The Scourge of God c-2

by S. M. Stirling

  He'd made the usual evening devotion, but a sudden sharp need seized him; he wasn't one to be always bothering the Powers, like an importunate child tugging at his mother's kilt and whining for attention, but…

  Rudi raised his hands above his head, palm pressed to palm:

  "Bless me with your love, Lord and Lady, for I am Your child."

  The hands moved to his forehead, thumbs on the center where the Third Eye rested:

  "Bless my vision with the light of wisdom."

  To the throat, and:

  "Bless my voice, that it may speak truth."

  To the heart:

  "Bless my heart with perfect love, even for my foes, for each is also Your child."

  To the spot below the breastbone:

  "Bless my will with strength of purpose, that I may not falter on the red field of war."

  To the loins:

  "Bless my passions with balance, making even hate serve love."

  To the root chakra, at the base of the spine:

  "Bless my silent self with clarity, that I may shun error."

  To the soles of the feet:

  "Bless all my journey in this world, that my path be the path of honor, until my accounting to the Guardians."

  Then he held his hands up, palms before his face:

  "Bless my hands, that they may do Your work on this Your earth."

  Finally pressed together above his head once more:

  "Bless me and receive my love, Lord and Lady, for You are mine as I am Yours; you powerful God, you Goddess gentle and strong, hear your child."

  Smiling to himself, he took up the sword and sheathed it, a quick flick and a hiss of steel on wood and leather greased with neatsfoot oil, and the ting as the guard met mount at the mouth of the scabbard. Suddenly a shooting star streaked across the dome of heaven, and he chuckled.

  "Well, I can't say You don't have a sense of timing!"

  Edain was waiting for him at the base of the rock. Garbh sat at his heel and grinned with the tongue-lolling happiness of a dog about to take a country walk with two of her people-pack amid thousands of interesting new scents.

  "Did you see the falling star?" the younger Mackenzie said.

  They headed off to the northwest, which would be their watch-station.

  "I did that," Rudi said, grinning in the dark. "I did that."

  "Huh?" Ingolf Vogeler said, startled out of an evil dream.

  Someone was close, very close. He pretended to drop back into sleep, but his hand crept to the staghorn hilt of his bowie, beneath the folded blanket he was using as a cover for his saddlebag pillow. The rough horn slipped into his palm, and he prepared to coil up off the ground…

  "Well, I'm not here to have a knife fight!" someone whispered.

  "Oh," he said; it was a woman's voice.

  The face of one of the twins was close to him as she knelt, smiling. "Though I could probably have killed you if I wanted to."

  "Oh," he said. "Well, true enough. Ah, Ritva-"

  "Mary," she said. "But I sort of like you, actually, Ingolf." A smile. "That was really pretty music."

  The smile was expectant; that gradually turned to a slight frown as he shoved the bowie back into its scabbard and sat up, scrubbing at his face. That was a mistake, since the bruises were still fresh enough to make him wince. His wits returned, enough to realize that she was carrying her bedding and dressed only in her shirt… though she had her scabbarded sword in one hand with the belt wound around it, like a sensible person in the circumstances.

  It was late; his eyes flicked automatically to the stars, and read them as past midnight. Nobody would be up now except the lookouts.

  "Uh…" He flogged himself to full awareness as she sat beside him and put an arm around his waist. "Umm, I sort of like you too, Mary."

  I must be older than I thought, ran through his mind. Or more depressed. A beautiful half-naked blonde is propositioning me, and I'm not actually leaping at the chance. Well, part of me is, but the rest isn't.

  Her smile returned and got broader-the part that was leaping was sort of obvious through the blanket. He was suddenly aware of the sunny smell of her hair, still slightly damp from bathing in the spring-water, and the way her breast brushed against his arm where she leaned against him.

  "If you want me to get specific," she murmured into his ear, "you're brave and smart and you've got a good sense of humor when you're not depressed and you've got a really cute butt. And I've known you for months now, so that's not a snap judgment."

  "Well, I was real sick for the first couple of months." Then he realized why he was oddly reluctant, enough that his mind was overriding the hammering of his pulse.

  Saba. We'd only just met that night I rode into Sutterdown, and that was the last time I was with a woman.

  The curved Cutter knife had been rising above him as he woke beside her. He swallowed as he remembered the way she'd shrieked as the Cutter's knife went in, and the way it had looked and smelled. Far too much like the sound and smell when the hog butcher put his spiked pincers on the beast's nose in the fall… and that lay over the memory of what had gone before.

  "Look," he said slowly. "I… last time…"

  "Ah," she said sadly, and put a hand on his arm and squeezed the thick bicep. "Saba. I'm sorry to bring it back to mind, but she'd smile at us from the Summerlands, really."

  "I don't seem to be good luck for women," he said. "Not since, well, not since Corwin. My luck generally speaking sucks since then. I-" He swallowed. "I don't want to risk anyone else. I like you, Mary. I don't want to see you hurt."

  "That's all right," she said sunnily. "My luck's good enough for two. And I'm a Ranger ohtar, a warrior by trade. Got to take my chances."

  "Ummm-" Christ, but I seem to be saying that a lot. "Look, Mary. .. we're friends, right? So can I ask you honestly… you're not doing this because you're sorry for me, are you?"

  "No, of course not!" she said. Then: "Well, not mostly. Being sad makes you more sexy; women think that way, you know."

  "You do?"

  "Usually. You know, the brooding thing, and it'll be a big charge to make you happy again. If you're interesting to start with." The grin grew broader. "And happiness is on the program."

  She moved suddenly, straddling his lap. His arms went around her involuntarily, and suddenly he could hear her heart pounding as hard as his. The problem with that was that it brought back the memory of the last time really strongly. Mary gave a slight yelp as his hands closed on her, and then she looked down in puzzlement.

  "What's wrong?" she said. "Things were fine, and then… look, I did take a bath…"

  "Ummm, I'm real flattered." He was; it wasn't often you got an outright offer like this. Of course, both times it had been witches. "As long as you really want…"

  "Sure! I won the toss, didn't I?"

  "Toss?" he said, jarring to a halt.

  "Well, Ritva and I are identical twins. We usually want the same thing. So we tossed for you. Well, then we did paper-scissors-stone. She cheats."

  Ingolf felt his jaw drop slightly. Girls back home weren't necessarily shy, or coy about telling a man their mind under the right circumstances, but…

  "You won me?" he squeaked.

  "It's not as if there's much of a selection." At his gape, she stroked his head and went on: "Ingolf, there's you, there's our brother, there's a celibate Catholic priest, and there's two kids. I mean, Edain? Cradle robbing."

  "He's about your age," Ingolf said weakly.

  "That makes him younger. And boys that age are even more dicks on legs than men your age. Besides, he's scared of us."

  "There's Odard…" And I can't believe I said that!

  "Euuu! He's been trying to get into our pants since we were sixteen! Euuu! He'd smirk. And it's Matti he really wants. Besides, he's too… smooth."

  "I'm not smooth?"

  "No, you're rugged."

  "Look, Mary…" he said slowly. Are these words really coming out of my mou
th? "I… well, I like you a lot, but I haven't, you know, thought of you that way." Except in passing. "Couldn't we, ummm, get to know each other better-"

  That was evidently not the right thing to say; she reared back like an offended cat and moved away from his embrace. Half of him wanted to snatch her back… and he was humiliatingly aware that some of the other half was sheer fear that he couldn't, not after what happened in Sutterdown.

  "Eny!" she said, and then a sputter of musical syllables he knew were Sindarin, though he hadn't learned more than the odd word. "Men!"

  Actually, that let's-get-to-know-each-other-first is usually the girl's line, he thought, bemused, as she flounced back to where her sister lay.

  Slowly a smile spread over his face as he lay back and pulled up his blankets. His body was giving a sharp protest at what he'd done, and a big part of his mind was agreeing, yearning for the sheer comfort of closeness. The rest of him…

  Maybe she didn't just set out to make me feel better, but for some reason I do!

  TheScourgeofGod

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CASTLE TODENANGST, PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION

  WILLAMETTE VALLEY NEAR NEWBERG, OREGON

  SEPTEMBER 10, CY 23/2021 AD

  Astrid Larsson, Hiril Dunedain, frowned upward at the curiously graceful bulk of Castle Todenangst. The great fortress-palace of the Arminger dynasty had been built around the slopes of Grouse Butte in the first Change Years, a little east of the town of Newberg. Built by thousands glad to haul concrete on their backs and claw away earth and rock for a regular bowl of gruel from Portland's commandeered grain elevators and a taste of the whip from the overseers. In those days of the great dying it had been a good bargain.

  Still a symbol of tyranny, I suppose, she thought. Complete with dark tower. But…

  Now it looked as if it had been there forever, a great circuit of crenellated concrete wall and tower covered in shining white stucco, the gates like castles in themselves and the broad moat bright with water lilies in coral pink and white and purple. The high mass of the inner donjon loomed over it all where the builders had carved away the central butte and cased it in ferroconcrete, covered with pale granite salvaged from abandoned banks and rearing hundreds of feet higher than the surrounding plain of dark forest and green pasture and yellow stubble-field, vineyard and orchard and village.

  Towers higher yet studded the oval wall, the greatest of all on the southern height nearest them, sheathed in black stone with glittering crystal inclusions that made it sparkle in the bright sunlight of a September dawn. Its roof was conical and tapered to a spike, but not green copper like the others. It was covered in gold leaf, and it blazed like a flame as the sun cleared the forested Parrett Mountains to the eastward, a monument to the dark and ruthless will of the man who'd reared it amid the death-agony of a world.

  He's been dead twelve years. Does his spirit still linger here?

  Proud banners flew from the towers, and lords and ladies in bright finery stood on the battlements to look down on the assembled armies of the Meeting. Several thousand peasants and townsmen crowded around the lowered drawbridge in their best Sunday-go-to-Church dress of jerkin and hose and cap or double tunic and wimple, ready to wave the little Lidless Eye flags they carried. A rank of soldiers stood on either side to keep them back, facing outward with their spears held horizontally.

  "I have to admit, though, it's almost… like something out of Gondor, isn't it?" she said with grudging admiration in her silver-veined blue eyes.

  That she used Sindarin kept the conversation private from outsiders. It was even more so because only she and her husband, Alleyne, and her anamchara, Eilir Mackenzie, and her man, John Hordle, stood near her. The rest of her Rangers were in a solid mass behind her two hundred strong, each standing at their horse's head, clad in light armor and spired helmets. The White Tree with its surround of seven stars and crown flew from a tall banner a proud ohtar held beside her own dappled Arab.

  "Possibly like Minas Tirith," Alleyne said, smoothing a finger along his neat blond mustache. "Or possibly more like the offspring off a fleeting romantic encounter between Carcassonne and San Simeon. I'm certainly glad we never had to try and storm it."

  Eilir nodded, and Hordle grunted agreement around the last mouthful of a massive smoked-venison-and-pickled-onion sandwich.

  "John!" Astrid hissed under her breath. "Do you always have to be eating? You're as bad as a hobbit!"

  He swallowed and licked fingers like great sausages backed with red furze, and belched comfortably.

  "Takes a bit to keep a Halfling my size going, m'lady," he said mildly, and leaned on the ball pommel of his heavy four-foot sword. "Can't roitly expect me ter live on just a bit o' lembas, now can you?"

  There was some truth in that, since he was ten inches taller than her five-nine and weighed over three hundred pounds, with shoulders as broad as a sheathed sword and a face like a cured ham atop a wedge of muscle where most men kept a neck.

  "Besides, it'll be all jerky and hardtack soon enough, with raisins if we're lucky. Maggoty dead horse if we're not."

  She nodded. The allied army was drawn up on the great open fields that sloped down from Todenangst's south gate towards the forest of oak and fir along the Willamette River; they served as green pasture for the castle's horses in peacetime, and now they blossomed with orderly rows of tents and pavilions. The smells of any war-camp-woodsmoke, scorched frying pan, slit trenches inadequately shoveled in after use, horses, leather and metal and sweat-mingled with the mild sweetness of the crushed grass.

  The Rangers had the center station since she'd be in command. To her right were the thousand Mackenzie archers that Juniper had brought, beneath the banner of the antlers and Crescent Moon; beyond them were the two hundred and fifty Bearkiller A-listers with their black bear's head on crimson, all full-armored and equipped with lance and horseman's bow; flanking them were a hundred knight-brothers of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict from Mt. Angel, with the cross-and-raven emblazoned on their shields.

  To her left was the Corvallis contingent, standing with their burnished armor and equally shiny field catapults, and the orange-and-brown flag of that rich city-state, with the letters PFSC above for the People and Faculty Senate of Corvallis. The flag bore the image of Benny the Beaver, a rodentine head scowling ferociously and baring chisel teeth. Her brother-in-law Mike Havel had called it dorky beyond words to use the university's football flag as a battle emblem, and she had to agree, but at least today they didn't have those cheerleaders in short skirts leaping and cavorting and making pyramids in front of the troops. She'd always hated that, particularly on serious occasions.

  The Portland Protective Association's contingent was on the far left. Several hundred were armored lancers on destriers, knights and men-at-arms riding great steeds that themselves wore armor on head and neck and chest. A thousand were footmen, half with spear and shield, the rest crossbowmen. The Association's men stood a little apart from the others-all of whom had fought the Protectorate during the War of the Eye twelve years ago.

  Or at least their parents and elder siblings did. That's going to be awkward, she thought. Far too many of us have the memory of friends or kin killed by those men under the Lidless Eye banner. And vice versa, I suppose.

  There was a stir in the crowd of commoners. Heralds in bright tabards and plumed hats marched in a double rank through the open gates of Castle Todenangst, formed lines on either side of the roadway and raised their long flare-mouthed silver trumpets. From behind them came the white glitter of polished armor and the glow of embroidered silk and vestments, and the flutter of heraldic banners. The trumpets screamed in high sweet unison, and then a great voice cried out as the echoes died among the walls and towers:

  "Our sovereign liege-lady, Sandra Arminger, Regent of the Portland Protective Association for Crown Princess Mathilda Arminger! Lord Conrad Renfrew, Count of Odell and Chancellor of the Realm! The lady Tiphaine d'Ath, Grand Cons
table of the Association! His Grace, Abbot-Bishop Dmowski of Mt. Angel and Head of the Commonwealth of the Queen of Angels! Lady Juniper, the Mackenzie of Clan Mackenzie!-"

  "The glory of the Elder Days, and the hosts of Beleriand," Astrid murmured softly, as the Protectorate commoners uncovered and bowed, or sank into deep curtsies before their rulers and those of the allied realms of the Meeting.

  "Yet not so many, nor so fair," Alleyne replied in the same quiet voice. "And they're coming to us, and not vice versa."

  "And not enjoying it at all, some of them," Astrid said happily. "It hasn't been a nice day for Tiphaine, at all, I imagine."

  Even here in the midst of the castle, in the arming chamber of the Grand Constable's quarters, you could hear the low grumbling surf-roar of voices from the walls and the field to the south. It was time to go; she had to meet Sandra and Conrad and do the ceremonial necessities. Tiphaine d'Ath wasn't looking forward to it, but that had been true of a lot of the work she'd done for Sandra since the Change. You couldn't complain about the pay or benefits, and it was usually interesting.

  "And they say I'm obsessed with fashion!" Delia de Stafford said.

  "We've all got to look pretty to keep up the Association's credit in front of the foreigners," Tiphaine said, then looked down as the last buckle snapped home.

  "Very neat, Lioncel," the Grand Constable said to her page, who was also Delia's eldest son. "But you musn't touch the plates with your bare palms; just the fingers. They smudge a lot more easily than the old chain mail did."

  The harness was her parade armor, the same design as her field kit and just as practical in terms of stopping sharp or pointy or heavy things wielded with ill intent, but a good deal more showy, since the plates were made of chrome steel and burnished- white armor, the term was.