A moment's pause, and Ignatius went on. "And the other thing that troubles you, my child?"
Mathilda started, then gripped her will in both hands and went on: "It's Rudi."
That calm waiting silence went on again. A coyote howled in the distance.
At last she said, "I've been having… well, impure thoughts about him. Fairly often. It's happened before, but never like this, not just in passing."
"Ah." This time the hint of a smile. "And have you welcomed these thoughts?"
"Well…" Mathilda forced herself not to wriggle.
It's better and worse than Father Donnelly. Father Ignatius is young enough to understand. And he's a Changeling like me, or nearly. But it's more embarrassing because he is young enough to understand.
"Well, I try not to."
Ignatius nodded. "That is all you can do."
Another pause, and she went on: "It's a bit different now. I mean, we've been like brother and sister all these years, and this… sort of changes things. I don't know why it's just now. I've been, ummm, noticing boys for quite a while! And Rudi's, well, he's a witch; you know how they are. I guess it's because Mom and I talked about us maybe marrying. I'm not sure if I love him, love him that way, but I sure think I could if I let myself. It may be just because we know each other so well. And… well, he's so damn pretty. And I keep imagining us together, you know, not just… well, I keep thinking about children and a life together and stuff."
Ignatius surprised her with a chuckle. "My child, are you confessing to longing to know Rudi Mackenzie in a carnal manner after you marry him?"
"Ummm… sort of. Yes, with the thinking part of me. The other part's just… longing, when I let it."
"Then you have not sinned, not even in intention. It isn't Satan who gives you such feelings, you know. The worst the Deceiver can do is tempt you to misdirect them. He can mar even the highest things, but he creates nothing."
Mathilda blinked in surprise. "But… are you saying that God wants me to marry Rudi?"
"Not at all, my child. That may or may not be pos sible; there are matters of State, which you must con sider as part of the duty your birth has laid on you. That, thankfully, is not a priest's to decide. And there is the difference in faiths, which does concern your spiritual directors. But the desire itself is pure."
"Then what does God want me to do?" she said in frustration.
"He has told you that, Mathilda Arminger. He has said it very plainly: 'Be ye perfect.' "
Mathilda shivered. "I don't have the makings of a saint, Father."
Ignatius's voice turned sharp for an instant: "Oh, yes, you do, my child."
He gestured upward to the dome of stars. "When all this beauty is past and all Creation is a story that has been told, you will endure-either a horror beyond con ception, or a radiance of glory such as we can scarcely begin to imagine. That is the makings that God put in you!"
Mathilda looked upward herself, and then nodded slowly. It was a humbling thought, when you looked at it that way.
"I, well, I've never had a vocation. I thought I did for a while when I was younger, but I didn't, really."
"Not a calling for the life of a religious, no," Ignatius agreed. "But He does not give us each the same cross to bear. Your nature and mine are different, and so we seek Him by different paths, but we are both loved by God and called to His perfection."
"Father, thinking about the perfection of God scares me silly. How can I be perfect, just being… me? It's not just being on the throne someday, though that scares me too. I know that'll always be like a fight in the dark, no matter how hard I try, and I'm afraid of it twisting me and making me someone who can't trust or love any one or anything. But being with Rudi all this time, the things I want, a home, babies, they just don't seem in the same… the same league as, well, perfection."
She made a wry face. "I mean, they feel so animal sometimes. Not in a bad way, but it's a lot like a mare with a foal, or a mother cat with her kittens."
" Now you are verging on the sin of pride! Lying in His mother's arms and nursing was good enough for Our Lord! God has given you these desires-including your desire for Rudi-and He gives us carnal love for a purpose, for mutual delight, to produce children, and the sanctification of the soul. Cast yourself headlong on God's love, begging His grace to help you in the perfection of the nature He gave you. To love another so deeply that we seek union with the beloved, by that to bring an immortal soul into this world and care for and shape it… that is to imitate God Himself in His splendor!"
They waited together for a moment more. "Now make an Act of Contrition, my child, while I pronounce the words of Christ's forgiveness."
While the young priest spoke the words of absolution, Mathilda recited the formula:
I am most heartily sorry
That I have offended Thee
And I detest all my sins
Because I dread the loss of Heaven
And the pains of Hell
But most of all because
They offend Thee, my God
Who are all things good
And deserving of all my love
I firmly resolve
With the help of Thy grace
To sin no more
And to avoid the near occasions of sin.
"Amen," they finished together, and she signed herself.
She always found confession comforting, and always tried to keep herself mindful of the importance, but it rarely struck her so strongly as it did this night, with the fallen of battle not a thousand yards away and the mem ory of the Death Angel's shadow, Azrael's wing brushing across her eyes.
I'm not sure exactly what I'm sorry for, but I sure feel better, she thought. Thank You, Lord.
Ignatius took his kit from his baggage and they walked a little way into the darkness; others didn't no tice, or looked politely aside if they did. He lifted out the white surplice and red stole and donned them; as he did he seemed to change somehow. Mathilda knelt, and he lifted a wafer from the ciborium. It seemed like a snowy sunrise in the darkness of the wilderness as he raised it.
"Ecce Agnus Dei," he said three times. "Ecce qui tollis peccata mundi. Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takest away the sins of the world."
She took the wafer on her tongue.
"Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam. May the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ preserve your soul for everlasting life."
Chapter Seventeen
Northern Nevada
June 1, CY23/2021 A.D.
"Yes," the scout commander of the detachment of the Sword of the Prophet said, sketching in the wet sand beside the pool. "The misbe lievers and their general are heading south and east, towards Goose Valley-you see, here, north of Wild horse Lake-they may push on into the hills south of the flats, to trace the old irrigation canal and repair it. The western pagans are keeping on eastward with the Mormon infidels; they should meet Thurston's force, or come very close."
The one-eyed man smiled, looking east and west over the encampment at the bottom of the canyon. There wasn't much to see; the horse lines were scattered up and down the rocky cleft wherever there was water within digging range, usually in clumps of cottonwood and willow. The men were even less conspicuous in the shadow cast by the narrow rock walls; a soft murmur of chanting came as some repeated the teachings in chorus, and the sound of oiled stone on steel as others touched up the edges of shete and lance and arrowhead. There was no smell of woodsmoke as there would have been with ordinary levies, no matter what the orders were; only rock and dust and the peppery-spicy scent of crushed sage and greasewood.
The commander of the detachment nodded eagerly at the scout's report; he was a youngish man, well short of thirty, shaven-headed and scar-faced.
"See how the Ascended Masters guide the lifestreams!" he said. "Your mission and mine, High Seeker, are now fully compatible."
Kuttner suppressed an impulse to grind his teeth. His authorizati
on from the Prophet's son overrode ordinary military commands, or it should. There were times when he wished very much that the Prophet would establish clearer lines of authority below his own level, instead of letting disputes fester until they had to be referred to him… or to the Son.
And the Prophet speaks so seldom now, and so… oddly…
He shook his head. The Son has given you a mission. Let's get on with it. And when the Prophet discards his mortal envelope to rejoin the Masters, things will change.
Kuttner looked up again, and a man on the rim of the canyon waved down, stooping behind a boulder to be invisible from the outside.
****
Ritva Havel and her sister lay behind a ridge of rock. Their war cloaks covered and concealed them; perhaps not as thoroughly as elven ones woven in Lothlorien, but enough to make them effectively invisible beyond a few yards if they didn't move. The thin tough cloth with its loops full of grass and twigs and the gauze masks also provided welcome shade on what was turning into a hot day. In the high desert anything that broke the sun made a big difference.
There had been fresh horse dung down on the road that ran below and a mile west of this ridge. Someone had come by, even in this emptiness. Chances were they would again. Shod hooves, to boot. Which meant civi lized men, or at least the more capable and therefore dangerous type of savages.
The stretch of river valley ahead of her-the maps called it Goose Valley-ran from southeast to northwest, with an old graveled road down its center. It had been cultivated once; you could still see the outline of the square fields, and new marshes where the irriga tion canal had burst its banks, and a few small clumps of burnt out houses. She didn't know why whoever had lived here had left, but even this far into the interior things could have been very bad right after the Change. The thought was dispassionate; she'd grown up in a world where ruins were simply part of the backdrop of life. The death of the world that had built them was only a little more real to her than the Fall of Gondolin.
Insects buzzed and occasionally burrowed in and bit; conquering ants bore a beetle off in triumph across the ground in front of her face from right to left. Dry sage gave off its spice and-sneeze scent, to mingle with sweat she could feel trickling down her neck and flanks, and the smell of the dusty earth and pebbles beneath her. With the sun overhead there wasn't much danger of her binoculars giving them away either… though since there apparently wasn't anyone to see them, that was a bit moot. Still, they kept motionless as the sun crept up the sky behind them and then down westward ahead.
Think rock. Think root. Let the wind flow through you.
A maddening itch on the instep of her right foot came and went. A long eared desert hare hopped by, stopped for a moment to stand upright and wrinkle its nose at the dry air, then went on its way. A few minutes later a coy ote came trotting along its trail, then caught their scent when the wind changed. It shied violently sideways with a little spurt of dust before turning and loping away.
Ritva smiled to herself, a bit from the expression of bug eyed alarm on the beast's face and a bit smugly as well. When you could fool a song dog into coming within arm's reach, you were hiding, by Manwe and Varda!
That was how Aunt Astrid and the others insisted on training Rangers, and they were quite right, though some outsiders thought the Dunedain were too sneaky and patient to be real warriors.
Very faintly, she snorted and thought: Canuidhol lin. Rangers just didn't go in for the two masses of farmboys in-steel shirts-with-pikes style of head butting. She was sure the Fair Folk had never been quite that stupid; they'd had to contend with a much higher grade of Dark Lord than you found nowadays.
Though this Prophet guy seems to show some promise.
Antelope ran across the deserted fields; birds rose from the marshes and the dead trees. Then…
"Mmm-hmmm!" Mary said.
"Lots," Ritva replied; speaking quietly rather than whispering-whispers carried farther because of the sibilants.
There was dust coming from the north; individual trails, and behind it a plume-several dozen wagons or fifty or sixty horsemen, she estimated. And eagles and hawks, hanging in the air above them; they always did that out here when humans were on the move, hop ing for birds and small animals spooked into the open. One plunged as she watched, coming up with something wriggling in its claws.
And let that be a lesson to you, she thought. That's what comes of breaking cover 'cause you're nervous.
The trails of dust turned into horsemen. Ritva turned the binoculars with extreme care; the sun was getting lower and nothing gave you away at a distance like a glint. They looked like anyone's light horse-except that everything they wore was exactly the same; same short chain-mail shirt, same stirrup hilted saber, same model of saddle, same five pointed star tooled into the leather of the bow cases in front of their right knees.
About a dozen of them, Ritva thought. No, twenty.
They were obviously scouting the line of march; they poked into every clump of trees, over to the riverbed to the westward, and every ravine in these hills within range of the road.
Of course, to be really sure they should push foot pa trols up into these mountains. The ones behind her were a tangled dome two thousand feet higher than the valley floor. But if they did that, it would take weeks.
After a while more khaki-colored dust showed to the north, and a little after that an iron tramp-tramp – tramp of booted feet and the trrrripp-trrripp-trrripp of a marching drum and the squeal of a fife.
Ah, not fifty or sixty horsemen after all. Five times that number of men, but on foot, and some wagons. Lots of tools on the wagons, picks and shovels and wheelbarrows… bet those are sacks of cement, too.
At the head went the banner, a golden spread-winged eagle on a tall pole clutching arrows in one claw and an olive-wreath in the other, with the old American flag beneath, carried by a standard-bearer with a wolfskin cloak whose head topped his helmet; he was flanked by drum and fife. The men behind were in armor of steel hoops and bands, and they carried big oval shields and six foot javelins; the points of the throwing spears moved like the ripple of wind on reeds to the earthquake tramp of their marching.
Yeah, Boise, Ritva thought.
She'd never been to the city, but she'd been on their territory, and there was a lot in the Mithrilwood files. A good well-stocked filing system was one of the marks of those reckoned mighty among the wise.
As the soldiers halted and began digging in their marching camp-six-foot earthwork, ditch and pali sade-the sisters began to work their way backward. They were too far away to be seen easily, but even so they moved with exquisite care. Now that the Boise troops weren't moving, they might take the time to check the hills, or at least all the points that conveniently overlooked their camp. You never knew.. ..
A pebble turned beneath a hoof, and Mary hissed. Both young women froze. Icewater ran from Ritva's lungs to her bladder, and her body tried to twitch in reflex fear before she stilled it. Slowly, slowly Ritva turned her head within the loose hood of the war cloak.
Two men had ridden up the dry creekbed behind them and a little south. They were in thick clothes of the type you usually wore under armor; the cloth was mottled with gray and olive green as well as dark rus set, so it took a moment to realize that it was a uniform. They wore hoods over their heads as well, baglike ones with only a slit for the eyes. In fact…
Pretty much like the ones in Sutterdown last year. Uh-oh. Cutters. The Prophet's men.
The men swung down from their mounts and dropped the reins to the ground-which meant very well trained horses. They were lightly equipped: daggers, point-heavy slashing swords worn over their backs so they wouldn't rattle, quivers, horseman's bows-about what the twins were carrying. And presumably they were on the same mission as she and Mary, which was a bit of a giggle when you thought about it.
Ritva made her breathing long and steady and slow, and felt the flutters in her stomach go away. Fear worked both ways-if you suppresse
d the physical symptoms, it calmed your mind. Dealing with people who wanted to kill you was never really a giggling matter, particularly if they had any chance of actually doing it. Rudi and Odard had boasted about the fight in Brannigan's inn, in a classy modest way. But then they were males, and therefore idiots about some things.
She glanced over at Mary, and caught the almost imperceptible single shake of the head. No. Her own nod was as quiet. Not worth the risk.
The two Cutters came up the slope towards the crest line, the last dozen yards on their bellies, moving slow and steady. When their heads rose above the peak of the ridge it was with glacial slowness; one brought a mon ocular to his eye, shading it with a hand to make sure it didn't flash in the setting sun. He spoke softly; his com rade dropped back until he was out of the line of sight, brought out a pad and began writing and sketching. They kept it up for a little while, and then the one with the monocular dropped down too, looked at the paper, and nodded.
Then they just waited. Perforce the twins did too; Ritva felt something crawling up her pant leg, and moved her hand down very slowly under the war cloak to kill it. Mary didn't move, but Ritva could feel her disapproval.
Well, it wasn't your sensitive bits it was going to sting, she thought. It had too many legs. They have centipedes around here! And scorpions, I think!
The sun faded westward and the wind blew colder, colder than the warm rock beneath her. The white and gray of the sagebrush desert turned colorful for an in stant, red and umber and sienna, and the mountains to the north and east blushed a pink that faded and changed tone instant by instant.
Then the light went that clear gray color you got in dry country just as the sun was dropping below the horizon-the hour between the dog and the wolf-and then it was dark. Stars frosted the sky as the last purple died from the sky westward, fading into being one by one.
Farewell, Father Sun. Mother-of All, I greet the stars that are the dust of Your feet, and… ah… Help!
Sunrise Lands c-1 Page 39
