Oh, wolves usually didn’t attack adult human beings, unless they were cornered or mad-hungry or had some other good reason. . but usually was the operative word and it was their idea of a good reason that counted. Not to mention what would happen if they caught you alone with a broken leg. Grizzlies were another matter. Oldsters said it was amazing how fast they’d realized that guns weren’t a problem anymore. And all tigers were either man-eaters or their descendants, since that was the game they’d survived on right after the Change, the easily caught meat that tided them over while they gradually learned how to live in the wild once more and then bred and spread explosively.
It was difficult to imagine the landscape she’d grown up in without tigers. That would be like seeing it without dandelions or tumbleweed or sparrows, but apparently the ancients had just liked keeping big cats around in pens for some reason and be damned to the risk to their descendants’ children and dairy cows.
They were. . strange back then. Very strange.
Ingolf came up, naked and still running with water. He’d stripped as most did while working his turn on the butchering and then he’d gone for a dip in the nearby pond to clean off. That was much easier than getting blood out of cloth or, even worse, leather.
“Oh, now you’re tempting me to neglect my duty,” she said, giving her husband’s hairy, muscular, glistening six-two a long look; just the right height for a woman who was five-ten herself. “It’s not the time to drag you into the bushes, more’s the pity. The Expected Guests are on their way.”
He was carrying his clothes and gear strapped up into a bundle in one hand, but he put them aside while he dried in the mild warmth. He also had a bunch of smoking skewers in his other hand, and juggled things to hand her one.
“And here I thought you were reading the life-story inscribed into my tattered hide,” he grinned, with that boyish look she’d always liked.
He did have a remarkable collection of scars; you could tell he’d been flogged once, knotted white tracks that told of a barbed whip. That had been the Cutters. And the thick white mark across his shoulder had been them too, a triad of assassins pursuing him into Sutterdown. If you knew wounds that one told you how tough he was, to have lived and healed. He’d gotten that the night she first saw him, in Brannigan’s Inn. There had been something about him, even then.
She touched the patch over the socket where her left eye had been. It gave them something in common.
“The scars just show you’re a survivor type, lover, fit to make excellent babies,” she said, and stood hipshot for a moment, looking out at him from under a fall of yellow hair and putting a hand behind her head. “It was your manly charms I was thinking of.”
“Good thing that water was cold,” he grinned.
“Oh, we’ve managed. Remember that little waterfall?”
“My back hurt for days, but it was worth it. Here, keep your strength up.”
She took the skewer, blowing and biting off a chunk. “Mmmm!”
There was nothing quite so good as fresh buffalo liver taken right out of the beast and onto the coals with no seasoning but a little coarse salt; richly meaty, but with a very slight tang of musky bitterness. Even buffalo-hump and kidney pie wasn’t quite as tasty.
“Remember that time we were with the Lakota for their summer hunt, on the Quest? Around the time they did that adoption thing with the tent and the sweetgrass?” she said.
“I’m not going to forget that, Yellow Bird.”
“Iron Bear backatcha,” she grinned.
In fact they’d both taken that ceremony quite seriously. They ate in companionable silence. After a few minutes there was a coded whistle and five figures came trotting towards them from the westward through the waist-high grass, where a dark green line marked the beginning of the thick forest. Two wore Mackenzie kilts with a pair of enormous dogs loping at their heels, two were her sister Ritva and Ian in Dúnedain field gear, and the last was a young man in Boisean Special Forces camouflage outfit.
“Cole,” Mary called with a grin and a wink and a raised index finger: “Cousin Alyssa just paid a call. That girl chases you in aircraft.”
“She gave us the heads-up first,” Cole said, stolidly ignoring the teasing; Boiseans could be annoyingly businesslike at times.
But then, so can Bearkillers, so maybe they deserve each other. Manwë and Elbereth witness we were right to move in with Aunt Astrid.
Ingolf handed out more of the skewers; Talyn gave a sharp no when Artan and Flan looked interested, whereupon the dogs completed their sniff-and-greet and flopped down with sighs. As far as they were concerned it was a wonderful day to do nothing in particular but enjoy a well-fed nap in good company. There were times she thought that dogs were more sensible than human beings.
“Company?” Ingolf asked.
“Yeah,” Cole said. “Sneaky company.”
Ritva rolled her eyes and nodded with her mouth full, and Ian spoke:
“If we hadn’t had warning, we wouldn’t have known a damned thing. As it was, we just had time to make it look like we’d seen them a mile off. I think they were pretty disappointed. Anyway, they said their Council emissaries would be showing up soon and then faded away again.”
Cole frowned thoughtfully: “I don’t think they know about aerial reconnaissance at all. Apart from that. . perfect technique.”
Talyn rolled his eyes and juggled one of the sticks of hot meat. “Ochone, the black pity of a Mackenzie hunter and First Levy warrior being surprised! Still, this is their home ground, and doubtless the spirits of place-”
He made a gesture of propitiation and tossed aside a fragment of the liver.
“-help them. They’d not do so well about Dun Tàirneanach, that they would not.”
“Not unless you were drunk,” Caillech said dryly. “Like that time you swore you missed a deer with two heads by an inch and saw it run off north and south. That was just before the Lady Flidais bore you off to her bower of love, I do not think.”
Ritva nodded. “Only guy I’ve ever met who successfully snuck up on me came from around here. He was working for the Prophet at the time. . but I don’t think it was a love-match. I kicked his ass in the fight, and he did tell me about sis being in trouble so I could save her life again-”
“Which just made us even,” Mary said. Lightly, but she shivered a little inwardly. The man who’d cut the eye out of her head had been technically dead at the time, and if Ritva hadn’t known-
“-but it was close. Far too close for comfort,” Ritva said soberly.
Ingolf grunted. “Now we find out how they’re going to jump. I do resent that he tried to carry my sister-in-law off.”
“Well, you carried me off,” Mary pointed out.
“The hell you say,” Ingolf replied. “As I recall, you won me from Ritva at dice.”
“She cheated-”
“I cheated?”
“-one or both of us cheated, so we did rock-paper-scissors,” Ritva said helpfully. “Nobody can cheat at that. . well, maybe Rudi could, but he wouldn’t.” Virtuously: “And we were really deciding who got a chance at you. I mean, twin sisters should share, but there are limits. Combs and pads yes, men no.”
“Sure, you were deciding who got a chance. And how much chance did I have?”
“None at all,” Mary said cheerfully. “I mean, we’re the Havel twins? What man could resist us?”
“Rigobert de Stafford aside,” Ritva added, which Mary had to admit was true.
“All right,” she said. “No man who likes women.”
She saw a dangerous glint in her twin’s eyes; hair-splitting was a favorite sport of theirs, and Rigobert did like women. The baron of Forest Grove was delightful company, in fact, not to mention gorgeous in a rugged manly middle-aged way. He just didn’t consider women to be sexy.
“Correction: no man who desires women can resist us. But I got dibs, so there.”
“Hey, what does that make me?” Ian said. “The alternative
menu selection?”
“It makes you younger and prettier,” Ritva said, giving his arm a squeeze.
“But mine has more character,” Mary said.
“Character? You mean he’s grumpier in the morning and makes bad puns,” Ritva said.
“Honey-smooth skin and chiseled jaws aren’t everything.”
“Hey!” both men said, antiphonally.
Ingolf started dressing. He’d just finished cinching his sword belt over his mail shirt when two parties of mounted Dúnedain closed in from the north and south; one included John Hordle on his usual warmblood destrier and the other Alleyne on a more conventional dappled part-Arab. Alleyne was tall, around six feet, but if you put Uncle John on an ordinary horse. .
He looks like a man trying to ride a big dog.
Mary put her monocular to her good eye and looked eastward. The people she saw weren’t making any attempt to hide, but they ran through the tall grass with a smooth economy that made them look just at home there as the lobo packs.
“Here they are, three of them,” she said. Then: “Oh. It is our old friend with the badges, right? Not just the bunch he runs with?”
“Right,” Ritva confirmed when her sister passed her the optic.
The party of the Hîr Dúnedain, the Lord of the Rangers, pulled up and dismounted. The standard-bearers thrust the butt-spikes of their flagpoles into the ground-the silver-and-black tree, stars and crown of her people, and the green-and-silver Crowned Mountain of Montival.
Mary and Ritva stepped forward to greet the three emissaries; presumably they weren’t their people’s sovereigns, which meant proper etiquette would be for them to meet someone of rank, but not one of the lords of the Dúnedain. She recognized the tall lean redhead from her sister’s description; he looked a lot neater and cleaner now than in that tale, but then he was on his home territory and not leading a fast pursuit on the trail of nine Questers. And she wasn’t dazed with pain and horror, in a way that still gave her bad dreams occasionally. With him were a medium-tall man in his thirties with dark brown skin-several shades darker than Fred Thurston-and a pale freckled woman of around her age with braided black hair.
The two men both wore broad-brimmed hats with wings of eagle feathers attached; the woman had similar headgear, but sporting falcon feathers. All three had loose well-tanned leather britches that ended above the knee, moccasins, and long belted tunic-shirts sewn over with round badges bearing stylized symbols-bows and arrows, tents, knapsacks, various tools. There were kerchiefs around their necks, too, run through carved bone rings. They had knives at the belts, and tomahawks a lot like Ingolf’s; her old acquaintance and the woman had recurve bows and quivers over their backs, and the dark man had a broad-bladed spear taller than he was.
“Good G-. . by Manwë and Varda,” Alleyne Loring said quietly from behind her. “I thought you were exaggerating, Ritva.”
“Not in a report, Lord,” she said. “But they’re a bit. . fancier than the one I saw three years ago. I suppose because it’s a diplomatic mission.”
“I was one myself once,” he murmured. “Before the Change. I wonder if I should mention it or not? It seems another world.”
The three halted. The redhead smiled at Ritva. “We meet again, woman worthy of badges,” he said, then gave a broader smile and nod to Ian’s scowl.
The man with the spear frowned himself and stepped forward and grounded the weapon with a formal gesture, raising his right hand shoulder-high, three fingers up, thumb crooked and holding the little finger. The other two copied the movement and the spearman spoke:
“I am Andrew, called Swift, a Scout of thirty-one badges, a bearer of the Eagle, of the Keen Spear Patrol of the Snow Tiger Troop, and I speak for the Council of Troops of the Morrowland Pack,” he said.
“I am Sheila, called Dauntless, a Scout of twenty-eight badges, a bearer of the Falcon, of the Thrown Hatchet Patrol of the Otter Troop, and I speak for the House of Girls and the Council of Troops of the Morrowland Pack,” the freckled woman said.
“I am George, called Tracker, a Scout of thirty badges, a bearer of the Eagle, of the Bright Lightning Patrol of the Wolverine Troop, and I speak for the Council of Troops of the Morrowland Pack,” Ritva’s old acquaintance said.
The spearman went on: “You have come on the Pack’s land and hunted our game without our consent, game that we need to feed our cubs in the cold months. Who are you, to make free with what is ours?”
Alleyne bowed slightly, with hand over heart; the other Rangers copied the gesture, and the rest made salute in their own fashions.
“Mae l’ovannen,” he said, in the formal mode. “Well-met, Scouts of the Morrowland Pack. I am Alleyne Loring-Larsson, Lord of the Dúnedain Rangers, vassal and kin to Artos the First, High King of Montival. We have come onto your land as part of the Host of the High Kingdom, for we are enemies of the false Prophet of Corwin. High King Artos needs this meat for his army, and passage to the north. . and you have served the Prophet. Are you our enemies? Or our allies? Or will you stand aside and take no part in this war?”
The Morrowlanders. . whatever that meant. . looked at each other. Mary would have been very surprised indeed if they hadn’t been following events outside their bailiwick, and even more surprised than that if they didn’t know the approaching Montivallan army down to the nearest battalion.
“We have heard of your war and we have scouted your great army,” the spearman named Andrew said, confirming her guess. “But the Prophet’s men. . the red-robes. . can find us in the forests. Find our cubs and our dens. There are not enough of us to fight their soldiers, if the woods cannot hide us. Nor can we live entirely without trade; we need metal for tools, and salt and cloth. But we could hurt them badly, so they leave us be in return for Scout service.”
“We come to cast the Prophet down, destroy his city of Corwin, and free all his slaves,” Alleyne said. “Then this will be part of Montival, and under the High King’s peace none will trouble you in your own land if you keep his law.”
The three looked at each other again. “We must test your words,” their spokesman said. “Send us emissaries, and we will see if they are worthy to speak with the Last Eagle.”
The woman spoke: “Send us emissaries, and your she-wolves among them. We see that you are not as the Prophet’s men, who seek to turn Girls-”
I can hear the capital letter there, Mary thought.
“-into sheep.”
Well, good for you, Scout of twenty-eight badges! I know everyone’s entitled to their own customs, but some are just plain creepy about that. At least we can beat some sense into the Cutters.
The dark spearman frowned; he seemed to be the senior here, but primus inter pares rather than commander.
“We must see that you are worthy of badges, folk of merit,” he said.
Alleyne raised his brows. “You want us to send our people among you without guarantee of their safety?”
“If you wish us as allies, there must be trust,” the woman said.
“And I will stay as hostage,” the spearman said proudly. “A Scout is trustworthy!”
The redhead grinned. “And you hold our best hunting-ground hostage, too,” he said irreverently, looking at the parties of horsemen and butchering-camps scattered for miles to the westward.
I think this one has gotten out of the woods more, Mary thought. Then to Alleyne, in the Noble Tongue:
“Lord, I think this is a time for. . for the sort of gesture Lady Astrid would have made.”
He looked at her quickly, his sky-blue eyes blinking thoughtfully. Ritva made a small private sign: Good call, sis!
Uncle Alleyne had always been affectionately respectful of the founder of the Rangers, but while he was the husband of the living woman he’d been a mixture of chief-of-staff and Reality Anchor. He’d always loved The Histories, that was how he and Astrid had first come together, but he hadn’t had the fire she did. Since she’d died, though. . since then, he’d lived her dream for
her, meticulously.
“You’re right, woman of Westernesse,” he said quietly. Then he replied to the Morrowlanders, with the air of a man quoting from a sacred book, the way bards did from The Histories around a winter hearth in Mithrilwood:
“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf,
And the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”
They looked at him sharply, obviously recognizing it. “I need no hostage, Andrew, called Swift,” he said. “For a Scout is, indeed, trustworthy.”
• • •
“Well, thanks,” Ingolf muttered. “For this glorious heartwarming display of trust and so forth your Uncle Alleyne made. He’s back there, I note.”
“We need to take chances,” Mary said back, quietly. “We’re in a hurry.”
She’d seen hints some of their. . guardians was a more tactful way of putting it than guards. . knew Sign. If they really needed to be secret they could use the Noble Tongue, but Ingolf wasn’t really fluent yet, and Ian could follow simple sentences but not really talk it at all, beyond stock phrases. Cole had none at all, and Talyn and Caillech only a few words. So far everyone had been impeccably polite to them anyway.
In the meantime the seven of them followed the trail at a wolf-pace, which was what the Morrowlanders called it too: a hundred yards at a jog, a hundred at a fast walk, a hundred at a normal walking pace, then repeat, with a ten-minute rest every hour. You could really cover territory that way. If you could keep it up, which they all could without much trouble. The Morrowlanders seemed slightly surprised, which they might well be if their standard of comparison was Cutter cowboys who thought they lost caste if they got out of the saddle. The Dúnedain didn’t think that way, nor Mackenzies, nor Cole’s service, and Ingolf was just plain versatile.
The game trail wound as their boots made a dull thudding on the soft pine duff. It took the easiest way through the hilly woods with the unerring skill animals had for a slope and for the least-effort way between two points. The land it led through varied, from open flower-meadow to dense pine forest and Engelmann spruce and pockets of aspen, and there were almost always mountains in view. The thin air was crisp in the mouth and lungs, like a dry white wine, scented with sap and meadowsweet and an intense green savor. Once she stopped for a moment with a gasp as they turned a corner and came into the open.
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