The Desert and the Blade

by S. M. Stirling

  “I told him we should stay at home until the levy was called out to avenge the High King, but he would have it so,” he said quietly, his face hard.

  Karl put a hand on his shoulder for an instant; he knew Ruan had been the more reluctant of the two to come on this faring. But he and Feidlimid had sworn the Oath of Iolas, which was a battle vow as well as one of the heart, and he’d followed despite his misgivings.

  “We are all are born fey, my friend,” Karl said; he made the Invoking sign and murmured a brief prayer to the Wise One and the Keeper-of-Laws for all who’d fallen. “Are you ready?”

  “Aye,” Ruan said shortly. “Let’s be about it.”

  “Patch any of our folk or Diarmuid’s who need it, then. Aye, and the hounds too, for that they fought with us.”

  Ruan’s mother and father were healers in Dun Fairfax, and like most he’d picked up a good deal of his trade from his parents, and studied in Dun Juniper as well—the Clan’s hearth-Dun was only a short walk from their home, which made it easier.

  And I spoke to Feidlimid of this rather than another who’d have done as well because with him came Ruan, and we needed his skills. Well, so be it; I’ll answer to the Guardians for it.

  “Be about it!” Karl said to the others. “Fill your quivers and sling the extras from the bicycles.”

  Susan Mika rode up while Ruan was snipping off the linen thread he’d used on a slash; she had her bow cased and her shete in her hand, the broad-tipped slashing sword common east of the Rockies. There was blood dripping from the forward third of the edge, and she swung down casually in the saddle to pull up a swatch of dry grass to wipe it before she sheathed it, leaning far over with one heel hooked around the horn of her saddle for an instant. He’d seen plenty of expert horsemen even if he wasn’t one himself, and the casual ease of that movement still made him blink a little.

  The last pair of McClintocks came out of the brush as the snick of the shete sliding home sounded.

  “They’re a’ sent on, feartaic,” one shaggy redhead said to Diarmuid, her grin distorting the blue design of feather-tattoos that covered her face and neck.

  She gave him his title of sub-chief with a duck of her head, and tossed her red-dripping spear a little to indicate how they’d been ushered to the Summerlands.

  “Wha’ tracks, Seònaidh?” he asked.

  She cleaned the spearhead by plunging it into the earth several times before going on:

  “Nae sign o’ ain truaillidh more, by She Who Brings Fear.”

  Karl winced a little, and forced himself not to make a protective sign. A Mackenzie wouldn’t have named Scathatch—the Devouring Shadow Beneath, the Dark Mother in Her most terrible form—so casually. Lady Juniper, the first Chief, had invoked Her in a battle early in the Clan’s history, and the fearsome result was still a tale told in whispers. Still, even a stark southern hillwoman wouldn’t swear by Her unless they were . . .

  Extremely and with no doubt sure, he thought.

  Susan nodded, looking east and south. “I didn’t find any of the crazy bastards either,” she said, looking a little grayer than her normal ruddy light brown.

  The eastern rasp was stronger in her voice than usual, too. From what Karl had heard there hadn’t been any Eaters out where she came from, even right after the Change. Cattle had outnumbered people there even in the ancient times, and there had been millions of acres of wheat in the ground when the machines stopped. Times had been very hard and many died, according to the tales not least in the wars that saw the refounding of her nation as a mighty power out on the plains, but it hadn’t been anything approaching what had happened where great cities were near.

  “’Cept the ones who couldn’t keep up,” she said, and touched her hilt. “Wouldn’t take those scalps even if I had time,” she added, answering a question he hadn’t asked.

  Karl thought for a moment. “Our wounded should be safe enough here. They’re not straggling about so much as I would have expected from bare-arsed wild men.”

  “Aye,” Diarmuid said. “You, Ìomhair a’ Bhogha Mhaide, you stay with the hurt.”

  Harshly, when Ìomhair clenched his hand on his bow and began to object: “Yer limpin’, mon! Ye cannae keep up wi’ us in a run! Ye’ll do aye more good here and the danger may be more. And ye, Ùisdean.”

  The McClintock he named looked up, hand hovering over the swatch of bandage covering one eye. The other was a blue-centered slit with the pain.

  “Can ye fight, mon?” Diarmuid asked.

  “Aye,” the wounded man answered. “I can, that.”

  Then with an attempt at a smile: “Wuldna’ claim tae be at my best, ye ken, feartaic.”

  Karl was somewhat impressed; that eye must hurt like the fangs of Anwyn’s hounds, especially with the disinfectant Ruan had poured on it.

  “You’ll stay too, then.”

  Karl cast a glance back over his shoulder. This didn’t seem nearly so much like a prank anymore, but he was more determined to see it through for all that. And . . .

  “We lost a day waiting at the farm, that we did. My da will be through here sometime soon with the Archers, hotfoot on our trail.”

  He turned to Susan. “How far to the Princess?”

  “Two miles.”

  “Let’s go then. You lead, but don’t get so far ahead we can’t act together at need. We’ll push it the now.”

  That didn’t mean a sprint, but at a quick jog with no rest periods they could cover the distance in twenty minutes. He cast a longing eye at the bicycles as she reined around, but riding would be impossibly dangerous now. They wouldn’t do the Princess any good getting killed before they arrived at the real fight.

  “Ar aghaidh linn!” he barked. “Let’s go!”

  • • •

  “About half an hour,” Edain Aylward Mackenzie said.

  The Bow-Captain of the High King’s Archers looked at the state of the bodies lying beside the road and how many flies had drowned in the pool of blood under young Feidlimid.

  His lips tightened at that; he’d known the neighbor-lad from his own Dun Fairfax all his life. Not the brightest candle in the sconce, perhaps, and given to wild fancies and seeing the Fair Folk dancing down at the edge of the pasture on festival nights after the keg was tapped often enough. But good-natured and willing and lively, strong as a bear, a pretty fair archer and promising smith, and a friend to his own sons. It was not the first time he’d seen a likely youngster lying stark with all the promise run out with their life’s blood, not by many a weary league in time and distance. And had to bear the thought of the family keening them without even the chance to lay their child out and carry the body to the pyre . . .

  But I’m thinking it’s the first time for Karl, and guessing that he likes war less now than he did when he was wild to be grown. Welcome you are to the club, boyo! We fought through the war time to give you peace for your childhood, but that ends now.

  The living wounded, four of them, had been moved into the shade and given good first-aid; there was nothing more he or the High King’s Archers could do for them. From the silent glare the tow-haired McClintock with the swollen knee was giving him as he leaned on his bow there was no point in asking questions, but there wasn’t much need either.

  The brush on the east side of the southbound track was thick, but one graycoat coyote slunk off from ripping at a naked body that sprawled on the pavement with an arrow right through the knee and a gaping wound in the throat. More squabbled in the brush. Hopefully no silvertip grizzly or big cat would get interested; there were plenty of both in this country.

  Earth must be fed, he thought. It’s as much a return to the Mother as the pyre.

  Báirseach nodded. “Your lads do seem to be running into bad folk along the way, and them such sweet peaceable babes, eh? Those ill-doers in the mountains, now this.”

 
“Aye, I’d not have thought ’em the type to leave a trail of bodies,” Edain snorted, but it was a good point.

  Ah, Chief, would that you were here! For that I miss you for yourself, also you’re missed for your sword-arm, and even more for your wits. The which the lass has too, but not so tempered by time’s hammer and anvil.

  “Not a fight this size until the one Eryn Muir reported, with the Eaters and the Haida and the Koreans working together,” he said softly. “Now, there’s more here than the little Princess taking a wee stroll with her new friends from Japan, as if it were that time she decided on a Quest of her own when she was eight,” he said. “And meself was the one sent after her then, too, and dragged her kicking off her pony. Caught me a good whack on the nose, she did; she has a temper, that one.”

  “She did? You were?”

  “A rare taking Matti was in, and the Chief not what you’d call over-pleased himself. But this is altogether more serious than the High Queen thought or thinks, that it is indeed and without doubt. Once is coincidence, twice happenstance . . .”

  “The third is a foemen’s plan or a message from the Powers,” Báirseach said softly, and made the warding sign of the Horns with her left hand. “I never thought the High King’s death could be mere happenstance.”

  “No, nor I. His fate was tied to the land’s. It’s troubled I am. We’re here on orders, but the orders were decided on from information that’s not complete.”

  “What would the High King have said, do you know?” she asked.

  Edain snorted almost-laughter. “He’d have said use my best judgment, and take the consequences.”

  He thought for a moment, looked up at the pillar of smoke to the southward, revised his first opinion and then called to the glowering McClintock. Another of his Clan sat beside him with a claidheamh mòr naked across his knees, but looked understandably preoccupied with a nasty face wound that had probably taken his left eye.

  Edain spoke to the standing bowman: “Cateran, there may be another fight ahead and we needed to pitch in. Where precisely were my lads headed?”

  The man glowered again, still more fiercely, and Edain said impatiently:

  “Would you rather I catch them, or enemies like these Eaters overfall them, then? And your tacksman and your clan-kin, to be sure.”

  The one-eyed man spoke unexpectedly: “Get yer head out o’ yer arse and tell him, Ìomhair, he’s right—a wonder of the Powers for a Mackenzie boy, but there ye hae’ it. Forbye I’m hurtin’ too bad to think and ye were always too much of a burraidh for that.”

  The man he named thought, then grinned—unpleasantly. Edain would have agreed with his kinsman’s appraisal of him as a dolt and a bit of a wild boar besides, but at least he seemed willing to take advice from his own kin.

  “Aye, summat tae tha’, Ùisdean,” he said in the rough growling accent of his native mountains, thick enough to cut with a sgian dubh, and turned to Edain:

  “The feartaic and the Princess, they maun hae need o’ ye, lowlander. Word came—the Lakota lass—that the Princess is in danger at . . . what do the westfolk call it . . . ah cannae get m’tongue aboot it . . .”

  “Círbann Rómenadrim?” Edain said sharply.

  “Aye, thass’ it. Danger fra more o’ these truaillidh, these filth.” He nodded at one of the dead Eaters. “So the war band went gangin’ awa’ in a’ haste, yer twa yellow-heads at the fore. Not that we waur ever in danger o’ bein’ caught by ye, eh?”

  He seemed to be deriving some satisfaction from saying it; Edain flushed and carefully didn’t give him a shout. Getting into a slanging match with a McClintock was like mud-wrestling with a pig.

  Báirseach glanced at the rows of bicycles left where they lay. “Drop our ma-shins too?”

  He shook his head, calling up maps and past visits and what Finney had said. Decision crystallized:

  “No, dropping them was right for them, not us. The young gombeens will be putting up any ambush ahead of us.”

  “Like dogs flushing partridges from the stubble, you might be saying.”

  “Aye, save these birds have sharp teeth and a taste for human flesh. Back to it, Archers! The Princess and the Prince may be in danger!”

  He could feel the reaction, like a dog’s ears pricking up and its hackles rising; a good commander had to be able to sense things like that. They’d given their all on this chase, but arresting was not what the High King’s Archers were for. Guarding the scions of House Artos, even at the cost of their own lives, was very much their craft, trade and mystery.

  “We’ll pedal as fast as we may.”

  There might be an ambush like this one his boys and their friends had broken from the inside, but he doubted it. His father had called that tactic of sending a party on ahead the Irish Mine Detector, for reasons he’d never made clear; Edain had asked Lady Juniper about it once and she’d just snorted and rolled her eyes and muttered Sassenach!

  Right now it meant that he could push his force three times the speed of those on foot.

  “Ar aghaidh linn!” he said, and stepped onto the pedal. “Let’s go!”

  • • •

  “It’s ironic,” Deor Wid-ferende said.

  He rose a little in the stirrups and looked out over the bright dry grassland that rolled away before them; just ahead was his brother Godric Godulfson and the raven banner of Hraefnbeorg. Behind came the rest of the thegns and huscarles and fyrdsmen, three-score and all mounted, with a few packhorses bringing up the rear.

  Standing hurt too, sharp pain up into his groin. The weary horse rocked back up into a canter, and seemed as miserable as he was. He felt for the beast, since it could not know why it had to suffer save that the human in charge demanded it. Sweat ran down from under his byrnie of fine riveted mail from Hinduraj and stung still more in the raw places.

  “Ironic? Is that a poet’s kenning for pain?” Thora said, grinning through the mask of summer road-dust across her face. “Like whale’s bath for sea?”

  Sweat tracked runnels of mud through it; she pulled her canteen from her saddlebow, drank half the last few mouthfuls and leaned a little aside in the saddle to hand it over to him. She was sweating more, since she was in Bearkiller cataphract armor—only slightly lighter than a knight’s. On the other hand, she was the warrior by trade, and the water tasted like bliss.

  “Here I’m famous for my travels, and this saddle is sawing me in half from the crotch up as if I were some city merchant used to a padded chair at a countinghouse desk beneath my backside, and smooth rails beneath the wheels for a tramcar ride home.”

  Thora snorted and shifted herself and reached under the faulds of her armor to pluck at the seat of her leather breeches.

  “More ironic for me, oath-brother,” she said. “I was raised to be a horse-soldier and after just a miserable little ride of five days I feel as if I want nothing more in all the world than a week in bed . . . alone, and face-down, with nothing but air on my arse. Or maybe air and goose-grease with comfrey and chickweed. Too many years on ships, both of us.”

  And perhaps part of it was that neither of them would see their thirtieth summer again. The years gnawed at a man, never ceasing, as the Malice Serpent did at the roots of the World Tree.

  I can still do everything I could ten years ago, he thought. It just hurts a good deal more, and for longer. Thora’s right, time to settle. After this faring, of course!

  He handed her the other half of his last dried apricots, and they munched them down. Something sweet just before a fight was usually a good idea, and it helped him to settle his belly. He’d never taken Thora’s fierce joy in battle. And while she didn’t enjoy killing men she’d never met and who’d done her no harm, it didn’t much bother her either if wyrd would have it so, hers and theirs alike. He himself sometimes saw the faces of men he’d killed in the early hours when dawn was still gray.


  Hooves beat with a drumroll on the hard ground, adding the scent of crushed herbs to the powerful smells of horse-sweat and man-sweat, metal and leather. They were well past the belt the thick impenetrable scrub and forest that hid the remains of Petaluma, and they’d cut cross-country rather than following the old roadway to save time. It was open here and kept so by natural fires and grazing game, rolling hills covered in long summer-golden grass with oak and bay and bluegum in the swales and scattered elsewhere.

  The golden hills of Westria, he thought, as the wind waved the grass like the locks of a hero in a song.

  When he’d gone north as a lad he’d read those pre-Change tales that the Queen Mother had liked, and from which she’d taken the new name for this province. They’d moved him too, and they’d been eerily prescient—perhaps somewhere, in some other cycle of Earth, they were fact and he was the dream. The High King had spoken to him of such things, late one winter night when they sat over wine in Dun Juniper and the coals burned low and shadows moved quietly on the eerie carvings of the Witch Queen’s hall and Artos’ own strong jewel-cut features. Of how this was not the first world that had declined towards its wyrd, nor would it be the last.

  He shivered a little as he came back to the hot sunlight of common day. They’d seen little except a few Tengwar runes on stones, deer and antelope sensibly fleeing, and once a grizzly had reared defiant a few score yards away, bellowing raw challenge before lumbering sensibly into a thicket of overgrown ruins to wait while they passed.

  Beasts are wiser than men, sometimes.

  A silence lay over the countryside but birds were gathering above, dark wings circling, ravens and crows and even the giant grace of a condor, unknown when he was a boy and still quite rare this far north. They’d had enough time since the Change to learn that when men gathered to fight a feast was likely spread for them.