Emberverse 08: The Tears of the Sun

by S. M. Stirling

  Rich land well farmed and plenty of it, she thought. The only wealth that’s really real. Never a hungry spring for my children, when they come; a place for them to grow straight and strong and carry our blood down the years in our children’s children.

  But for a moment she was possessed by a bitter longing for the hard pine scent of the homeland winds, the pale light of the short midsummer nights gleaming on the silver bark of the birches, and even the bright chill of a winter morning when the land seemed crusted with diamond and the air crackled in your nose. There was no point in talking of any of that. She had made her decision, for reasons which still seemed good, and she would abide what came of it. Edain best of all, and where he was she would make her home.

  “The harvest was fine,” she said instead, the surefire conversational gambit; she couldn’t imagine anyone not being interested in that. “The heads in the sheaves were thick and heavy.”

  “Fifty bushels the acre if it’s one, despite pushing it just a wee bit early for the war’s sake and letting the grain dry in the stooks,” Edain agreed. “Nor any sign of the rust. As good as any can remember since the Change.”

  He cocked an eye at her. “And you pitched in very well, with not a word said. Everyone was pleased, and more than one told me so.”

  Asgerd flushed, happy and a little angry at the same time that anyone could have doubted her. She’d seen lands where a few rich lorded it over all others and despised toil and sweat, but she was glad that among Mackenzies everyone worked, and fought when needful. Back in Norrheim she’d often seen King Bjarni with his hands on the handles of a plow or the haft of an ax, and Queen Harberga busy with loom and churn or helping get in the hay.

  “Who but a nithing would do otherwise?” she said. “When there’s real work to be done, you do it with all you have. The wights give no luck to the lazy, nor would Frey and Freya if I lacked respect for Their gifts.”

  Edain chuckled. “I know you, acushla, and have for a year now; and I know your folk a little, so I know why your back’s up and bristling like an angry cat. There’s no harm making a good impression on those who don’t know you or them, though, eh? We Mackenzies think well of a hard worker too, and you’re the new wolf in the pack here.”

  She nodded. I haven’t met many Norrheimer men who are as good at following a woman’s thoughts, she mused. He’s a troll-killing terror in a fight, my Edain, and a stallion in the blankets, and he can hunt anything that flies or runs, but in some ways he’s as sensitive as another girl.

  The thought gave her a flush of pleasure. She hid it by cocking her head to one side and considering Dun Fairfax itself, seen as a bird or a God might view it and away from the confusing thronging closeness that had blurred her vision of it before. There was nothing quite like a Dun of Clan Mackenzie in Norrheim. The thorp of a godhi, the home-place of a ring-giving drighten chief, would come closest; but that would be dominated by the Hall, and none held quite so many dwellers. Most Norrheimers lived each family of yeoman bondar by itself in the center of its allodal family land, the way her own parents and siblings did, with perhaps a few dependents’ homes to make a hamlet for the most prosperous.

  Dun Fairfax was a rectangle surrounded by a palisade of logs set in concrete and bound together with steel cable. There were blockhouses at the corners and flanking the gate made from squared baulks of timber; the whole was built from big logs, as thick as her body and many man-lengths high, for the trees grew tall and great here. They’d been stripped of bark, too, and varnished and oiled and polished, and bands across them had been carved with low-relief patterns of twining leaves and vines and serpents and elongated beasts, colorfully painted and inlaid with glass and stone from which whimsical faces peered, human and demi-human, bestial and divine.

  Mackenzies were fond of that effect, but it always made her feel as if something was looking at her, just out of sight at the corners of her eyes. Here you always felt that the Otherworld was only a half step away.

  A clear space of close-cropped pasture was kept outside the walls. Within were the homes and workshops along cobbled lanes, the tall steep-pitched covenstead that served for ceremony and gatherings and school for the children, and a communal barn and grain elevator and warehouse where things like the reaping machines were kept; there was a pond like a blue eye near the center where ducks and geese swam, surrounded by willows and oaks and a stretch of grass. Smoke drifted blue from brick chimneys in roofs that might be mossy shingle or flower-starred green turf, and very faintly she could hear the tink-tank-clang of a smith at work. The largest house was a pre-Change frame structure not at all unlike some she’d seen as a girl, but it was much altered and painted in a pale blue. The corners and windows and door lintels had all been set with bands of carved planking picked out in gold-yellow and scarlet and green.

  Beautiful, but different . . . very strange . . . witchy, she thought.

  “Too crowded,” she said aloud, and then again had that disconcerting feeling that Edain was following her real thoughts. “All those households within one wall.”

  “Ah, well, it was bad in Norrheim after the Change but worse for us,” he said blandly. “For ten years war hung over us like a thundercloud of threats and raids before it burst; I remember the wars against the Association, though I was naught but a nipper when Rudi was taken prisoner, and the northerners besieged Sutterdown, and I recall Da leading our archers out to the Field of Gold. And bad bandit troubles before and after and during that, gangs of the spalpeens, so it wasn’t safe for families to live apart on their own as your folk do. We got into the habit of dwelling close, so.”

  “It’s still as packed with folk as an egg is with meat,” she grumbled.

  “Forbye it’s a bit crowded now, yes, what with the easterners we’ve given refuge and our own numbers growing. Perhaps after the war, we’ll get together with Dun Carson and some others and found a new settlement.”

  Unspoken went: if too many don’t die in the battles to come.

  There was quiet pride in his voice: “We’ve done it before and more than twice; this is the oldest Dun in the Clan’s territory, after Dun Juniper. And Dun Juniper’s . . . different. This was the first of our farming Duns, and the pattern for the others, so.”

  The bigger house was the Aylward household, where her man’s family dwelt. Her marriage-kin now. She took a deep breath. No task grew easier and no danger grew less because you flinched from it. Just as she did they both heard soft quiet steps coming from below. Hands went to weapons, and Edain made a brzzzzzllll sound between his teeth, the buzzing trill of some local bird she didn’t know. The like answered it, and they relaxed; then a man and three dogs came into sight.

  “Dickie,” Edain said, slipping the arrow back into his quiver.

  His younger brother was just eighteen and hence a little younger than Asgerd herself, in a kilt but barefoot, with only a sleeveless shirt below his quiver and a bow in his hand and a dirk at his belt. He had a kin-look of Edain, but his long queue of hair was a brown ruddy with the tint of old rust, his face half-covered with freckles where it wasn’t pale, and his build more lanky. Two of the dogs were just out of pup-hood, two years or so with heads and feet still a little large for their frames; the other was a gray-brown bitch of six or seven. All three were enormous, mastiff-Dane crosses with a strong trace of timber wolf.

  “Stay, Garbh,” Edain said.

  The bitch came over to him, sniffed politely at Asgerd’s hand, accepted a ruffling of the ears, then sat down by her master with a thump of tail against packed dirt and leaned her massive barrel-wide head into his thigh. A slight lift of the lip to show fang kept the younger dogs well mannered when they showed an impulse to leap about. They were the get of a sister from Garbh’s litter, and had accepted her authority instantly.

  “Edain,” the younger man replied, and: “Sister,” to Asgerd with a casual nod.

  And he’s always just taken me as I am, Asgerd thought gratefully. Neither too friendly or hiding behi
nd formal manners, more as if he’d known me from a baby and remembered me sitting on the porch sucking my thumb. Right now I think he wants to talk to his brother, though.

  “I’ll go down,” she said. “Your mother may need some help, with the feast preparing.”

  “See you in a bit then, mo chroi,” Edain said.

  The Aylward brothers squatted side by side with their bows across their knees, looking down at the Dun that was the home where they’d been born.

  “That is a fine, fine figure of a woman you’ve found yourself there,” Dick said after an instant, nodding down the trail after Asgerd.

  “Or she found me.”

  “Stubborn and close-mouthed, though.”

  “Ah, you just noticed! Not that any Aylward has ever been such before, cough our da cough.”

  “And when she does talk, it’s always as if she were chanting a tale.”

  “She thinks we Mackenzies gabble too much and too quick,” Edain said with a grin. “All her folk talk like that. Something to do with their Gods, d’ye see.”

  Dick snorted. “Well, the father always says we talk like . . . like the stage Irish. What that means perhaps Ogma of the honey tongue knows, but I do not.”

  “I’ve heard Lady Juniper say something of the sort,” Edain said, and shrugged.

  Their generation was used to finding those who’d been adults before the Change odd, even the most beloved or respected. Then he went on: “How else should Mackenzies talk? We’re Gaels and that’s how we speak. I’ve no complaints about Asgerd; when she does speak, it’s usually something worth the hearing and not just clack for the sake of it. No complaints in general; let Lady Aeval who rules the marriage bed bear witness.”

  Dick nodded: “She’s clever and hardworking, too, and not so bad a shot with a bow in her hands; you and she should make some fine comely bairns, which the Mother-of-All grant. But can she cook, brother?”

  Edain laughed. “Over a campfire, yes, but we’ve not had our own hearth yet! Her folk do well enough; plain good cooking the most of it, not as subtle as ours, and they’ve less to work with in that grim shiversome icebox they inhabit. Their beer is sad beyond description—no hops—but they make a fine mead and good whiskey and cider and applejack. And they liven up considerable at a feast; no lack of the craic.”

  Dick reached into his sporran and pulled out a scone wrapped in a broad dock leaf, breaking it and offering Edain half. He took it, biting into it with relish. It was still faintly warm, with a brown crisp crust on the bottom and a soft steaming interior thickly studded with Bing cherries and hazelnuts, the whole sweet with honey.

  “Ah, and on the quest I missed the mother’s cooking something fierce,” he said through the crumbs.

  “I don’t hold with foreign food myself,” Dick agreed. “Now, what’s this I hear about an Óenach Mór?”

  Edain nodded. “On the fly, so to speak. There will be business to do for the Clan, and it can’t wait, so the levy will be the assembly too, so to say. And sure, they’re collecting the proxies so there’ll be a quorum with the marching host; it’s a war we’re going to, not a cèilidh. Lady Juniper’s been busy with that, Rudi having other things to put his hand to the now.”

  Dick’s brows went up. “We’ve already voted for war, and that some time ago.”

  “It’s that Rudi . . . the High King . . . can’t be tanist anymore.”

  His younger brother sat bolt upright and sprayed crumbs; Edain pounded him helpfully on the back. “And why not, by Anwyn’s hounds?”

  The Chief always had a tanist, a designated successor in training; it had been Rudi Mackenzie for six years now.

  “Because he’s the High King, y’daft burraidh!”

  “A blockhead, am I? And why shouldn’t he be Chief in his time, as well as Ard Rí?”

  “Because he’s to be High King of all Montival, of which the Clan is only a part, and not the largest part at that. Which means he belongs to all the peoples, not just us. And it would be just a bit of a slap in the face to all the rest if he were to be Chief, the Mackenzie Himself, wouldn’t it now? He’s to be King over them, but that doesn’t put us over them, so.”

  “Oh,” Dick said, knotting his rusty brows. “Well, since you put it that way. But who’s to be tanist, then? May the Gods grant the Chief a long life, but . . .”

  “But we all of us pass the Western Gate someday. Well, in strict law we could choose anyone. If I were a betting man, I’d say that Lady Juniper’s middle daughter would be the one to back. A good deal of quiet talk’s been going on with the notable folk in each Dun to that effect, and in Sutterdown. And not just since Rudi returned. The Chief saw the necessity of it as soon as the news that Rudi was to be King came back, and folk took to it so enthusiastic and all.”

  “Ah,” Dick said. “Well, I wouldn’t want to choose any outside the Chief’s line anyway, given a choice. There’s Lady Eilir, but she’s with the Rangers. Fiorbhinn’s a likely lass, though.”

  Edain shook his head. “She’d do at a pinch; but she’s very young yet, not under the Moon, and besides she’s more for the music and the magic. Maude’s near as old as Rudi was when we hailed him tanist, and she’s clever and good-hearted. She’ll be a steady hand on the reins.”

  “The Chief’s a bard, and a priestess of power, and a good Chief too.”

  “That she is, but a child can get some of the gifts and not others. Forbye Fiorbhinn doesn’t want it, and does say so with great enthusiasm and determination. Mentions that her first decree would be that everyone must speak in rhyme at all times, and the second that all dishes but ice cream and apple pie be banned. And she’s only half in jest. Maude will do what duty says, regardless.”

  “Which is what’s wanted, true enough,” Dick said, and finished his half of the scone.

  They both took a swig from Edain’s canteen, poured a little water on the ground and dusted their hands beside the trail. Each dropped a small piece broken off from the scone for the purpose as well.

  “Let the spirit of the place take her due. All the rest is yours, little brothers,” Edain murmured, welcoming the insects and birds, then went on: “We had some fine eating in those foreign parts when we guested with great men, but nothing to compare with home to my reckoning. Well, except in Readstown, where Ingolf the Wanderer’s kin dwell along the Kickapoo River; Wisconsin it was called, before the Change. His brother’s wife Wanda is a hearthmistress there, and a brewmistress of note as her kin were before her, even before the Change.”

  “Good, she is?”

  “Better than good, by the Blessing! Such beer as Lord Gobniu brews in the Land of Summer. And her meat pies would make you weep. Also their sausages are good, and their cheese is very fine, as good as the mother’s or the best from Tillamook.”

  “You always did take tender care of your stomach, Edain. You’ll get all you can guzzle tonight,” Dick said, with a smile that was half-sour. “I fair couldn’t stand it the more. A fine fat yearling buck I brought in yesterday, and six rabbits—”

  They both absently made the gesture of the Horns to Cernnunos, the Master of the Beasts, to acknowledge that their two-legged kind took of the bounty of the woods only when they walked with His power. Deer swarmed in the forests round about, and even more in the overgrown abandoned fields that still made up most of the Willamette country; not only were they good eating, but hunting helped protect the crops and gardens from their nibbling scourge. No fence or hedge made by man would keep a deer out, or a rabbit or a fox.

  “—and that’s as much as I propose to do. Running about waving their hands in the air, they all are, and screeching. Nerves on end, with the levy and the war and all.”

  Edain looked out, listening to his brother’s voice with the ears of the mind.

  “It’s not just the womenkind who’ve driven you out on this fine day,” he said. “You’re not one to balk at peeling a few spuds.”

  “Well . . . mind, I’m happy to be in the High King’s Archers. But it�
�ll be a wee bit odd, not to march with the Dun’s levy.”

  Edain laughed and slapped his brother on the shoulder, callused palm echoing on hard muscle.

  “If you’re afraid of being too safe . . . well, lad, we’ll be by the High King’s side. Never a dull moment in battle, I promise you that. That’s not all that’s bothering you, mo bhràthair!”

  Dick sighed, a sound like the relaxing of a constraint.

  “It’s the father,” he said after a moment, his voice catching a little. “Fair worried I am. He would do too much when we brought in the wheat, and I think he pulled something in his back, though the barbs of the Gáe Bolga itself couldn’t drag a word of it out of him, you know how he is.”

  “That I do, and I know just what you mean.”

  “I’m that afraid he’ll kill himself when the spring-planted barley comes ripe, we’ll be gone to the war and the Dun’ll be shorthanded. If any man with Mackenzie on the end of his name has earned the right to take a rest in the sun, then by Lug Longhand and Ogma and Brigid and the threefold Morrigú and all the Gods of our people, isn’t it him? By hard work and harder fighting both. But will he listen to me, or you, or Tamar, or even the mother?”

  “Not a bit will he. Though it hurts our honor as his children that he won’t let us take better care of him.”

  Edain closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and shook his head; Garbh looked up and whined slightly at his tone as he went on: “Aye, it’s bitter hard to see the old man fail. You don’t remember him as well as I from when he was in his prime, First Armsman of the Clan for all those years.”