by Myers, Karen
Rhian had the hounds, and Benitoe had gotten a fire going while Gwion fetched dead wood, carried down by the stream and beached.
George hid a smile as he watched Maelgwn show Hadyn and Thomas Kethin and three other men where to tie up the hunt staff’s horses, before he dismounted and did the same with Mosby and his own. He gravely thanked them, and took their nods of acknowledgment.
He’s such a mixture, George thought, as though he’s trying to move straight to adulthood as fast as he can. Not so surprising, I guess, considering what he’s lived through, but I wish he could enjoy what’s left of his childhood more.
Maelgwn turned from his task, and George loudly thanked him for seeing to their horses. The rest of the hunt staff added a few words, and the boy straightened with pride without changing his serious expression.
Dyfnallt and Brynach laid the deer down and cut the ropes binding its legs. “Pay attention, gentlemen,” George said to Dyfnallt, beckoning Gwion in, too, “here’s how we do it over here. You’ll get to do this, next time. We’re going to have to pack it out on horseback.”
“I never missed my staff until I had to do without them,” Gwion joked. “Not even a wagon out here among the primitives.”
Rhian, meanwhile, was doing her best to keep a quelling eye on the impatiently waiting pack and to dry out in front of the fire at the same time, without being too obvious about it.
“You alright?” George asked her.
“Just a bit… damp, huntsman,” she said.
“I didn’t realize you knew those words, back there,” he teased, and she blushed.
George turned his attention to the deer and began work. He carved out the scent glands first, to keep them from spoiling the meat, then slit the carcass carefully down the front so that he could remove the gut sack and the primary organs, slitting it at the throat to detach one end. He cut the large intestine and its exit out and used a couple of sticks to carry it down to the unoccupied upstream end of the shingle. He bent over to wash off his hands and knife in the water while he was there.
“That’s the corbin’s gift,” he told Dyfnallt and Gwion when he returned. The first raven was already settling down, walking over to inspect the offering with a rolling walk and a cocked head.
“Well, it’s close to nature this is, I’ll give it that,” Dyfnallt said.
“Will you prepare a feast here?” Gwion looked around the bare strand skeptically.
“No, we’re not equipped for it. We’d need wagons and gear. We’ll bring back the flesh in its hide and cook the rest for the hounds’ reward on the spot.”
“Why do you go to the trouble of cooking it?” Dyfnallt asked.
“I like to reduce the possibility of parasites,” George said.
“Do your healers not treat the hounds, then?”
“They do, but we have a saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Brynach brought over a number of green sticks that he’d cut with his hatchet, and showed the men how to drape lengths of gut around them so they could be held over the fire for a quick sizzling roast. After a few minutes, they spread the results out in a loose line before the fire. George took the short conical silver horn out of his chest pocket and blew the mort, calling in the quivering hounds for their reward and praising them individually as they came.
The field broke off from its conversations to cheer the hounds as they snapped and disputed over the hot tasty morsels.
Dyfnallt, with a sturdier horse than Gwion, received the honor of carrying the carcass home. They lifted it up to the horse’s rump behind the saddle, and Brynach showed him how to tie it on so that the antlered head was twisted, with the antlers pointing away from the rider.
George left them to it, while Benitoe and Rhian did a rough clean-up of the hounds in the handy water. A bit less work for Ives and the kennel-men, if they could at least get the first layer of dirt off, and they could hardly get any wetter than they already were.
Most of the field had dismounted and were gossiping away, holding their horses by the reins. He spotted Gwyn standing talking with Edern and Rhodri, and he walked over to them, his boots squelching with each step from the soaking. At his approach, Rhodri called, “We couldn’t see the action for all the steam rising from the damp clothes.”
“I’d hate for you to feel left out in any way,” George said, with a gleam in his eye. “Perhaps you’d find an early morning dunking an acceptable reminder of when you were doing this work yourself?”
He stalked Rhodri, mock-threateningly, and the laughing man tried to evade him, but his dancing horse got in the way. As he turned to duck in the other direction, Maelgwn suddenly appeared in his path, casually cutting off his escape. Rhodri raised his hands in surprise and surrendered.
George spared him, merely raising his tricorn over his head to let it drip on him.
“Nice teamwork,” he said to Maelgwn, as they walked back to their own horses.
George surveyed the dinner table in the huntsman’s house with satisfaction that evening. He’d wanted to show his guests a complete new world meal, and Alun and Angharad had managed it perfectly.
On his left Rhian was joking about the cold stream with Brynach while Ives listened, and Gwion vied with Rhodri across from him to keep Angharad smiling at her end of the table. On his right, after Maelgwn, Dyfnallt asked Benitoe about the winter weather they should expect—how cold, how long.
The dogs, his and Angharad’s, lay drowsily by the fireplace, but their eyes covertly followed every bite, just in case something should fall.
“You saw this venison come in from Thursday’s hunt,” George said, as Alun set the steaming platter of sliced roasted meat in the center of the table and brought the conversations to a halt. “The shoulders, hide, and antlers are perquisites of the huntsman.”
Dyfnallt asked, “How is the rest divided?”
Ives said, “Neck and shanks to the hounds, and the head, too, usually.”
“We trade with the tanners and other craftsmen for finished materials from the hide and antlers for use in the kennels,” George said. “Much of the leather used throughout the kennels is deerskin, except for hard-wearing items like the book covers in the huntsman’s office and the horse tack. Cowhide’s more durable for that.”
Maelgwn’s turkey arrived on the next platter, with a crispy skin. Apple wedges spilled out of the interior. “I’d like to thank our foster-son for his contribution,” George said. “I haven’t had wild turkey for quite a while.” It was a good-sized bird, though nothing like the huge domestic turkeys George was used to.
“How did you kill it?” Rhian asked Maelgwn. “With your sling?”
He nodded, proudly. “First try.”
Alun brought in bowls of sliced and pan-fried potatoes, roasted turnips, and cabbage, then finally a platter of corn bread for soaking up the juices.
Gwion looked at the corn bread as if he’d never seen it before. “What’s this made from?” he asked, as he tasted it.
“Yellow maize,” Angharad said. “Mixed with flour, sweetened a little, and raised without yeast.”
George paused as he cut his meat. These foods that struck him as so typically new world that he hadn’t thought about them—they were domesticated plants, weren’t they. There were no humans here, no Indians. Corn cobs were the end result of thousands of years of selective breeding. Who did that?
“Angharad, where do you get corn and potatoes?” he said.
“We grow them ourselves.” She was puzzled by the question.
“No, I mean, where did they come from originally? Who domesticated them?”
“Oh. I have no idea,” she said. “We got our varieties from our human trade, initially. Like tobacco.”
“Do you use potatoes, where you’re from?” George asked Gwion and Dyfnallt.
“Potatoes, aye,” Dyfnallt said, “we grow them, and squashes and tomatoes. We get tobacco and sugar from trade with Gwyn’s people. Older folk talk about the
time before, when these plants were unknown.”
“We import our sugar and sell it to you, so much cheaper than growing it ourselves,” Angharad said. “We get our baking soda that way, too. Very convenient.”
It occurred to George to wonder if there was an entire black market economy the human world knew nothing about, tens of thousands of customers for basic staples that spread their demand across the mid-Atlantic states. How did they keep it hidden from their human suppliers? What would happen if the population grew significantly? He needed to talk to his friends among the korrigans—they handled most of the long-distance trade, but they’d be noticeable in the human world, short in stature. They must use agents.
“Don’t you have human trade, yourselves?” George asked.
“We see an item in the markets, now and then, but it’s not part of our regular goods,” Gwion said. “Wouldn’t do to become dependent on it.”
George disagreed in principle but held his tongue. Trade was always stimulating, and turning your back on it did not lead to economic success. On the other hand, he suspected the situation here in the new world was not sustainable. Sooner or later so much demand would become noticeable. It must already be causing questions in data analysis for some companies, and no one was prepared for the human world to become suddenly aware of this one. It would probably precipitate a shutting down of the connections, and that could create a crisis of supply for an unprepared fae world.
Maybe some of this bulk agriculture should shift to the fae world instead. He’d have to talk to Ceridwen systematically about the food crops here. Had the fae plundered the human options fully, or should he start looking at seed catalogs on their behalf? More to warn Gwyn about, if he wasn’t already fully aware of the vulnerability.
The conversation wandered off into other topics but suddenly George’s brain caught up. Wait a minute, if they had to get new world crops from the humans because there were no paleo-Indians here to create them, what about all the large animals that went extinct after the last ice age? Maybe climate was the cause, but maybe humans were, through hunting, changes to the landscape with fire, and so forth. The jury was out on that discussion, among the scientists. Did the animals survive, here?
When the English settlers arrived, they found buffalo in this area, he remembered. “Are there buffalo here?” he asked Angharad.
Brynach replied before she could. “I’ve heard they’re hard to tame and impossible to fence in, compared with the cattle we brought, so we hunted them instead. Eurig has trophies you should see, sometime. He says the first trails we followed here were buffalo traces.”
“They’re still in the Valley,” Maelgwn said, “on the other side of the Blue Ridge. It’s quite a thrill to come up on one in the woods.”
In the woods? George expected to hear of giant herds on the grasslands, though perhaps the fae hadn’t gotten that far yet. But the wisent, the bison of eastern Europe—that lived in the forests, didn’t it?
“What about horses? Were there horses here, when the fae arrived?”
Maelgwn looked at him blankly. “Of course. Why wouldn’t there be?”
“What are they like?” George asked. “They were gone by the time my ancestors settled the new world.”
Benitoe said, “Well, you’ll find some at Iona’s. She took over my uncle Luhedoc’s herds and he was fond of them. Much of our stock for riding and driving come from old world breeds instead. But many of the country farmers use them. They’re short and stocky, hardy animals. They have strong profiles, not like the dainty lovelies that Gwion brought, and they run to striped duns and spotted hides. The manes stick up straight and short. You can usually tell a horse of mixed background by these features.”
George nodded, his brain working furiously. That’s what was bothering me when I looked around at the small animals and vegetation. It really isn’t the same, is it? What about elms and chestnuts? I haven’t been paying attention, there must be lots of chestnut in these woods, without the chestnut blight.
My god, he thought, I’ve been worried about what the fae were getting in crops from the human world, but I didn’t think of the threats. Human diseases—are the fae vulnerable? If you can keep out Dutch elm disease, what about smallpox? And do they have something of their own to which they are all immune, but humans aren’t?
Well, at least there was one solution to the question of what the fae could offer in trade in the human world, if it ever came to that. His world would be ecstatic at the possibility of recovering extinct animals from a new world that never lost them. The only wild horse species left was Przewalski’s horse. What if these were a different species? What else was still here?
“Huntsman?” Rhian said quietly, next to him.
“Sorry, I’ve just realized that the different histories of our worlds manifest in some striking dissimilarities.”
“We have some puzzles of our own,” Rhodri chimed in. “One of the famous challenges we’re taught as way-adepts in the new world is how to recognize the Starling Way. Somewhere here we believe there’s an as-yet-unidentified way from Britain. It’s the only place we seem to get starlings from, and quite a nuisance they are to contain. Many have sought it but no one’s found it yet.”
But those could as easily have come from an undiscovered human way in the new world, George thought. We introduced them from Britain ourselves. Maybe other undiscovered ways are potential disease vectors, just waiting to get started.
He was grateful when Alun’s appearance with a bread pudding for dessert turned the conversation to other topics.
This time the newcomers were startled by the maple syrup on the pudding. “Tree sap?” Dyfnallt said, in response to the explanation. “You’re joking.”
Ives explained the process in detail, from the collection of springtime sap into buckets to the boiling down that concentrated the syrup. In this case, the method originated from the human world, but it had become a local specialty in the northern areas of Gwyn’s domain.
After a few more minutes the plates were emptied and Angharad pushed back from the table. “If you’re quite done trying to shock the visitors with our primitive customs, dear, let’s move this party to the study and give everyone a chance to stretch their legs and work off their dinner.”
He rose, smiling. “As you wish. Come, let’s have another drink and get to know each other better.”
Only beer and cider had been offered at dinner. George was minded to try stronger measures to encourage the new men to lower their defenses and, besides, their only responsibilities for Sunday morning were hound walking. Why not let everyone blow off some steam tonight? He believed that in vino veritas was a universal truth.
He led them all into the study at the front of the house, where the fire had been lit and there were comfortable chairs. “How about some brandy, Alun?” he said. Maelgwn perched on the edge of a window seat at the front of the room while Alun passed drinks around. Rhian declined but took a sip from Brynach’s glass and wrinkled her nose. Angharad abstained, thinking of the child, George knew. Everyone else accepted with a will, even the lutins.
“Lovely paintings, my lady,” Gwion said. “These are yours?”
The two most prominently displayed were the recent oak tree she’d just completed and the one of George thwarting the archer who had attempted to ambush Gwyn a few months ago, when the Archer’s Way to Edgewood was opened.
Rhodri described the latter event for him while Dyfnallt wandered into the library in the next room, drink in hand. George joined him to show him around and his two dogs followed him, the blue-tick coonhound collapsing back on the floor with a sigh when they stopped.
“This was Iolo ap Huw’s library,” he said, “and I’ve added a few books of my own. I haven’t been here long enough to do more than just scratch the surface of it.”
Dyfnallt said, “It’s a fine assemblage. I’ve seen many of these works myself, in my lord Cuhelyn’s library, but there are only a few I have for my own.”
/> “I don’t think Gwyn has a separate collection, so it may be that these are both his and Iolo’s. I haven’t asked, they came with the house.”
“Aye, that would make more sense, then.” He took a sip. “So you’re new to this yourself, are you? The hunting, I mean.”
“Yes and no. I’ve foxhunted all my life and whipped-in for years to my grandfather and then to our professional huntsman. But chasing fox is rather different from deer, and the bloodlines of these hounds are altogether unique.”
“What is it that you and Rhian do? Have you got the beast-mastery, you two?”
“It runs in Gwyn’s line, I understand. We can bespeak them, but the point is to help them learn to do it right by themselves, not as puppets to our command.” He let stand the implication that his version of communication with the hounds came from his relationship to Gwyn. He was convinced it was something different, from Cernunnos and his father’s blood.
“I thought that was it, when I saw you greet the hounds in kennels yesterday. It must be a grand thing.”
“It is. I came to it when I arrived here,” George said. “I can’t imagine doing without it, now.”
Dyfnallt grunted.
“But, you know, everyone else here does it the traditional way. Iolo did, too. You and Gwion will be fine.
“I’m not worried about that,” Dyfnallt said.
“What, then?” George emptied his glass and waited for Dyfnallt’s hesitant reply.
“My lord Cuhelyn expects certain things of me, of course. I must be careful not to disappoint him.”
George heard the ambivalence in his voice, and the evasion. I could like this man, he thought, if I could trust him. But I’d be a fool to do so. “Let’s get a refill and see how the others are doing,” he said.
Gwion called to Dyfnallt as they re-entered the study. “Did you ever see the like?” He held out some turkey feathers that Maelgwn had stuck in a small vase. “The big ones came from that turkey.”
