Tiphaine pursed her lips. “It’s direct, and it doesn’t give them the chance to get off their back foot,” she acknowledged. “Given the time constraints . . .”
“Least bad,” Rudi replied. “The western part outside the old park was cut over about thirty years ago, and the remainder burned hard just before and then just after the Change; it’s grassland and shrub now for the most part, good grazing—and heavy with game, buffalo and elk, deer and boar and feral cattle. That will help a fair bit; we’d send light cavalry and scouts first anyway, and they can shoot as much as possible and rough-gralloch it. The troops can eat roast meat and save the iron rations for later.”
Everyone looked at the map. That route meant hauling everything they couldn’t forage with wagons on roads that had spent a generation getting worse, repairing where essential as they went. And even on a good road a horse or ox could pull less than a tenth of what it could on rails, and more slowly too.
He tapped the map again. “We have to guard our line of communication here, at Henrys Lake and up to the ruins of West Yellowstone town; there’s a possible approach from Corwin to the north, where they could flank us. I want the bulk of the remaining Association foot there, Grand Constable, to patrol and block the possible approaches from the north. Delegate the command as you see fit. You’ll keep . . . two thousand of your lancers with the main field force advancing on Corwin. We’ll take the light horse, fifteen thousand of the pike-and-crossbow infantry from Corvallis and the Free Cities, three brigades of Boiseans—Fred, you pick which ones—the Bearkillers, the Mackenzies, and field artillery in proportion. Most of the siege train we can leave west of here, and all the heavy pieces; Corwin isn’t heavily fortified, much less so than Boise, though there are forts, especially to the north.”
The staff at their tables began frantically scribbling, to translate that into the movement orders.
“It’s doable,” Tiphaine said. “But only just. And that’s provided we don’t get locked up skirmishing and breaking ambushes on our way through the Park. That’s mainly still forests, according to the reports. I’ve fought in similar country before, and it’s dead easy to end up chasing each other around in circles for weeks while your main column sits and eats. Or starves.”
Rudi smiled. “I have . . . contacts there. They’ll deal with it.”
Hopefully, he added to himself.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Morrowlander Scout Pack Domain
(Formerly Yellowstone National Park)
High Kingdom of Montival
(Formerly western North America)
August 15th, Change Year 26/2024 AD
The glider blazoned with the crimson bear’s-head whispered by overhead. Sunlight blinked from the canopy as the wings waggled, once and twice and thrice; then it banked off, caught an updraft, and spiraled up into the sky.
“OK, cousin Alyssa, message received,” Mary Vogeler said, waving broadly with her sword in one hand for emphasis and to catch the light as well. “Company’s coming.”
Then she repeated it aloud and in Battle Sign, and the word was passed on from mouth to mouth, quietly and without visible stir. The Dúnedain Rangers were out in force for the great hunt, along with the other scouts and light troops. The day was only just warm even in high summer, for this rolling volcanic plateau rose seven thousand feet above the level of the sea; nights would make bedrolls and fires very welcome, though actual hard frost was unlikely for another month.
Somewhere a work party was singing at their labors, in the Noble Tongue:
“East and west of the Misty Mountains
North and south of the sea—”
Mary smiled; it was good to be back among her own folk for a while. She’d been travelling and adventuring among strangers for a long time by the time they got back from the Quest, and even since. Spending some time in Mithrilwood would be even better, badly though Aunt Astrid’s absence was felt there . . . though she had to admit that this part of Montival was just as comely. Mountaintops winked eastward, icy teeth stretching towards a sky aching blue and streaked with high white mare’s-tail cloud.
The rolling ground around was mostly grass tall and lush and green, starred with yellow sand lily and thick drifts of crimson Indian paintbrush, yard-high purple bunches of fringed gentian and more. There were occasional stumps or the remnants of logs in the grassland, charred and rotting; this land had a natural burn cycle that pushed it from forest to prairie and back. Already there were clumps of aspen and tall slender lodgepole pine up to forty feet high on the most favorable locations on south-facing ridges. They’d cut some of those and erected tripods to hoist up the carcasses of the bison and elk and black-tail deer; if gutted and drained they would keep acceptably for days in this climate.
There were dozens of the tripods in use within sight, and teams of horses dragging in more bodies. This was strictly killing for meat, just methodical hard work like farming. Very much like slaughtering season in the fall, in fact, down to the collective thanks-and-apology prayer. They’d used screens of beaters to drive the herds onto the waiting spears and bows. Even upwind the smell of blood was strong, though clean enough, mingled with the smell of grilling kidney and liver, the strong-tasting organ meats that went off so quickly and were the rights of the hunter. They’d dug trenches for the guts, once the dogs had gorged themselves into a stupor, and the hides were stacking up, to be used to wrap around butchered, quartered carcasses for easy transport.
Mary still felt slightly guilty, since they’d be wasting so much valuable sausage casing, horn and fat and leather and sinew and bone, not to mention the brains that could be used for tanning. The Valar recognized that humankind had a right to eat just as the other carnivores did, but they disapproved of wantonness with the gifts of Arda and Eru the Creator.
This is rich land and we’re not taking the calves or young females, she thought a bit defensively. The herds will bounce back quickly. For that matter, the way the herds are composed shows that someone is cropping the wildlife here, and someone who knows what they’re doing, too. You see the same thing in Mithrilwood or our other steadings. I think I know by whom, too.
The Lakota had been most impressed; they lived by ranching as much as anything these days with a little gardening here and there and some crafts, but they managed the swelling buffalo herds of the makol, the high plains, very carefully.
Nobody was alarmed at the message from the glider; she wasn’t the only one tasked with waiting for it, and anyway they had a perimeter of guards out and everyone was on the alert. If nothing else, the killing had brought every opportunistic predator in the area out hotfoot, and when wolf-packs and grizzlies and tigers got the scent of blood, you had to be cautious.
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.
&nb
sp; 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.”
The Given Sacrifice Page 24
