“We’ve got the watermill’s Pelton wheel and the hydraulic ram working; the Dúnedain from Stath Ingolf just over the hills have been most helpful. The last harvest was good and the next looks to be even better-”
He spat aside and made the Horns with his left hand to show that he wasn’t tempting the Fates.
“-this is fine land and we’re learning its ways and how to please the spirits of place, who’re happy to have humankind about once more. What brings you and your Da here, so far from Dun Juniper and so near Beltane?”
Rudi answered: “Seeing the land, and introducing Órlaith to it. And to mark out what we of the two-footed kindred and the animals who live with us may use in this valley, and what’s rightly the domain of Lady Flidais and Her especial children.”
Oak and his people nodded solemnly; so did Órlaith and Heuradys. Flidais was the Goddess in Her aspect as Mistress of the Beasts; She drove a chariot pulled by sacred white deer, and Her very name meant doe; the wildwood and its dwellers belonged to Her and Her consort, the Horned Lord most often hailed as Cernunnos.
Órlaith knew that in other parts of Montival her father would have used different terms-in the United States of Boise he’d have talked of National Parks, and in the Association fiefs of the old north-realm about the rights of the Crown and Counts and baronage under Forest Law. In Corvallis, where the Faculty Senate of the University ruled, they’d speak confidently of the biodiversity of riparian wetlands and watershed maintenance; in the territory of Mt. Angel the learned warrior-monks of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict would say the same, but also cite God’s command that the sons of Adam exercise wise stewardship. The Lakota said White Buffalo Woman had told them what men might rightly take, and there were so many other stories. .
It all meant more or less the same thing, and she preferred the Clan’s way of describing it. Besides, she’d seen Flidais in dreams herself, though not to speak to, and had a proper awe of Her power after a single glance from those moon-pale eyes. Wise folk asked Her permission to enter the unpeopled lands and walked lightly there, just as they thanked Cernunnos for luck in the hunt, and showed respect to the prey itself for its gift of life. You never knew when the Hour of the Hunter would come for you yourself-except that soon or late, it would come.
“It will be Órlaith’s business soon enough,” her father went on. “And-”
His blue-gray-green eyes narrowed. The High King was just as old as the Change, born near Yule of that terrible year as darkness turned towards light, a tall handsome man with close-cropped red-gold beard and shoulder-length hair of the same sunset color; it suddenly shocked her a little to see how the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes were deeper than she remembered. Your parents seemed to go along changeless while you were small, but she was getting beyond that stage now.
Allowing for gender and age they were much alike, something more obvious now that she’d reached her full growth, save that her eyes were cornflower-blue and her hair wheat-blond with only a slight tinge of copper; she was about three fingers shorter than his six-foot-two, taller for a woman than he was for a man, with a similar long-limbed build.
“-and. .”
His hand fell to the pommel of the sword by his right side, a sphere of milky crystal gripped by antlers. He wore it on that hip because his right arm had been injured long ago, on the great Quest to the eastern sea that brought the Sword of the Lady back from the fabled magic isle of Nantucket. The wound still pained him sometimes, and it had leached a very little strength and speed from the limb.
Everyone looked grave for a moment; the Sword of the Lady was far more than a weapon. Far more than merely a symbol of sovereignty, even, though it was that in truth. The bearer never talked much about it, but common knowledge was that it conferred powers, only the first of them being the gift-or curse-of telling truth from falsehood.
“. . and a feeling that I should be here, somehow.”
“You’ll guest with us?” Oak asked, plainly assuming they would.
“If it’s not an imposition to feed four-score. We’ve supplies with us.”
“There’s plenty for the Beltane feast, and we’re glad to share it. The lions and leopards and catamounts and tigers and wolves are a troublement to our herds, not to mention the grizzlies, but the hunting here. . ah, you’d have to be blind and have no string-fingers to go short of meat. We’ve wild beef and fine yearling buck and a sounder of pig hanging in the icehouse right now, thanks be to Cernunnos, and everyone who isn’t here pulling this last Annwyn’s-Hounds-devour-it stump is cooking or baking or making ready to do so. Or rolling out barrels, the which requires a liberal testing of samples to make sure they’ve not gone off. Forbye we’re also making trial of roasting a whole young ostrich overnight in a pit with hot stones. Halfway between chicken and veal, the taste is.”
“Now you’re making me drool. Offer accepted! You know Sir Aleaume?” the High King went on, indicating the commander of the men-at-arms. “He’s come to the Guard since you hung up your bow.”
The knight was a man in his twenties with bowl-cut reddish-brown hair, regular high-cheeked features only slightly marred by somewhat juglike ears, and slanted blue eyes.
Órlaith had known him off-and-on for years and thought him toothsomely handsome as well as brave and able and a fine singer and with a pawky sense of humor when you could get him to unbend a little. Unfortunately he was paralyzingly conscious of the gap in their ranks, or too much given to the troubadours’ wilder flights of chivalry. The ones about true knights pining chastely over a fair maid from afar. Or both.
Particularly with her father about; Associates just thought differently about such things, and Christians were plain-and-simple strange. She understood, being half of that stock herself, but it could be a hindrance.
It’s a fine thing to journey with Da, but it has its drawbacks. Not to mention that it took me and Herry falling about laughing at his painful discretion to convince Aleume that we’re not lovers. Mother-of-All, but men can be idiots sometimes.
Oak gave a nod, friendly but not particularly deferential to the heir to the Barony of Tucannon; Mackenzies didn’t pay much attention to rank.
“Aye, we’ve met,” he said, to the knight’s evident surprise. “Your father Baron Maugis and I worked together a good deal in the Prophet’s War, young lord. I saw you once back then, but you’d not remember it, most likely. As I recall you were tugging at your mother’s skirt and asking for a honey-tart. I hung up my bow about the time he became Grand Constable, and that in time of peace.”
“I’ve heard the stories about what you and my father did at the battles around Corwin, good Clansman,” the knight said in the clipped formal tones of a north-country noble minding his manners, leaning over to shake hands. “You and he and the others of your generation had all the grand adventures!”
Oak snorted, but declined to comment directly; a similar sound came faintly from Edain Aylward Mackenzie, the commander of the High King’s Archers, who was riding just behind them. Órlaith could read the minds of both the old soldiers:
Adventure? You’d be welcome to my share, that you would, boyo.
She caught Heuradys’ amber-colored eyes, and her liege-knight gave an almost imperceptible shrug. In theory she dutifully agreed with all the scarred middle-aged veterans who’d helped raise her; a ruler responsible for the homes and safety of her folk couldn’t wish the wild times and deadly deeds back for their own sake. . but they both understood young Sir Aleaume de Grimmond as well.
They’d both grown up in the shadow of those thunderous stories, much more immediate and more real than the tales of the ancient world. Then all their own lifetimes had seen a steadily spreading peace and prosperity in the broad lands of Montival and among the many peoples who hailed her father as liege, paid his scot and kept his laws. What the bards had taken to calling the Age of Gold, when a child with a full purse could walk from the western sea to the Lakota plains unmolested, and old feuds and hatreds re
ceded into song and epic. . or at least into nothing more serious than the odd brawl in a tavern.
It could get a little boring.
She suspected that was why many came south to this new province. It wasn’t crowding, since there was still plenty of good land unplowed even in the Willamette Valley, the heartland of the realm.
Órlaith herself had taken to worrying a little about the hopefully distant day when she had to do the job and maintain what his father had built.
Da at least didn’t have to start with being the beloved father-to-the-land. He got to be a wild youngster first, haring off into the back of beyond with his friends! I’ll be expected to rule like him from the first day, but without the Baraka his deeds brought with them. Lord and Lady pity me. . hopefully I’ll be middle-aged by then. I know he plans to give me more and more of the work, that’s started already.
“You’ll hear more of the old tales tonight,” Oak laughed. “There’s nothing like wine to lubricate song and story, and Goibniu of the Sacred Vat be witness, we’ve plenty of that to go with the roast venison and pastries. All we needed to do for grapes was prune, pick and crush.”
“Chief,” Edain said abruptly, raising his binoculars for a moment; one of his dogs had looked up and whined, then the other pair came to their feet and pointed southward. “One of our scouts is headed back our way, and in bit of a hurry.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
County of Napa, Crown Province of Westria
(Formerly California)
High Kingdom of Montival
(Formerly western North America)
April 29th, Change Year 46/2044 AD
Everyone went from genial to cold cat-alert at the tone. The Bow-Captain of the High King’s Archers was two years younger than her father and looked a bit older, a broad-shouldered weathered man of middle height who shaved his square chin, unlike most clansfolk his age. He made a slight imperative gesture, and the Archers all slipped off their horses and strung their great yellow yew bows with a brace and pull and flex; the beasts were for getting them about where bicycles weren’t practical, but you needed your feet on the ground to use the Mackenzie weapon.
The sound of a horse at a gallop came before the scout reappeared around a clump of oaks, and the muffled thud of a saber-scabbard against a leather-clad thigh and then the rattle of arrows in a quiver. Órlaith saw out of the corner of her eye that Heuradys had leaned over and was giving sharp concise orders to a varlet, who ran for the pack-train, but her main attention was concentrated on the messenger.
The quarter horse was lathered as she drew rein, with foam speckling her light mail shirt. Órlaith recognized her; her father had always said you should know as many names as possible. Nohemi Hierro, a wiry brown-skinned, black-haired young woman from the CORA territories around Bend, on the dry side of the High Cascades. A Rancher’s retainer by birth, with a hawk-nose and a small gold ring in one ear and a dandified trio of coyote-tails at the back of her helmet, spending a few years in the Royal service to see the world and build a stake.
“Your Majesty,” she said, raising her recurve bow in salute and offering a folded message. She pronounced it more like Yer Maj’sty, in the manner of her folk.
“Give us the verbal précis,” he said as he opened it.
Órlaith could see a sketch-map on the paper. Her father gave it a single flickering glance and handed it to her; he had an uncanny grasp of the terrain anywhere in the High Kingdom, as if he could summon up maps in his head or see the living land from a bird’s-eye view.
The sketch was concise enough, and everyone in the High Kingdom’s forces used the same set of symbols for landscape features. There was the marshy strip of beaver-dams and reeds and dense tangled willow-alder-sycamore-cottonwood forest along the river laced together with wild vines, the ruins of ancient Napa town, which were now a wood too, with bits of building sticking up through it, open country just to its north. An X at the western end of two parallel stretches of woods, and an arrow pointing towards it. She memorized and handed it back to Edain, and he to the rest.
The scout obeyed, raising her voice so all the officers and squad-leaders crowding close could hear clearly:
“Captain Hellman reports two groups of outlanders are fighting each other to the south of here, about three miles. There’s at least one beached ship, it’s burning, you’ll be able to see the smoke soon. He thinks two more beyond it, no more than a light watch on either.”
“How many blades?” her father said crisply.
“More than one hundred, less than two, both sides together, but one side outnumbers the other two, three to one. Some of them are Haida-”
There was a growl and a hiss and a rattle from the High King’s party; seaborne raiders from those northern isles had been a plague to the coasts of Montival since not long after the Change, despite defenses and punitive expeditions. They had little enough in common with the ancient tribe except the name, but they were pirates for certain, and vicious enough and to spare, and their hit-and-run attacks were the one problem Montival had never really been able to solve completely.
“But there are two other groups, different gear and banners, nothing we’ve ever seen or heard of. One lot is fighting side by side with the Haida against the third bunch.”
“Well, that simplifies things, just a bit; we’ll judge each by the company they keep, for the present.”
The scout nodded. “Captain Hellman is keeping them all under observation and holding us out of sight; we went in on foot and stealthy to get the information, once we spotted them on our way back from the Bay. They’re not paying much attention to anything but each other. He says that if you want to intervene, you’d best be quick; the fight won’t last much longer.”
“He’s wise to wait, with no more than a dozen scouts. Back with you, tell him I’m following in your tracks and he’s to meet and brief me, screening as he does. Prepare for action.”
He turned to Oak. “How many bows can Dun Barstow muster?”
“Who’re listed for the First Levy? Two-score and three; the folk here are mostly young and fit. Except for me,” he added with a grim smile. “And I’m fit enough. We’ve bicycles enough for them all. Like old times, eh?”
“If it’s all the same to you I’d rather watch sheep eat grass. Turn them out and follow quick as you can, with the usual cautions.”
Oak nodded without bothering to speak, and he and his snatched up their weapons and headed off westward at a run. Most Mackenzies were a loquacious folk by inclination, and loved argument and debate, but they knew when to shut up as well.
The High King went on, writing on his own order pad, tearing off the sheet and holding it out: “Sir Aleaume! A rider to Castle Rutherford. The commander to order a general alert, word to all the settlements in the valley, and his ready company to move out at once. And I want both his gliders in the air, I need reconnaissance of this whole area.”
The knight barked an order, and a messenger in the leathers of a courier took the paper, stuffed it under his helmet-lining and took off northward towards that half-completed fortress, leading two remounts at a gallop. Edain put his bow in front of his monarch’s horse as it turned to a shift of its rider’s balance.
“Arm up first, Chief. And the rest o’ the lobsters. We’re not in such a hurry you can’t spare that much time.”
Her father snorted, said: “Yes, mother,” and slipped off his mount.
Órlaith did likewise, speaking before the guard-captain could:
“And if you say the little princess had best stay behind I’ll clout you, old wolf. I’ve taken valor”-which meant qualifying for the First Levy, among the Clan-“and earned the golden spurs as well.”
Her mother Mathilda was Lady Protector of the Portland Protective Association as well as High Queen, and the old north-realm was the home of chivalry.
“You were the age I am now when you went east on the Quest, too, that you were,” she finished.
“Which is the truth,
and I wouldn’t dream of saying anything like that,” Edain said, with a wry twist of his mouth.
And patent untruth; he’d been guardian to her all her life, even more than to her brothers and sisters. His own children had laughed to her more than once how glad they were he wasn’t such a clucking mother hen with them.
Her father stood with arms outstretched, and the High King’s squires rushed forward lugging heavy canvas sacks full of armor before they helped each other.
You couldn’t don full plate by yourself without time and contortions, and Órlaith was too recently a knight herself to have a squire of her own. Heuradys didn’t either, since her duties as junior household knight made it difficult; that was a substantial responsibility, one they both took seriously. Instead they would help each other on with the gear; that was nearly as fast as having a squire do it.
Heuradys’ eyes were shining. “This is it,” she whispered. “I told you back when we were little girls that I’d be your liege-knight and fight by your side someday.”
“You called it, liegewoman,” Órlaith nodded.
They put their hands on each other’s shoulders. Heuradys closed her eyes for a moment and spoke, with none of the usual hint of mockery in her voice:
“Shining war-maid, Gray-Eyed One of the piercing glance, I pray to you. Precision and unmuddled thought grant to me, surety and conviction, quick wit and quick action and unbaffled sight. Protector of the City, let me protect my King and her to whom I have sworn my oath, though my life be the cost.”
Órlaith hesitated for a moment. Then: “Dark Mother, in whatever form I need You most, come to me now, that I be worthy of my oaths and honor and the land that looks to my blood for guardianship. And what price You ask, that I shall pay without withholding.”
Something seemed to pass across her eyes. She blinked and it was gone. The rest of the lancers were on the ground too, assisting each other to complete the additions to the half armor they usually rode in to spare the horses.
The Given Sacrifice c-7 Page 37
