The Desert and the Blade

by S. M. Stirling

“Harvest Lord who dies for the ripened grain—

  Corn Mother who births the fertile field—

  Blessed be those who share this bounty;

  And blessed the mortals who toiled with You,

  Their hands helping Earth to bring forth life.”

  Then she set aside a crumb and a drop for the house-hob, whatever the Rangers might call the one of the aes dana who warded this place; the Mackenzies and McClintocks scattered about did the same. Others of her party made their various small rituals. Thora and Deor and his folk hammer-signed the air before them, thanked the wights and invoked Earth who gives to all; Heuradys dipped a crust of bread in her winecup and then the dish of oil and spoke, clearly but softly, as she threw the morsel into the flames of the hearth and watched it flare up:

  “Home-loving Hestia who is the flame of the hearth, you whom I have always honored first and last, accept this offering of bread and wine and oil, and bless all who join us in this meal.”

  The Nihonjin made a gesture with palms together and then spoke a soft-voiced Itadakimasu towards their hosts.

  There might be some faith or place that didn’t have a thanks-offering at meals, but she wasn’t aware of any. It was one of the minor graces that made life homelike wherever you went, and gave it form and meaning.

  More of the meal appeared . . . literally, since the kitchens were on another smaller level of flet below this one, and sections of the floor sank down and rose again with wheeled trolleys loaded with covered dishes, which were in turn pushed around by adolescent helpers. She’d heard that Hîr Ingolf and Hîr Ian had designed and helped build the system with its smooth-acting counterweights; they were both amateur engineers of note. The Rangers expected their leaders to share the common work, and honored a maker’s skill highly.

  The Nihonjin smiled and bowed thanks to their hosts again when those trays turned out to include bowls of steaming rice. Which for them was the equivalent of leaping in the air with glad cries while snapping their fingers and clicking their heels.

  Sure, and if there was tea, maybe they would do that! Órlaith thought.

  “Please, where does this come from?” Ishikawa Goru said as he accepted his eagerly.

  In a fundamental way to Nihonjin rice was food, and everything else a garnish; it was their equivalent of bread, though they’d settle for noodles instead. The fact that rice was an expensive luxury in the central parts of Montival had been a trial to them. The fact that they’d borne it with cheerful willing stoicism didn’t mean they weren’t happy for the familiar taste.

  Faramir answered the sailor; Morfind and Susan beside him were whispering and feeding each other morsels on their forks and Morfind was actually giggling, at which Órlaith boggled for a moment.

  “If you go east up the Côf . . . the Bay . . . and then up the river that flows into it, the Mallenduin . . .”

  He noticed bafflement among the north-realm visitors, and clarified:

  “—What the ancients called the Sacramento, there are huge marshes, many days travel across and low islands among them . . . it’s a maze that shifts with every winter flood. The ancients grew a lot of rice there, and it grows wild in patches still, though thin and scattered. We gather it there. Most summers we of Stath Ingolf send expeditions by boat up the Mallenduin, to gather and fish for sturgeon and hunt—there are uncountable thousands of hippo and water buffalo there. Even tigers have problems with grown water buffalo, and they leave the hippos alone, so they breed fast and we’re the only predator.”

  In the course of the translations and explanations it turned out that the Nihonjin knew what water buffalo were, more or less, but had only the haziest idea of a hippopotamus from pre-Change books. Órlaith had never seen a living one herself; north of here Montival was too cold for escapees of that breed from zoos and parks to survive in the wild, though things were very different as you went south. The delta of the Sacramento—

  Pardon me, of the Mallenduin, she thought; it meant Goldriver.

  —had proved to be ideal for the big river-pigs, and hordes of them had bred up and joined the water buffalo and the crocodiles and tigers and the native tule elk and muskrat and beaver and capybara and wild boar and much else. Hordes of other animals from the grasslands of the great Central Valley migrated to the marsh edges during the dry hot summers too.

  Eyes widened a little at his description of going after the irascible amphibian giants from boats with heavy crossbows and harpoons, and even more when a Ranger showed off a carved sword-hilt wrought from a single one of their huge teeth, nearly a foot long. It did sound exciting. She’d been far too young for something that dangerous when she was in Westria before, and anyway the Dúnedain of Stath Ingolf had been fewer then, and still feeling their way into their new home.

  “Even salted for wintertime or travel the meat’s not bad in a stew, the teeth are prized, the fat makes good soap and lubricant, and the hides are very valuable for shields and saddles and the like. The northern merchants always want more for machine belting. The buffalo hides too, it’s nearly as thick and tough . . . they’re more or less like lean beef to the taste, their horn makes good bows and springs and cups, you can render their hooves for glue, things like that,” Faramir said.

  “Hinu, hinu!” Susan said, which was an exclamation of interest. “That sure sounds like a fun hunt!”

  Morfind looked up as she poured the three of them more of the red wine.

  “We make camps on the islands in the marshes to smoke the fish and jerk and salt down meat and salt-cure the raw hides so they’ll keep for tanning later, and we gather some of the rice while we do it,” she said. “It’s beautiful country, especially at sunrise and sunset, though the bugs can be bad. Not just a sea of reeds . . . and even the reeds make paper and mats. Wild fruit and herbs and greens are more than anywhere else I’ve ever seen, and it’s nearly empty of humans, but . . . haunted. Good training for working in wetland, and for handling boats. You’ll have to come with us sometime, Suzie. It’s hard work, but sort of like a festival too.”

  The Lakota brightened, then made a moue. “I wish I could invite you guys to the makol for the buffalo hunt, but . . . probably not.”

  John started questioning the Ranger pair on hippo-hunting, which led on to crocodiles in the same marshes, whose old bulls could be fifteen feet or more and push a ton in weight, and the peculiarities of looks and behavior among the tigers and wild boar, sitatunga antelope and curious birds who lived amidst the islands and reed-beds.

  Órlaith concentrated on eating for a little while, starting with a soup of abalone, mushrooms and scallions and bamboo shoots seasoned with sorrel that the Japanese seemed to appreciate as well while the conversation turned on hunting dogs and bows and spears and the habits of every sort of game.

  She liked hunting, and nearly everyone did it, except some townsmen, Christian clerics and the odd strict Buddhist. Cernunnos and Lady Flidais permitted it to those of the Old Faith; it was part of the nature of human kind, just as it was for wolves, provided it was done with care and respect for Their power and the lands and beasts under Their protection . . . which was one of the things the Crown ensured everyone did, often through the Rangers. It was useful work too, yielding leather and meat, bone and fat, and also necessary in most places to protect farms and livestock or people or often all three.

  It was in the nature of tigers and lions to see her kind and their livestock as food, for wolves to eat sheep and coyotes and foxes to chase lambs and raid henhouses, and for grazers from rabbits on up to feast on garden and field if they could.

  John was considerably more fond of hunting than she, though. So was Heuradys, for that matter. Associate nobles tended to be a bit obsessed on the subject.

  Karl and Mathun and Diarmuid were soon joining in enthusiastically from the other side of the table and everyone’s favorite then the boar broke through the thicket story came out, alon
g with the really impressive buck that got away. Even Egawa tried to join in, to the limits of his shaky English and with Ishikawa doing his best to translate.

  Under her usual slightly lofty politesse Reiko seemed frankly bored with the subject, and they exchanged a look of mutual sympathy.

  “I thought your home was too crowded for much game?” Órlaith asked quietly.

  Reiko nodded. “Sado-ga-shima and the other refuges, yes; only small things and birds for hawking. I like hawking because it is . . . quiet.”

  Órlaith nodded; they’d done a little falconry together during Reiko’s stay in the north, both for its own sake and as a disguise for private scheming. The Nihonjin form of the sport had some interesting minor differences.

  “They say the hunt is the shadow of war,” Órlaith observed.

  “Hai, and I am not fond of war!” Reiko said, and laughed behind her fan. “Not fond enough to welcome its shadow as a pastime. But the main islands, they are more like—”

  She made a gesture encompassing the resurgent wilderness that covered much of Montival.

  “And General Egawa’s work has taken him there all his life. To the new settlements, and on salvage missions. The settlers must make war indeed, or the animals would eat all their crops and their plowing beasts. And the food is valuable.”

  “I’m a little surprised that so many survived to breed,” Órlaith said; from what the books said, Japan had been fantastically crowded, even more than old California.

  “I think because so much of my country is mountain forest,” Reiko said. “More than eight parts in ten of the whole. Very many people in those days, but also much remote mountain where animals could hide . . . and the dying was mostly very swift because the cities were so very large. Few managed to escape them; enough to destroy the countryside in the plains and foothills and along the roads, but not to scour every woodland bare. Then there was so much land growing back in scrub that animals had very much to eat.”

  Her tone was clinical. Órlaith recognized it, and remembered her elders going still when she or one of her contemporaries used it among themselves; as the cataclysm grew farther away in time and fewer and fewer of those who’d lived through it as adults survived, so the children of the Changelings regarded it more and more as history. Tragic, yes, but not immediate in the way that haunted their grandparents or great-grandparents.

  “And also . . . I think many of the people who worked in—”

  Her much-improved English failed her for zoos and wildlife parks; Órlaith supplied the words. They were fairly recondite even in her dialect of the tongue, since both concepts had more or less vanished in the modern world. The closest thing to them were the vast areas of Crown Forest, the noble hunting preserves in the Association lands, and areas reserved for religious or secular reasons or both in many other places—in the Clan’s dúthchas they were under the protection of Cernunnos and Lady Flidais, though the Mackenzies were perfectly aware of the ecological reasons as well.

  In most places humans dwelt if you wanted to see wild animals you simply walked a little way from your house. In many, the animals came to you, which was one reason few went far from their front doors without a spear or bow. Though like other apex predators, humans were the main risk to their own kind.

  “—worked in zoos and wildlife parks were very dedicate . . . dedicated. Those who knew that they would die, they may have spent themselves, their lives, to help their charges escape.”

  Órlaith nodded soberly. That had happened on this continent too, though in most cases they’d simply released the beasts before trying to save themselves; it had helped that there were so very many places where animals were kept here—game ranches in Texas alone had seeded species which spread all across the southern tier of the continent. From what she’d seen of Reiko’s people, they were more likely to make any task the center of their lives and give it complete and utter devotion to the exclusion of all else.

  Ishikawa was politely floundering as he tried to translate for Egawa; his English was much better than the general’s, but not nearly as good as Reiko’s, and his vocabulary was centered on matters nautical and on engineering and war. Órlaith took pity on him and helped a little before withdrawing. Evidently there were tiger, leopards, bear of several kinds, boar and a fair selection of grazing beasts including feral livestock all over the main islands of Japan. From what he said, probably more life and more varied life than those lands had seen in thousands of years.

  The more time for me to enjoy the food, Órlaith thought when her self-imposed task was finished. I’m hungrier than I can remember being ever in my life . . . eat nice and slow now, girl! Learning to live with the Sword is complex. Da was always a trencherman who could put John Hordle to shame, though he was as trim as a tiger all his life, not a spare ounce on him. Mother struggles with that. Was this part of it, that the Sword draws on your body?

  The Ranger’s feast was good, and varied; the four founders of the new, or renewed, Dúnedain had had different likings, and they’d thrown in things from the Histories, not to mention what recruits had brought with them since. Aunt Eilir, Juniper Mackenzie’s eldest daughter, had a Mackenzie’s tastes, as you’d expect. The salad of wild miner’s lettuce, onions, tomatoes, chickweed and purslane with hard sharp cheese crumbled in and dressed with garlic-infused oil and wine vinegar could have been from her hands.

  Her husband Little John Hordle was given to what a deeply rural Englishman would like, one who was also six foot seven and three hundred pounds of boisterous enthusiasm, as much for a feast as for a fight . . . or for growling about playing bears on the floor with a clutch of giggling children. She took a slice of a cold pork pie shaped like a squat barrel and simply seasoned with sage, salt and pepper and remembered him fondly; from the strong taste and texture she thought the meat was boar-loin.

  Aunt Astrid had died—heroically, of course—not long before Órlaith was born; she ate some of the fresh steamed asparagus with lemon butter and almonds in her memory. Her spouse Lord Alleyne had been English and a countryman too, an old friend of John Hordle, and he’d lived long enough for Órlaith to meet him and guest with him and the Hordles at Mithrilwood. But he’d been a Loring, of a family that had produced far-traveled governors and commanders in the days when his kind ranged and ruled the world around, sampling its good things as they went with lordly insouciance. The lamb tagine with green olives was his sort of dish; so was the chicken marinated in yoghurt, spiced with hot red chilies and turmeric and baked in an intensely hot clay oven.

  Someone had been polite in the kitchen, too: besides the soup and rice there were seafood and vegetables dipped in batter and deep-fried in tempura style, pickled vegetables, and skewers of grilled salt-dressed chicken and other things. None of it was exactly Japanese food—she noticed several abortive reaches for containers of shoyu, fermented soy sauce, that just weren’t there. Any of it might have been seen in most of Montival, but it was to their taste and convenient for their chopstick-based style of eating.

  The flaky honey-sweetened pastries full of spiced apple, raisins and walnuts and the custard-and-berry tarts and sliced peaches in cream were just good.

  And if it’s one thing you can be sure of getting in Westria, it’s wine worth drinking, she thought, and poured another glass for Reiko, who did the same for her; Nihonjin etiquette encouraged that sort of mutual small courtesy.

  Montival had many fine vineyards in the Willamette and Yakima and up the Columbia and as far inland as Boise, mostly pinot noir and pinot gris, Gewürztraminer and Sémillon and the like, but the ones here were contributing some varieties that just didn’t do well in the north, and it was more a matter of reconditioning and pruning them than slow starts from scratch.

  A happy hum of conversation and the clink of cutlery filled the hall; a harpist was playing to flute accompaniment, and doing it rather well. Reiko sipped at her wine again; she’d learned to
like the grape despite being reared on beer and sake, and this was a very nice Zinfandel from over at Wolf Hall with notes of anise and pepper.

  “Quite good,” she said. “And it goes well with these enoki maki.”

  Which was Nihongo for skewers of mushrooms wrapped in pork and grilled.

  “Chancellor Ignatius thinks that excise taxes on wineries here will be important eventually, since the province is Crownland and the taxes go directly to the High King’s fisc. And Westria can grow things the rest of Montival can’t, so there’s a natural basis for exchange.”

  “Rice?” Reiko asked with interest.

  You couldn’t grow up a monarch’s heir and not be interested in crops and taxes, not if you were going to do the job right. Tilled land and field-workers were the foundations on which all else rested, and politics was essentially about who got how much of what they produced.

  “Rice eventually, definitely cotton, possibly sugar, and a lot of warm-country fruits like these oranges and lemons,” Órlaith said.

  She smiled a little sadly: “I found his lectures on fiscal policy a bit dull sometimes, but now . . .”

  She gestured with her head to the hilt of the Sword hung over the back of her chair.

  “. . . now it looks sort of restful.”

  Reiko nodded silently; Órlaith flushed a little as she remembered that Nihon had been at war virtually since the Change. Montival had been lucky by comparison, even with the Prophet’s War and the Haida reavers and all the internal scuffles in the old days, like the one which had killed her grandfathers.

  “It was not the most fascinating part of Grand Steward Koyama’s time as my tutor either,” Reiko admitted with a slight shrug, lifting one of the grilled mushrooms to her mouth in her chopsticks and eating it with delicate finesse. “But as the saying goes, a koku of rice is a koku of rice.”

  The term that came to Órlaith’s mind when she said koku was ten square feet, or a measure of weight which meant a little less than a pound a day for a year; after a moment something prompted her to think six or seven bushels. It also had an overtone of a year’s ration.