Emberverse 08: The Tears of the Sun

by S. M. Stirling

  “I thought so, but I could swear that’s—”

  She went over to her saddle by the picnic basket; their mounts were grazing free, both being too well trained to need hobbles. The binoculars were securely cased; she freed them and trained them to the northwest.

  “Ah, the palantír en-crûm,” Ian said; he’d been picking up a little of the Noble Tongue. Then he blinked. “That isn’t a bunch of cowboys or militiamen, is it?”

  “No,” she said, without taking the glasses from her eyes; her voice bubbled with delight and curiosity. “I’m afraid not.”

  Kovalevsky looked down at the picnic basket with its earthenware jug of beer, roast-beef sandwiches and pickles and salad and Babushka pirozhki, sweet pastries stuffed with sour cherries and nuts. His vanishing hopes were in his sigh. Ritva began stripping off the practice gear. The redcoat did the same.

  “Who is it?” he asked in a resigned tone, absently rubbing at the still-sore point on his right buttock where the arrow had struck.

  A series of liquid trills answered, and then she shook her head and dropped back into English: “Sorry, forgot.”

  Poor boy. You actually had a pretty good chance of getting lucky, she thought. You’re sweet, which is a welcome change from Hrolf.

  “I think it’s my aunt,” she went on. “My mother’s younger sister. The Hiril Dúnedain. A party of my people.”

  By the time the party reached her it was obvious. A dozen Rangers, all of them known to her—the Dúnedain weren’t so many yet that she couldn’t remember them, especially the ones based out of Mithrilwood. She waved and called greetings to the green-clad riders. They had a couple of Anchor Bar Seven riders with them, probably from the patrols; one peeled off and galloped for the homeplace.

  Lots of remounts and they’ve been pushing hard, she thought.

  You could go nearly as fast as a rail-borne pedal car if you had three or four horses and switched off several times a day. For a while, at least, and if you didn’t mind your backside getting thoroughly tenderized. There was a very old joke about a book titled Thirty Years in the Saddle, by Major Assburns .

  And in front of them all were Aunt Astrid with her disturbing eyes of silver-rimed, silver-threaded blue, Uncle Alleyne blondly handsome, Uncle John bulking huge under a red-brown thatch just showing some gray with his greatsword slung over his back, and raven-headed Aunt Eilir beside him grinning. The whole ruling quadrumvirate of the Folk of the West; it must be something important to bring them all out here in the middle of a war when they’d be badly needed closer to home. Everyone dismounted, and Ritva went to one knee, put hand to heart and bowed: “Well-met, my liege-lady and kinswoman; and all of you, my kin, my brethren.”

  Astrid smiled and advanced, holding out her hands. Ritva placed hers between them. Close-to you could see that she’d spent many days in the saddle moving fast, but she showed the strain little as yet, though there were small lines beside those odd compelling eyes.

  “Ritva Havelion, you have brought honor to the People of the West. You have helped to bring our King, your kinsman, back once more to his people. You have helped to lay the very foundations of the Kingdom of the West, of Montival. Mae coren! Very well done!”

  Ritva felt herself blushing, and astonished at it. Off by yourself, you could think of Astrid Loring-Larsson as something of a figure of fun, however formidable. In her presence, the sheer burning power of belief caught you up again. Looking into the moon-rimmed eyes, you saw yourself as something else again from the light of common day.

  I don’t think I have it in me to believe in anything quite that strongly. Does that mean I’m more sane, or something less than she is?

  Then, rebelliously: But I probably have more fun!

  “Did you see Rudi . . . Artos, Aunt Astrid?”

  A brilliant smile answered her. “We did, at Castle Corbec, for the handfasting with Princess Mathilda.”

  Neithan! she cursed silently. Bad luck to be laid up healing.

  She didn’t resent it . . . much. There simply had been no time to waste waiting for her, and she hadn’t been in any condition to be moved. War was like that; she might have been crippled or killed, with only a little less blind luck.

  “And we saw the Sword of the Lady. Marvelous, a wonder, like Glamdring or Orcrist or even Andúril Flame of the West!”

  I hope you didn’t tell him that, she thought. Mary and I tried to convince him to name it Andúril and he didn’t react well at all.

  “Through it the light of the Elder Days is brought to Middle Earth once more. And we are on a mission of our own at the High King’s command,” she went on. “One which will bring the Rangers glory and undying fame!”

  Uh-oh.

  “The code name is Operation Lúthien.”

  We are so fucked! she thought.

  “We’ll need fresh horses, Ritva,” Alleyne said; he dropped into English for that, looking at the redcoat. “I understand they’re available here?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ian Kovalevsky said. “This ranch raises them and sells saddlebroke four-year-olds, and the Force and the Militia regiments have brought in more.”

  Ritva introduced him, adding: “A very brave man, and he fought extremely well against the Easterlings . . . the Cutters. The Force are the local equivalents of the Rangers.”

  A party was riding out from the tented camp beside the homeplace. They cantered up the rise and drew rein, a dozen men in light-cavalry gear over plain gray-green uniforms of linsey-woolsey. Their leader was a toughlooking bandy-legged little man of about forty with a face like an intelligent rat and sergeant’s chevrons riveted to the short sleeve of his mail shirt. He took off his helmet as he dismounted, scratching vigorously at his cropped graying brown hair, and then his eyes went wide in astonishment.

  “Little John? John ’ordle? Fuck me sideways! You’re alive?” he blurted in a thick clotted accent.

  “Was last toime Oi looked!” Then the big Ranger did a double take himself. “Geoff? Geoff Bainbridge? What the ’ell are you doin’ ’ere, Geoff? You were on Salisbury Plain, last toime Oi saw you, drivin’ a Challenger. Oi got over ’ere from Blighty about fifteen year ago. Thought you were a gonner these twenty-five years.”

  “Ah were on a trainin’ course at CFB Suffield, me and two thousand others, just before the Change. Lucky as fuck that were an’ all!”

  “You don’t know the ’alf of it, mate!” Hordle said feelingly.

  “Aye, Ah do. An RN ship docked at Churchill three year back and dropped off a packet o’ English newspapers. Sounds laak it were raaght bad back ’ome for a while. Expected Leeds were totally fooked any road—seems Ah were raaght. Raaght bad all round, sounds laak.”

  “Bad? Fuckin’ ’ell, worse than bad, mate. Worse than bad . . . but over quick, for most of ’em at least. How’d things go over ’ere?”

  “It were raaght rough the first couple o’ years ’ere too; fuckin’ Calgary and Edmonton near dragged us down wi’ ’em an’ buggered t’lot o’ us. Would’ve, if hadn’t been so fuckin’ cold, that got most who walked out. Then we got things sorted out, laak. Ah’ve got a wife an’ kids and a bit o’ a farm goin’ a ways north o’ ’ere now. Till Ah got called oop fer this lot, any road.”

  “We need some ’orses, Geoff. Quiet loik, away from pryin’ eyes. Paperwork’ll all be done roit later.”

  “Ah think sommat can be dun,” the little man grinned. “If that there redcoat lends an ’and.”

  “Good. ’Ave a sandwich, mate,” he added, taking one out of the basket in each hand and starting his own with an enormous bite. “S’goof,” he added through a mouthful.

  “My picnic!” Ian said . . . but quietly.

  “You Rangers can move,” Ian Kovalevsky said a week later. “Even by the standards of the Force.”

  “They sold us good horses back at the Anchor Bar Seven,” Ritva said; they both had the habit of talking without looking at each other as they rode, which was useful—her eyes were moving ceaselessly and so were h
is. This was potentially hostile country. “And we have well-callused backsides.”

  Ian grinned. “After the way you got wounded bringing the alarm about the Cutters and your brother Artos saved everyone’s bacon by showing up in the nick of time it’s not surprising. You guys could have had the horses for free, if you’d asked. With me thrown in.”

  The Rangers—plus one member of the Force sent on special detached service by an amused and agreeable captain—were riding under a bright cloudless summer sky. Around them lay bunchgrass and bluestem turning from green to gold, whispering in long ripples to the end of sight and standing high on the horses’ fetlocks. Land crept by to the steady walk-trot-canter-walk pace, changing from flat grassland to occasional steep wooded hills, or cut by deep ravines and then subsiding to open level ground again. This high plateau that had been known as the Eye of Idaho once; white-topped mountains showed west and east, with the deceptive look of the big-sky country that fooled you into thinking something three days’ ride away was only a few hours’ distance.

  The air was warm with summer, but not hot; they were four or five thousand feet up here. Small blue flowers starred the tawny-green grass in swales where the dark basalt soil was damper, and insects burst out of it before their hooves, or now and then grouse or partridge. Ahead, the party’s spare two-score remounts—the remuda, which despite the sound was a Spanish word, not Sindarin—grouped together in a well-trained knot, requiring only an occasional canter by the pair assigned to rearguard to keep them bunched. She was glad of that; leading reins were a trial, especially when you had three or four horses each. A big remuda was the way to travel fast, though. With enough remounts you could make a hundred miles a day or more in summertime, especially if there was good grazing or feed available along the way.

  “Beautiful beasts,” he said.

  Ritva nodded, watching with pleasure their glossy hides move. These weren’t the ones they’d taken south over the Drumheller border, through the lands where the Dominion, the PPA, the US of Boise and the Prophet’s domains met over hundreds of miles in a tangle of wilderness they all claimed but mostly didn’t control. They’d given the garrisoned fortress-city of Moscow a wide berth, and then Nez Perce supporters had supplied remounts at the northern edge of their territory; the nascent Bearkillers had made friends there and elsewhere in this district when passing through Idaho right after the Change, and Hiril Astrid had been with them then. She’d returned last spring, as well, and had renewed those ties with locals who didn’t care for President-General Martin Thurston and his wars.

  These glossy Appaloosa-spotted beasts were still quite fresh, and they’d brought the Ranger party far and fast. Now it was time to meet the next set of helpers here in enemy territory.

  Though I should remember Idaho and its people aren’t the enemy. The usurper Martin Thurston is the enemy, and his ally the Prophet of the Church Universal and Triumphant.

  They swung westward a little to skirt a marsh where water glinted amid stands of reeds and patches of open water; the Rangers were in a loose diamond formation, carefully irregular so as not to attract attention from a distance by hanging up a we are military sign.

  Ducks lifted thousandfold from the swamp, and white herons waded around its edges, probing for frogs; a line of old fence posts stood disconsolately in the shallow water, tilted and blackened, gaps showing like missing teeth and with a few strands of rusty barbed wire still clinging to them here and there. There was a dense fringe of youngish willows and cottonwoods and other water-loving trees tangled with undergrowth along its edges, and the horses snorted and shied as the party approached.

  The Dúnedain leaders had probably veered that way to keep the timber between them and prying eyes on the higher, drier ground eastward beyond the wetland. Ahead someone stood in their stirrups and raised a hand, then swung it leftward: investigate.

  Ritva swung her horse into a lope with a shift of balance and the grip of her thighs, an arrow ready on the string of her recurve saddlebow. Her mount was usually a well-behaved beast, but laid its ears back as they approached the woods, and now and then snorted in a fashion that plainly said in Horse: Smells bad, boss. Are you sure you want to go there?

  When its hooves started to squelch a little and the ground gave off a rich muddy smell she leaned far over, left knee bent and right heel hooked around the saddle horn as the horse walked slowly along the edge of the firm ground. The marks in the bare mud between two clumps of grass were unmistakable, cat-pugs about as broad as she could have spanned if she stretched thumb and little finger apart as far as they would go. Bigger and squarer than the more common cougar, and mountain lion didn’t like this sort of ground anyway. Tigers, on the other hand . . .

  They do like a swamp, the stripe-kitties, when they can get it. Big snowshoe feet and they swim well too. Is it my imagination I can smell him? No, it’s there, like a tomcat, but even more rank. A male then, and big, warning off his brothers. The wind’s in my face, right from the woods, so he can’t be too close or the horses would be acting up more than they are. I wish we had Edain and Garbh along, she’s the best tracking dog I ever met.

  The lead party had halted. They’d be looking at her with Astrid’s Zeiss binoculars, an heirloom from her father Kenneth Larsson. Ritva remembered her grandfather with affection—he’d died in a boating accident when she was about fourteen—and he’d loved gadgets, having been an engineer as well as a very wealthy man before the Change. The 20x60 S-type monstrosity was typical of the sort of thing he’d collected, with an utterly ingenious mechanical stabilization system that hadn’t been in the least affected by the Change, and it would make nothing of a thousand yards. She pulled herself back into the saddle with a flex of the leg, then slipped her bow back into the scabbard at her left knee and the arrow into her quiver, stood in the stirrups and brought her hands before her face, palms in.

  Then she made claws of the fingers and raked them outward sharply, twice, making the gesture broad and obvious. That was Sign for tiger, and her honorary Aunt Eilir had made the visual language part of the Dúnedain curriculum, back when she refounded the Rangers together with Astrid in the years after the Change. That was probably because she’d been deaf since birth, but also because it was extremely useful to be able to exchange complex information silently.

  Two more of the party trotted back on the other side of the remuda, pushing the beasts towards the marsh and its fringe of woodland despite their unease. The commanders came up; Hiril Astrid was casing her binoculars in their padded-steel case.

  “That was good scouting, Ritva,” she said with a nod.

  “Thank you, my lady,” Ritva acknowledged.

  Which was a bit formal, but they were in the field, not sitting over wine in Stardell Hall listening to a song or a reading from the Histories. The four older Rangers looked a little more worn than their followers; not that they were anywhere near their limits, merely that there was more discomfort behind their hard-held faces.

  “Scout net,” Astrid said, and two more of the Rangers trotted away.

  Alleyne brought out a map, and everyone else squatted around it with their reins looped through their belts and their horses occasionally taking a nuzzle at their hair.

  “This marsh isn’t mapped, but I think it’s here,” he said, tapping a spot. “The wetland’s probably recent. Within the last twenty years from the trees, though cottonwoods grow bally fast.”

  “And this St. Hilda’s place should be about six to eight miles south and west,” John Hordle rumbled, his finger moving over the waxed linen like a sausage with auburn fuzz.

  Astrid sighed. “This all looks so different from when Signe and Mike and Dad and I came through in the first Change Year,” she said, gesturing at their surroundings. “Most of this was plowed land, winter wheat and black fallow, with gravel roads every mile. See where the dimpled lines run, with more sagebrush and less grass? That’s the old roadbeds.”

  “The ironic thing,” Alleyne said, his ey
es still on the map, “is that there are probably more people living here now than then. There wasn’t any famine here, and this Lewiston place over a bit west was a substantial city and the ranchers here must have taken in some of them. And of course everyone’s been breeding like rabbits since.”

  That’s an odd thing for him to say, Ritva thought absently. Uncle Alleyne and Aunt Astrid only have three themselves. That’s not many at all.

  “There was black plague in Lewiston,” Astrid said, her weirdly beautiful face looking stark for an instant. “Pneumonic form. It came in with refugees from Spokane; we heard about it, and Mike turned us back when we saw the smoke from where they burned the bodies. Saw it. And . . . we could smell it. But I know what you mean.”

  It took a moment for Ritva to follow the thought; she was distracted by the casual mention of a journey that had become a legend in itself, and hearing her father—whom she barely remembered herself—referred to so humanly as Mike. It had been Astrid who coined the great title of Bear Lord for him, much against Michael Havel’s liking, from what she’d heard.

  But I’ve been on a longer trip, and one that will be more of a tale! she thought suddenly. All the way to Nantucket and . . . well, not quite back, for me, not yet. Dad would have been so proud!

  Ian nodded agreement.

  “It’s the same where I come from, sir, ma’am,” he said, in English—he’d been following the Sindarin conversation fairly well after a spell of total immersion and a lot of saddle-time studying a borrowed phrasebook. “We have more people now than before the Change in the Peace River country too, but there are abandoned fields and big grain elevators and such all over. We only need . . . oh, about one twentieth the tilled land. Less, maybe. I guess it must be like that in a lot of places.”