The Desert and the Blade

by S. M. Stirling

  Diarmuid Tennart McClintock’s folk came up from behind while the dozen Mackenzies were halted—it was their turn for rear guard—and did likewise. Karl carefully did not grin at the set look some of them had as they slowed and stood down; at least they weren’t falling over anymore, even the ones with four-foot claidheamh mòr greatswords in hide slings over their backs. Some of them were openly kneading their buttocks under the baggy wrapped-and-pinned Great Kilts they wore.

  It wasn’t that they weren’t hardy, though Mackenzies often gently mocked their pretensions in that direction. But McClintocks were woodsrunners, hill-and-hollow dwellers from the uplands south of the Willamette who lived thinly scattered and seldom saw even a two-wheeled cart; their dùthchas was mostly rugged territory where nature had been unkind to the old world’s works, roads among them, so it was pack-ponies and shank’s mare for them when they traveled. The Clan Mackenzie claimed plenty of mountain country—up to the crests of the High Cascades in the east—but they had a nicely large chunk of the Willamette Valley too, fat flat fertile land, and that was where most of them dwelt. They weren’t crowded even yet, but roads were good and bicycles common.

  “Aught?” he asked Diarmuid.

  The McClintock feartaic shook his head, but unconsciously looked over his shoulder. He was shorter than Karl and about five years older, a slim-waisted, broad-shouldered brown-haired man with the thin golden torc of the handfasted around his neck, a basket-hilted claymore by his side and a round nail-studded shield slung over a back clad in a light mail shirt. He’d sprouted a respectable close-clipped beard on the journey to go with his mustache, while Karl and his younger brother still scraped off all their whiskers . . . though as much for the fact that their scattering of fair down still looked embarrassingly sparse as for the fact that it was the custom for young single men among Mackenzies. It made the swirling blue patterns of his tattoos look a little odder to Karl’s eyes as they peeped out from under the hair.

  Diarmuid had been Princess Órlaith’s lover, something of which Karl was frankly and wistfully envious. Presumably that was ended, but not a close friendship, not when he was ready to risk his life and leave a newly-handfasted bride at home as well to manage the Tennart steading with his mother, and her expecting their first babe.

  Karl wouldn’t have wanted to face that on his homecoming. There were places where a man could just tell a woman to shut up and expect her to at least pretend in public to do it, but those most emphatically did not include the dúthchas of the Mackenzies or their McClintock cousins either.

  Thank the Mother-of-All, Karl thought. And she didn’t outright tell him not to go . . . still, she was not joyous at the thought, no she was not altogether . . .

  Though he supposed it would make a man reckless of death; he’d seen the young hearthmistress in question when they stopped at Diarmuid’s garth and she’d been silent on the matter in public but tight-lipped.

  “Nae, no’ a thing I could see, wi’ the blessin’ of Cernunnos,” the tacksman said.

  The McClintock accent was rougher than that of Karl’s folk, harsh with rolled r’s and throaty swallowing sounds. Karl grinned, though he imitated the other man as he made the sign of the Horns to show respect to the Lord of the Beasts, as was fitting. Both Clans were mainly of the same branch of the Old Faith, though with differences of emphasis.

  “He’s the Lord of the Hunt and of the hunted both. Which face of Him do we call on?” Karl said.

  Diarmuid smiled back and offered a silver flask from his sporran. Karl took a sip; the other man had refilled it with grape brandy at White Mountain. It wasn’t as good as the smooth sweet pear spirit from his own steading he’d had in it originally, but it was welcome. Neither of them was formally sole leader of this branch of the expedition, and the rivalry between McClintocks and Mackenzies was as old as the Change . . . though usually mild enough, a matter of teasing, rarely more serious than an occasional good-natured brawl. It was still best to be carefully friendly; and the feartaic was a man to respect anyway.

  “That’s a matter for debate, but I hae nae doot at all of yer da’s opinion o’ the matter,” Diarmuid observed pawkily.

  “Oh, I think we’re a bit ahead, to be sure. Yet true, Da’s not the sort to give up.”

  “Were truer words ever spoken?” Diarmuid said. “My ain father knew him in the old wars, ye ken. Think three times before ye cross that ’un, Diarmuid he said tae me once; and this from a man who liked the hunting of bears, which was the death of him in the end. Well, I’ve done the thing now, but no’ lightly, I’ll hae ye know.”

  Karl nodded, torn a bit between pride and what he grudgingly admitted to himself was resentment. As a lad he’d glowed every time someone sang the tale of the Quest, or badgered his father into telling a bit after a mug or three before the fire some long evening in the Black Months.

  There in the story was his da; the High King’s trusted right-hand man and blood brother, who’d gone to Nantucket and back, won the sword-maid of Norrheim, dared peril and black evil and saved his Chief’s life at the great battle of the Horse Heaven Hills. Yes, and he’d strutted and enjoyed the other children’s envy, when Da wasn’t around to tweak his ear for getting a swelled head, and tell him not to believe everything that came out of a bard’s mouth.

  When you came to manhood yourself, though . . . it could make you feel as if you’d be a boy all your life, having that looming over you. Diarmuid seemed to have an easier time with his father’s memory, though that might just be that he was older or that his father had already passed the Gate or had simply been a well-respected and prominent man rather than a hero of legend and tale.

  Well, I’m on my own journey now, and no mistake! If we can just get clear of Da, that is.

  They were making good speed. Not as fast as the knock-down rail-riding frame they’d picked up at White Mountain and used down the great baking stretch of the Sacramento valley, pumping away at the pedals with the hot wind in their teeth like a horse galloping but for far longer. The dogs had loved it, lolling at ease with their noses in the breeze and their tongues flapping like pink banners of wet silk; keeping up with bicycles on their own four feet since they left the rails was hard for them.

  Still, good time.

  He assumed the High Queen would send Edain Aylward Mackenzie after them; that might be a bit of vanity, but he didn’t think so. Even if his father had come into White Mountain right on their heels—the High King’s Archers could move—they wouldn’t be here just yet. Since that had been the only set of railcar frames to hand at the outpost, his band would have at least a day or two on them by now.

  The thought made him snicker a little.

  “Still seeing Da’s face in your mind, when he finds the trick we played on him?” Mathun said, slapping him on the back. “And that last little detail you thought up—lovely! You’ve a right to laugh at your own wit.”

  “That I do, brother of mine. That I do.”

  “The wonder and joy of it, the more so as it’s a thing so seldom seen.”

  Diarmuid joined in the laughter as the brothers cuffed playfully at each other. Inwardly Karl was a little worried, and glad to be past that stage along the rails, not least for the effort of knocking down the frames and carting them around the breaks in the ancient working. The scorching western side of the great central valley of the Province had been uninhabited after they passed White Mountain. By repute there were only a few tiny bands of skulkers in the hills that bordered it, and it had felt safe enough, but he didn’t like it.

  I’m tired, maybe that’s what’s making me see things out of the corner of my eye, he thought.

  He’d expected danger and weariness on this venture for the Princess, and found them, but not so much the loss of sleep.

  This is much better than the great valley, the Sacramento, he thought; there were rolling hills not far away, and low mountains to the west blue
with forest. Still hot, to be sure, but better.

  Gwri Beauregard Mackenzie came up, a dark-skinned woman of a few years more than his own age with her hair in thin braids tipped by silver balls; she was his second on this venture. Her home was Dun Tàirneanach, over towards the Willamette and well south of Dun Fairfax, and he’d known her for years, since a memorable Beltane feast, in fact. She was clever and a good archer and hunter, serious-minded and steady . . . and more to the point, her mother Meadhbh was a Priestess of the Triple Cords and a fiosaiche—seeress—of note. She’d done notable work with that talent during the Prophet’s War.

  Gwri was neither High Priestess nor seeress, not yet, but she had some abilities along those lines. The Princess had left it to him to pick who came along, from those willing and able to keep their lips from flapping in the breeze. On a venture as uncanny as this, with the breath of the Otherworld on your neck, he wanted someone with a bit of those skills.

  And so, I do not like it when she frowns that way and looks about her as if seeking for something not to be seen in the light of common day. Good never comes of it . . . though it’s best to know the threat before it strikes, or at least that there is one. Still, why could the foresight not predict a rain of beer, or roast pigs trotting by with knives and forks in their backs?

  “I’ve an ill feeling,” she said, confirming his stomach’s verdict.

  One of the landworkers—the middle-aged farmer, built like a knotted stump but with a slight limp to his stride—came over to the fence at the edge of the field, leaning eight feet of half-pike against it. The full sixteen-foot length was unwieldy for anything but serried ranks in a pitched battle, so throughout Montival they were made in two halves joined by a metal sleeve; that was easy to take down and left you with a top half that made a useful general-purpose spear and warstaff.

  That he came by was no surprise, given that the cart was safely heading off. It was normal to be suspicious of outsiders, and just as normal to come and chat once you knew they weren’t hostile. News was always welcome, and would be more so here in this out-of-the-way place, and doubly so with the shock of the High King’s death nearby so recently making folk anxious.

  What wasn’t expected was what he said: “Diarmuid Tennart McClintock, and Karl Aylward Mackenzie?”

  Karl and Diarmuid glanced at each other, startled; Karl felt his mind stutter, and wished he had a reason to pause and gather his wits. Luck or the aes dana provided one. A little berry-brown girl with hair that was a mass of black curls hardly confined by a red ribbon had followed the farmer. She hid behind the man, gripping his leg and peeking repeatedly out from behind him at the worn strangers with their odd clothes and great shaggy dogs, sometimes clutching at the little golden crucifix that hung about her neck on a silver chain. The beasts gave their slack-mouthed dangling-tongue toothy look-it’s-a-puppy! grins at her and thumped the ground with their tails.

  Not for the first time he reflected that dogs were better than men, on the average and in some respects.

  Mathun crouched, grinning himself, and winked at her as he took a little figure of a running horse out of his sporran. It was well done, lively in the elongated and stylized fashion Mackenzies preferred; he liked to whittle with his sgian dubh when he had a little time. The farmer halted in surprise, then paused for a moment.

  “Here,” the younger Aylward brother said. “Do you like horses, little lass? I’ve a sister about your age and near as pretty, and she’s mad for them.”

  A wordless nod, and he went on: “This, ’tis Epona, the Lady of the Horses, a Goddess great and powerful. Forbye she’ll send you one of your own to ride in your dreams if you put it beneath your pillow, so.”

  The little girl’s eyes went wide; the farmer laughed and urged her forward with a hand on her head and she snatched the toy, murmured thankyouverymuchsir and ran full-tilt back towards the oak with bare feet flashing and shift flying in the wind, waving the carving overhead and calling shrilly to her playmates.

  “George Finney,” the man said in the blunt Corvallan way, and shook hands with their leaders. “I’m yeoman here, holding this land in free tenure as a Crown grant.”

  When Karl and Diarmuid confirmed his guess he forbore to note aloud that Karl was an odd first name for a Mackenzie, or to ask about the famous-and-rare midname. He had been warned, after all, and evidently hadn’t asked questions then either. There were times when Corvallan customs were agreeable enough.

  “We sent for your friends when we spotted you, figured it had to be the party they’d warned us about,” the man said instead. “They’ve been here since yesterday, camped out in my olives, and they told me you’d be by.”

  “Ah,” Karl said, trying to look relaxed. “That would be Susan Mika.”

  The man nodded. “The Sioux girl, the Courier, right. Odd to see a Lakota again after all these years . . . strange folk, wild men if you like, but by God they can fight!”

  Diarmuid nodded in turn and offered his flask, which the landsman took with a nod of thanks, and a gasp of appreciation after he sipped.

  “So me ain father said of them more than once; fair deadly in open country. You’d have been at the Horse Heaven Hills, then?” he said.

  It was a safe enough bet for someone the farmer’s age with several visible scars, and there had been a contingent there from the folk of the Seven Council Fires as well.

  The man surprised them a little by shaking his head. “I came in with a later draft, but then I carried a pike all the way from Walla Walla to Corwin—my regiment was one of the ones that fought their way in from the edge to the center and up the steps of the Temple. Met my Pía there, she was a healer with one of the outfits from the Free Cities and everyone’s field hospitals were taking whoever got brought in. There at the end they were as busy and as jumbled up as we were at the point of the spear.”

  “I’ve heard the street fighting was . . . hard,” Diarmuid said.

  “It gave a whole new meaning to cluster-fuck, those goddamned tunnels, the maniacs kept popping up behind us. . . . Pía sewed up seven cuts and a stab on me and got me a transfusion, I had blood squelching in my boots by then. Couldn’t seem to settle after the war, so a bunch of us came down here. . . .”

  His eyes went distant. Karl cut in: “Friends, you said? There being more than Susan?”

  “Yeah, the Sioux Courier, and two young Rangers from their station at Eryn Muir, but they left day before yesterday. The Courier should be here soon—I sent José over to the homestead, where she’s staying.”

  He smiled. “Filling my kids’ heads with stories and doctoring people’s horses, she has a good touch with both.”

  Karl nodded, smiled back, and winced inwardly; the more so when Diarmuid cocked a pawky eye at him. The dwellers had sent off a messenger, and he hadn’t seen it.

  “We’ll wait here, then, and many thanks,” he said, and the man nodded, shouldered his half-pike and walked off after his grain-cart and family.

  Everyone was glad of a bit of a rest, not to mention meeting someone who could give them some idea of what was going on here. They didn’t have long to wait; a rider came down the roadway at a canter, leading two remounts.

  By then he had his own scout out, Boudicca Lopez Mackenzie of his own Dun Fairfax, who he’d picked for her skills as a skulker—the kind who said shooting game with a bow was a crude makeshift, because she could stalk deer and then cut their throats before they really noticed one of the human-kind was standing at arm’s length. He thought a bit of that was vaunting, but grudgingly admitted she was the best of the Dun of their generation at brushwork, though he thought himself a close second. She came out from under the war-cloak that turned her to an anonymous lump of vegetation and dirt and waved her arms in the all clear signal of Battle Sign.

  The rider came on a bit, drew rein and hailed him. Susan Mika was riding a nondescript tough-looking little cob, and with a
few individual touches—beadwork on the shoulders, fringes down the seams—to her tight leathers and more on her bowcase and the sheath of her shete. She’d been the go-between who’d brought Órlaith’s word to him in Dun Fairfax, using her place in the Crown Courier Corps . . . or just serving the Crown, though the High Queen might dispute the point if it were argued to her.

  She was his age, give or take, but much shorter—the Couriers all were, to sit light in the saddle—and a slim wiry bundle of steel-wire sinews, with a high-cheeked, proud-nosed face of a tint like old bronze and with a complex set of black braids on her head. Even for her horse-lord people she rode easily, and with a young man’s automatic likerish appraisal he thought she’d probably be a wildcat in the blankets if you could get her interested.

  “Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again,” he replied, which was the Mackenzie formal greeting.

  Right now she was all business, though she gave him a smile. “Tanyán yahípi, friends,” she said, raising one hand palm-out. “Welcome. Good to see you at last.”

  “The Princess isn’t here yet?” Karl asked.

  “Not yet,” she said. “We’re expecting the ship anytime, but it’s not as if you can tell that sort of thing to the day. And Faramir and Morfind had to take a message north to Mist Hills. Too suspicious if they balked at a regular order, but they should be back soon; from what they say it’s only a long day’s ride if you have good remounts and push it.”

  Karl nodded, though a Courier’s definition of only a long day’s ride if you push it meant twenty-four hours of torture by most other folks.