The beads of sweat grew and he suppressed an impulse to wipe them away.
“Quite a bit of a trip, a long ’un,” he said. “Weeks or more. We’d be going off right away.”
Horned Lord and Mother-of-All, do you have to ask so many bloody questions? he thought desperately. And then: Oh, bugger, I let it slip.
Normally he spoke with nearly the same accent as any other Mackenzie his age, except that it was a bit stronger since he lived close to Dun Juniper. That musical lilt and its rolled R sounds were natural to him, though he’d heard that it had started right after the Change when people tried to imitate Lady Juniper’s manner of speech. His father always found it irritating or amusing, depending on his mood.
When he was in the irritated phase, Sam Aylward called it life imprisonment among the stage Irish, whatever that meant.
But when he was under a strain more of his father’s own voice came out in his, and Sam Aylward had been born in England—on a farm near Tilford in Hampshire, to be precise—and the soft burr clung to his tongue despite more than twenty years here in the Willamette.
Edain could see his father relent; he laughed then, and the younger man flushed.
“It’s all right,” Sam Aylward said. “Just that you’re about as good at keeping something off your face as I was at your age. Still, you’re a better than good shot and useful otherwise for a long trip.”
“You know?” Edain blurted.
His father grinned like a wolf. “I may not be the first armsman anymore, but Lady Juniper does still ask me for advice, I’ll have you know. I was your age when I took the Queen’s Shilling, pretty much, and ended up on a transport to the Falklands not long after. Your mother knows too, by the way.”
That was no surprise. His mother was high priestess of the oldest coven in Dun Fairfax, and she heard everything from this world and the Otherworld both.
“You want to go?” Sam Aylward asked.
He looked at his father in astonishment. “Well, of course I do, Dad!” he said.
“Ah, I should remember what nineteen’s like,” Aylward senior said. At Edain’s affronted look: “You’ll understand in a while.”
“It’s the farm I was worried about, with the spring work and all,” the younger man said awkwardly. “I mean . . .”
“Lambing and shearing’s over,” Aylward said. “And besides, we’ve got Tamar, and her man’s about the place now, and young Dickie is getting to be a real help, and your little sister with your mother. We’ll manage.”
Edain blew out his lips in relief. A huge excitement grew beneath his breastbone; it dimmed only a little when his mother came through the door from the main house with his siblings, including his elder half sister, Tamar—she’d been born a little before the Change that killed her father—and her handfasted man, Eochu, and their firstborn in her arms.
Baby Forgall just gurgled quietly, but everyone else looked at him. His mother with worry; she had the upper section of her arsaid over her head like a hood, which meant she’d just been at some rite before the house altar. Dick was looking at him with naked envy. Young Fand was nearly as distressed as their mother, her fair redhead’s face flushed.
Then her expression changed and she spoke: “I guess we can’t tell Eithne, sure?” and giggled, back to her usual hateful twelve year-old self.
That made him feel better about it. For one thing, Eithne would be spitting mad that he was going and she wasn’t when it all came out, so he wouldn’t be sorry she didn’t hear of it. And things had never been quite the same with them since that trip north last year. He felt even better when his father snapped in a tone harder than his usual: “No, and if you want your brother back alive, you’ll keep your mouth bloody well shut, girl!”
She looked properly abashed.Then Sam Aylward went on to his eldest son: “Rudi has the gear you’ll need for the first part ready. But you’ll need a spare war bow.”
There were dozens racked on the walls, finished or in the making. Edain’s eyes went wide when he saw the one his father took down. It wasn’t new—he’d gotten a new one as a gift at his birthday this spring, just after Ostara—but it was beautiful, from the darkly shining riser of black walnut root to the carved horn tips at either end. The staves were yew, the whole weapon six feet long with a subtle double curve, out a little from the riser and then back again, what the old books called reflex deflex.
His father was known as Aylward the Archer through out the Willamette, and his marksmanship was only half the reason.
“That’s your war bow, Dad!”
“Too heavy for me, these days. I get a twinge in me shoulder at full draw with it. A hundred and fifteen pounds with a thirty inch arrow . . . Give it a try.”
Edain flushed again at doing it with everyone watch ing. The actions were automatic: he strung it Mackenzie-style, with the lower tip braced against his left foot and his right thigh over the riser. Then he brought it up and drew, pushing out his left arm and pulling with the muscles of his torso and gut as much as the right arm. A little to his surprise it bent easily, and he held the draw without any betraying quiver.
“You’ll do,” his father said when he’d eased off from the draw, then pulled him into a quick rough hug. “You’ll do me proud, boy.”
His mother was crying a little; she was a decade and more younger than his father, but he suddenly realized with a shock that her yellow-brown hair had gone mostly gray too. When had that happened?
He knelt before her. She made the invoking sign over his head—a pentagram, starting with the top point—and spoke with a catch in her voice:
Through darkened wood and shadowed path
Hunter of the Forest, by your side
Lady of the Stars, fold you in Her wings:
So mote it be!
The whole family joined in on the final line of the spell-prayer. It made him feel stronger; then his mother handed him a sack.
“Just a few extra things. There are some simples in the white box; they’re all labeled in case you take a chill. Try”—her face worked—“try to come back safe!”
He was glad to finally get out and on his way; good byes were all well and good, but he had to go. He strode down the graveled lane between the houses and sheds, the Covenstead and the big communal barn, and out through the gate, with Garbh padding at his heels. It was midmorning, and most of the folk were out in the fields; he passed a few younger chil dren playing or watching still younger siblings, and the odd adult whose work kept them in the dun even now. Outside the gate he paused to leave a few crumbs by the grave of the Fairfaxes, the old couple who’d owned the farm around which the dun had grown, and then turned east.
He kept to the road, passing people busy in the garden plots with their eternal battle against slugs and couch grass and creeping shoots, their hoes flashing as they sang a working song:
Remember what old granny said
These beetles are pretty—but better off dead;
They can be compost—and we can be fed!
Eithne gave him a look and went back to work; he winced a little. Her mother gave him a look that was even worse and called out, “Care to try a spell at the hoe, if you can spare the time from a walk in the woods?”
He shrugged and kept walking. “No, no, these myster ies of the Earth Mother are too sacred for my eyes!” he called with mock solemnity.
That got him a chorus of good natured hoots and jeers, particularly from the men and boys working there, and he waved back as he went by. Nobody was too upset; they knew he wasn’t one of Dun Fairfax’s few shirkers. This was a solidly prosperous settlement and proud of it—prosperous by standards no older than Edain, which meant that everyone in it had plenty of food all year ’round, at least two spare sets of clothing and a clean bed of their own. But it stayed that way because everyone in it worked very hard indeed.
The fields narrowed as he went east towards the head of the valley. A quick skip from rock to rock at a ford put him over the river that flowed down from
Dun Juniper’s hillside bench. Then he was into the green gloom of tall forest, land that had been Mackenzie owned in the old days, Lady Juniper’s land; that meant a century of careful tending since it was last logged. Red alder grew tall along the stream, ten times his height, with its bark mottled white and the new leaves green and tender. Fir and hemlock and red cedar stood taller still and candle straight on the drier ground; beneath the forest floor bore a carpet of low-growing red stemmed kinnikinnick, starred with pink flowers in this season.
Birds were many; away in the middle distance he heard the mating-season boom-boom of a blue grouse, and closer to hand a pair of hummingbirds hovered above a patch of iris. It was all nearly as familiar as his family’s house, or the fields. He still smiled to see it. . . .
But I’m leaving, he thought. I’m going far and far away, and I may never be back again!
He stopped for a moment to look back for a last glimpse through the trees and down at the valley’s dappled spring quilt of plowland and pasture and young wheat. That was enough to sober him for a few minutes; with every pace away he could feel how his heartstrings were deep in that good brown earth. And it made him look at each tree and turn of the creek in a new light as it went past; but he was cheerful enough again in a few minutes. He was young, and strong, and the Chief’s tanist had chosen him as his companion on the great journey.
When he came near the old overgrown logging trail above Dun Juniper he was grinning again. He decided to approach on the quiet—and was congratulating himself on how well he was managing, though only deer and elk and the odd hunter had kept fern and brush from totally closing the way. It was Garbh’s low growl that alerted him; he wheeled with a sudden start of alarm.
“Not bad, kid,” a voice said from behind him.
He knew from the flat harsh accent that it was the foreigner Ingolf. Very slowly he turned, cheeks blushing with embarrassment, biting down on anger.
He outsneaked me! he thought indignantly. And on ground I’ve hunted over all my life!
Rudi stood grinning, leaning on a quarterstaff. Three big A-frame packs rested at his feet, and another of the walking sticks.
“Ready, Edain?” he said, tossing it.
Edain caught the length of ashwood and looked up through the trees to the high white peaks eastward. Mackenzie Pass would still be cold this time of year. . . .
“Ready, Chief!” he said, rearranging his quiver and shrugging one of the packs onto his back with a grunt of effort.
Usually Rudi didn’t like being called that; and tech nically he wouldn’t be, not until his mother died or stepped down, and even then only if the Clan hailed him—though that was pretty well a foregone conclusion now that they’d made him tanist. This time he shrugged it off with a grin.
“Then let’s get going!”
“After you, Chief,” Ingolf said with a smile.
Rudi did scowl at him; then they set their faces east ward and walked into the forests and towards the peaks that walled the world.
Chapter Eleven
County Odell,
Hood Valley, Northern Oregon
Portland Protective Association
April 17, CY23/2021 A.D.
“It really is worth coming here for the blossom time,” Mathilda Arminger said wistfully, taking a deep breath of the cool morning air. “Too bad we have to leave right away.”
This had always been fruit country, and still was; neat orchards mantled the rolling floor of the valley on every side, apple and cherry and pear, a froth of cream and pink and white, the scent as intoxicating as cool wine. Petals fell in drifts from the trees on either side of the road to catch in her hat and hair and the russet-brown suede leather of her jerkin, and there was a deep murmur of bees amid the blossoms.
The great white cone of Mount Hood hung in the sky to the south, looming over the valley that ran north to the Columbia Gorge. The cream of its summit was tinged with a little pink from the rising sun. It looked a bit odd to see the snowpeak there, even though this was far from her first visit to the chancellor’s home fief—in Portland and the Willamette you saw the mountain from the west.
The ferroconcrete bulk of Castle Odell on Lenz Butte behind them was two years younger than Mathilda, but the bright white-stucco mass might have loomed there for generations, with banners flying from the high turrets and terraced gardens falling from the outer edge of the moat to the valley floor. Odell Town huddled at its base as if for protection, its churches and dwellings and workshops mostly red-tiled and built since the Change; a half finished cathedral in the fashionable Cypriot Gothic style was already the tallest building in it.
Steep forested hills rose green and blue with distance on either side, and Middle Mountain a few miles south separated the lower valley from the upper. A few fleecy clouds floated overhead, and the air was busy with birds journeying north. The road their horses trod came out through the town’s western gate and followed the old Union Pacific. Trains of ox drawn cars went by north ward on the steel rails, mostly with barrels of fruit brandies and cordials, apple vinegar and honey mead; south the return cargoes were grain and wool from the count’s vassals in Grass and Tygh valleys.
As the road and rail turned west and then south they passed manors and villages and even a few isolated farms—the latter very rare in Association territory, and a sign of long peace. Peasants cutting hay in a riverside meadow paused to wave their straw hats; a friar on foot told his beads as he walked and raised a hand in blessing as they passed; once a raggedy-gaudy troubadour with a lute slung over his back doffed his cap and bowed as they rode by. A little later a half dozen mounted crossbowmen on road patrol saluted smartly.
And now we have to figure out how to get rid of Lady Catherine, she thought as she returned the gesture with a wave of her riding crop.
As princess she was exempt from most of the usual rules, but Catherine was young—daughter of one of the Countess of Odell’s ladies-in-waiting—and took her duties as chaperone seriously, sitting primly on her pal frey in her modest divided skirt and leggings. Her lips were compressed; it had taken a direct order to stop her hauling along a round dozen mounted attendants and guards. Mathilda’s own mouth quirked.
Chaperone, indeed! As if I couldn’t kick up my heels anytime I wanted! And Odard would be happy to cooperate—he isn’t a pest about it, but you can tell. There’s no real guard against impurity but determination.
The hills closed in on either side as the way turned south and closed with the Hood River, brawling and leaping white over rocks with spring’s snowmelt. A roadside shrine caught her eye, a miniature carved wooden shed above a saint’s image. It was a naked man with one hand on his chest and the other holding a cross.
Saint Dismas, she thought, the thief who’d been cruci fied at the side of Jesus. The one who repented, that is. Patron saint of criminals who’ve gone respectable.
Conrad Renfrew wasn’t openly old fashioned, but he had an odd sense of humor she’d noticed sometimes in those who’d been adults before the Change. It was just like him to find a special devotion to that particular member of the calendar.
“Let’s stop and ask the saint’s help,” Mathilda said.
That was always a safe thing to suggest, and in this case she really wanted it as well. They reined in and dismounted; Odard gallantly gave her a hand down, which was sort of superfluous—Catherine was the one who might actually need it. As he did he whispered, “I’ll fix her saddle to slip off when she remounts. She couldn’t ride a rocking horse bareback and she won’t notice until it’s too late. Then we can just gallop away and she’ll have to walk back to the castle.”
Mathilda nodded unhappily; the count wasn’t at home, but his lady and his eldest son were, and they’d smell a rat as soon as Catherine got back to town, and couriers would start galloping in every direction and heliograph messages would fly to the outposts all around. It would be touch and go whether she and Odard could make it south to the border before a conroi of lancers caught up to �
��escort” her home . . . and there would be hell to pay from her mother.
The three young nobles tied their horses to the hitching rail, dropped a few copper coins in the box and lit the small tapers provided, planting them before the image. Then they knelt on the dense green turf, signing themselves, kissing their crucifixes and taking up their rosaries. Mathilda continued with silent intensity as they all bowed their heads in prayer:
Saint Dismas, patron of the repentant, I am not sure that what I plan to do is right, and I am torn between my duties. I know I should obey my mother, but God has called me to guard the folk. I can see no other way than this to best fulfill my oaths and help my friend in this task, and so do what is best for both our peoples. If I do wrong, misled by my rebellious heart, help me to repent. May God bless this quest and my companions on this road. Saint Dismas, teach me the words to say to Our Lord to gain pardon and the grace of perseverance; and you who are so close to Him now in heaven, as you were during His last moments on earth, pray to Him for me that I shall never again desert Him, but that at the close of my life I may hear from Him the words He addressed to you: “This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.”
As Mathilda stood and brushed off her knees she heard a quick beat of hooves from the northward. She looked up in alarm, a hand going to her sword hilt, but it was a single rider leading a pair of packhorses.
As he came closer she could see that it was a monk with his dark robe kirted up over practical looking deerskin pants and stout riding boots; a telltale chink and shift hinted at a short mail shirt beneath the coarse dark robe. A longsword and dagger hung from his belt, be side a steel crucifix and a rosary of maple-wood beads, and a bowcase and quiver rode at his saddlebow. One of the led horses had a four-foot shield strapped to its packsaddle.
The canvas cover was still on that, but she suspected she knew what it would show: a raven over a cross. And his face was vaguely familiar. . . .
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