A Meeting At Corvallis

by S. M. Stirling

  Juniper exchanged a few words with the other musicians and then raised her voice; the buzz of talk instantly dropped away.

  "We'll be doing a piece named 'Donnal MacGillavry,' and perhaps a final song or two, then allowing everyone to seek their beds, or their straw," she said, tucking the violin under her chin. "And if you'll clear a space for them, Aoife Barstow and Liath Dunling here will dance a bit."

  The bodhran drum began, beaten slow but gradually speeding its tempo, and then the pipes behind it. The young man's clear tenor joined as Juniper's fiddle did:

  "Donnal's come up the hill, hard and hungry

  Donnal's come doon the bill, wild he is and angry—"

  Mathilda leaned over, looking at the kilted dancers; Aoife was familiar, but the other woman was a little younger, just turned eighteen, with long brown hair in a single braid and an unremarkable round face made pretty by youth and health and happiness. She wore her shirt open a little to show a new tattoo at the base of her throat. That might have been a crescent moon, but it wasn't; it was a strung bow, the Warrior's Mark, a fashion among the younger Mackenzies when they passed the First Armsman's tests and became liable for the Clan's fighting levy, and for duties like this trip escorting the Chief. Sam Aylward himself disapproved of it, as he did painting faces before a fight, but both new customs had spread nonetheless.

  Rudi thought it had come from one of the old songs or stories, but he wasn't sure; he was sure he intended to have it done himself, just as soon as he was old enough.

  Mathilda whispered in Rudi's ear as the two Mackenzies unsheathed their dirks and held them overhead, the bright metal catching the lantern light; they stood side by side, left hand on hip, weight on that leg and right toe just touching the floor, and they'd put their flat bonnets back on, with the signs of their sept totems, Aoife's raven-feathers and Liath's tuft of wolf-fur.

  "Liath … I thought her name was Jeanette?" she said. "Doesn't she live at Sam's place?"

  "She's his wife's youngest aunt's daughter," Rudi said automatically, leaning forward as the dancers took their first step forward. "Changed her name when she was Initiated just a little while ago—you know, the way a lot of people do, if their birth-name's old-fashioned and silly. Aoife used to be called Mary, I think."

  "Oh," Mathilda said. "I think some people do that up north, too. Different stories, though, so the names are different. Arthur and Roland and Ger and Lancelot and Verranger."

  Liath and Aoife bowed and twirled and leapt, their feet flashing faster and faster, the sound of them on the worn oak boards of the barn's floor like the skittering throb of the bodhrans themselves, dancing side-by-side, then face-to-face, then back-to-back. The audience clapped to the rhythm and roared out the chorus:

  "Come like the white wolf, Donnal MacGillavry!

  Here's tae the Chief and to Donnal MacGillavry!"

  "Oh, no!" Rudi said suddenly, slapping himself on the forehead.

  "What?"

  "That's what Dan meant about Aoife falling in love again! He was bummed about it too!"

  "I thought her boyfriend's name was Connor?"

  "Connor Ianatelli? He dumped her and got handfasted with someone over at Dun Carson and moved there just after Yule. Didn't you hear about it?"

  "Who cared about that soppy stuff? I was sooooo excited when Sam gave me that bow. A new one! All my own!"

  Rudi smiled. "Well, Mom did lay that geasa on all of us, you know. So Sam had to be as nice to you as he was to me. Besides, he likes you. It's hard to tell that with Sam if you don't know him."

  "So Connor got married and left?" Mathilda said; she liked to keep things straight and orderly in her mind.

  "Yup. To a cousin of Cynthia Carson, a girl named … named … " He slapped himself on the forehead again. "A girl named Airmed! Her family's got a part of the new vineyard there. I remember it all 'cause Mom yelled at Aoife about it."

  "Yelled at Aoife because Connor dumped her for Airmed?"

  "No, 'cause Aoife was so mad she tried to cast a spell to make Airmed's toenails split and her hair fall out and things."

  "Can't you witches do that?"

  "Well, of course we can, we're just not supposed to, it's against the rules. Besides, Airmed's a witch too. That's really really really not a good idea, putting a hex on another witch. They can tell."

  "Oh. Well, so who's Aoife in love with now?"

  "Liath, of course," he said impatiently, gesturing towards the dance, and rolled his eyes upward.

  "But Liath's a girl too!"

  "So?" Rudi said, puzzled. "Sometimes that's the way it happens."

  Mathilda looked at him. "But that's against the rules. And it's … icky."

  "Why?" Rudi asked, and then nodded as he remembered. "Oh, yeah, it's geasa for you Christians, isn't it?" he said tolerantly. "Like not eating meat in Lent? It's different for us witches."

  "But then why was Dan bummed about it?"

  " 'Cause Aoife's cool most of the time, but she's a complete pain when she falls for someone, everyone knows that. You weren't around the last time, with Connor. She gets real boring; all she wants to talk about is how wonderful whoever-it-is is; she won't do anything that's fun at all, it's all gooey eyes and mushy songs and stuff like it wasn't just the same way the last time. And we're gonna be stuck listening to her 'cause Uncle Chuck has her guarding us all the time … maybe it'll be better this time … Oh, Lord and Lady, Liath's in the First Levy now, she'll be on guard with us too! You're my best friend, Matti, but this guarding thing is a pain in the arse. Really. I wish your folks would … oh, never mind."

  "Am I?" Mathilda asked, her voice quiet.

  "Are you what?"

  "Your best friend."

  "Well, duh, why do you think I hang out with you all the time?" he said cheerfully, giving her a punch on the arm. "It's not so Uncle Chuck can have the same boring grown-ups following us around with spears, you know. Or because you're my fostern-sister. You're cool."

  They leaned back against the hay bale, sharing their plaids as the night grew a little chilly, and passing the chunk of fruitcake back and forth for the sort of small bites you took when you were full and just eating for the taste. Mathilda felt her eyelids drooping as Juniper sang "Odhche Mbath Leihh," slow and sad and sweet.

  Then they came open with a snap, a wariness prickled by a change in the air. Not at anything that was said or done, or any sudden sound at first. Then she noticed a mud-splashed man in leather pants and jacket talking to Edward Finney; and the farmers face changed. He came over to Juniper, bending to talk in whispers. Juniper's face changed as well, and she rose to walk over and crouch before the children. Rudi smiled sleepily at her, and she absently smoothed a lock of red-gold hair back from his forehead.

  "Mathilda, my dear, I have news for you."

  "What?" Mathilda said, feeling a sharp stab of fear draining away the good feelings.

  "Your mother has come to Corvallis, child. You'll be seeing her tomorrow, or very soon."

  Chapter Six

  Corvallis, Oregon

  January 1lth, 2008/Change Year 9

  The fort on the eastern bank of the Willamette guarded the twin bridges running into Corvallis town, but the ground around it was open save for a small lake and a few woodlots, cultivated fields that had been part of the University's experimental farm, and more that had once been a golf course. In midwinter all that was fallow ground, dusty green pasture, or the lumpy dark brown of plowed furrows, patches of it covered by a drifting ground-mist that turned distance to shadow and trees to looming shapes.

  A small stone monument outside the gate listed the names of those who'd died defending the desperately needed crop in that first dreadful year. Lieutenant Sally Chen remembered those days, sometimes much better than she wanted to, late at night; remembered the cramping hunger in her belly as her bones poked through her skin, and the cry of bring out your dead … She'd been a first-year student then, and used a sharpened shovel in the scramble to keep refugees and
foragers off the fields of grain and vegetables and the hoarded livestock; helped bring in the harvest too, often with her bare hands or a kitchen knife. She'd also fought in the internal battles, carefully not commemorated, with those who wanted to fall in with the state government in Salem and its insane plan to put all the food in one pot and try to carry everyone through. When that civil war was over—and the plague victims had been buried in mass graves north of the Hewlett-Packard plant—there had been food enough for the survivors in the city and its surrounding territory to keep eating until the next year's crop … just barely.

  Beyond the river was a thin strip of settled land about two farms deep, with grainfields and orchards and defended homesteads, and then mostly vacant brush-country to the notional border with the Mackenzie territories along old Highway 99E, and more of that beyond, because the first Clan duns were well east, past the old I-5 interstate. In between were old ruins and new wilderness, growing up worse every year in bramble and weeds and sapling trees save where wildfire preserved grassland; the central core of the Valley had taken the worst damage in the aftermath of the Change, and what people remained still clung to the bordering mountains.

  Chen spent much of her time under arms patrolling that budding jungle, keeping it a little less unsafe for traders and travelers, which was less boring than sitting here watching the road, but also less comfortable. Now she sat on a bench in the fort's courtyard across from the open east gate and took a bite of the sandwich her eight-year-old son had brought over from home; smoked pork and sharp-tasting cheese on black bread, with mayonnaise and chopped pickled onion …

  Pweeeeet!

  The whistle of the speaking tube brought her on her feet with a sigh; just standing around in armor all day was work, and unlike the shop you didn't have a pair of shoes or a set of harness to show for it afterwards. She looked up, then walked over to the stand and pulled the cork out of the funnel on the bottom end of the tube. The striped fabric of the hot-air balloon a thousand feet above was a looming shape in the fog, a gaudy black and orange against the pale gray of the sky when wisps of mist blew aside and gave her a view. The mooring-rope climbed in an ever-steeper curve from the heavy winch to the gondola, and a rubber hose ran beside it.

  "What've you got, Hillary?" she shouted into it, then put her ear close to listen.

  "Mounted party on the highway, armed—I can see some lanceheads. About twenty riders, with two two-horse wagons. Coming at a walk."

  Chen looked out the open gate: nothing there but roadway stretching out into the mist; then she scratched her head under the brim of the helmet with her free hand and took another bite out of the sandwich. Twenty armed riders with only two small vehicles didn't sound like merchants; you'd never make a profit on it. She knew that well, since in civilian life she ran a leatherworking business with her husband and brother and sister-in-law, as the marks of awl and thread and needle on her hands bore witness. They'd taken small shares in several caravans buying hides further to the east, and checked on the costs to make sure the accounting was honest.

  Chen looked around the small courtyard that held the winch. The fortress was a solid, square block of stone and concrete about the height of a two-story house, with round towers at the corners and a wet moat without; one of the minor hardships of being stationed here was the everlasting slight stagnant smell, except when the spring freshets from the Willamette changed the water.

  "Keep an eye on them," she called into the tube, and then took another bite. Her next remark went to the courtyard in general: "Turn out, everyone: wall-stations. But not the gate, not yet."

  Booted feet pounded up the steep staircases as someone beat on a triangle, and hastily donned helmets showed along the crenellations of the battlements. The drawbridge was worked by counterweighted steel levers, which made it easy to close quickly; they had to be cranked down, but that was usually less urgent.

  "And load the engines," she went on, a little less distinctly as she finished the heel of the sandwich.

  A series of deep chrunk-tunng sounds came from the catapults and bolt-throwers as valves were opened. Water from the reservoirs in the towers flowed into the hydraulic bottle-jacks built into the war machines, pushing back against the coil-springs and throwing arms until they were cocked and locked with the trigger mechanisms. Those engines could cover half a mile around the fort with showers of forged-steel darts and globes of homemade napalm. Or at least they could when visibility was good, which right now it wasn't.

  "Now let's see what we've got," she said, wiping her mouth with a napkin and tossing it into the lunch-basket.

  She dusted off her metal-backed steerhide gloves, settled her sword belt and picked up the glaive that leaned against the stone of the inner wall. That was much less cumbersome than a pike in the strait confines of a fortress interior; five feet of ashwood with a heavy pointed length of steel like a giant kitchen knife on it, and a hook welded to the base of the thick, straight back of the blade. Then she walked out onto the drawbridge over the moat, careful not to step beyond the edge of it. The counterweights could snatch it up quickly, and she'd slide down to the bottom on the inside with nothing lost but dignity. That would leave plenty of time to close the steel-shod gates and drop the portcullis.

  Not that she expected trouble. Enemies or bandits would have to be insane to attack here; the fort was strong, and it had a garrison of thirty, and there was another just like it where the bridge met the city wall on the west bank of the river, and the city itself could muster near two thousand defenders almost at once if the call to turn out in arms came. It was probably just some Mackenzies, or possibly travelers from east over the Cascades … though the passes would be difficult, this time of year. Or it might be Bearkillers, though they'd be more likely to come from the north, past the border station at Adair.

  She scowled slightly, and absently snapped down the triangular three-bar visor of her helmet and peered out into the fog. Mackenzies were all right, she supposed—sort of bizarre in varying degrees, but all right. Bearkillers … well, they weren't cutthroats and thugs like the Protector's men, but they were almighty hard-boiled, and their A-listers were often outright arrogant. They made her glad Corvallis had avoided developing a landed aristocracy of the type that seemed to be growing up like mushrooms on cowflops in most places.

  Leaning on the shaft of the glaive, she waited. The lookout in the balloon didn't say anything more, so the riders were still coming on, and she hadn't recognized them. Her second-in-command came up, a long-hafted war-maul across one mailclad shoulder as he stroked his square-cut brown-yellow beard with his free hand. He was also her next-door neighbor, a house carpenter, a member of their regular Friday-night bridge club and they'd been in several classes together back in 1998.

  "What the hell do you think it is, Sally?"

  "Jack, I keep telling you, it's Lieutenant, Lieutenant Chen or ma'am, when we're on duty!"

  A grin. "OK, ma'am, what the hell do you think it is?"

  "Damned if I know, Jack," she replied.

  "Hey, when we're on duty that's Sergeant Jack to you, bitch," he said, and they both laughed.

  A moment later Chen shoved her visor up for a better look at what came looming out of the fog. "Mud lun yeh!" she said, startled into swearing in Cantonese for the first time in many years. "What the fuck?"

  * * * *

  "Erainnath Dunedainon nelmet, Astrid a Eilir!" Astrid Larsson called, reining in where the roadway met the fort's drawbridge.

  Her Arab mare Asfaloth tossed her wedge-shaped head, and her long mane flew silky, wound with bright ribbons as the slender legs did a little dance in place. Astrid raised her right hand high, palm-out in the gesture of peace.

  "Ennyn edro hi ammen!" she cried.

  "But darling, the gates are open," Alleyne Loring murmured.

  "Greetings, Lady Astrid, in the name of the people and Faculty Senate of Corvallis," the militia officer said; or at least Eilir thought so, even though uncertainty made t
he movements of her lips less crisp than the deaf woman would have preferred.

  That's irritating, she thought. Lip-reading is hard enough even when people enunciate properly!

  There was wonder in the Corvallan's eyes as she looked down the row of mounted Dunedain, with the brace of baggage-carts bringing up the rear. The column of twos had halted with a single surge and stamping, and the Rangers sat their horses nearly motionless … except for wondering eyes on the watch-balloon overhead.

  "Mae govannen," Astrid said graciously. "Or in the common tongue, well met."

  Eilir smiled to herself at the way the militia soldiers' eyes were bugging out; Astrid had laid herself out for Yule presents, and the entire column of Dunedain was wearing the new black tunic-vests with the silver tree, stars and crown, while Eilir herself held the banner with its cross-staff. They'd also agreed that if the Rangers were to be a thing they lived rather than did in their spare time they should look more alike, and not like Bearkillers or Mackenzies on holiday. The pants felt strange on her legs, and she missed her kilt and plaid, but she supposed she'd get used to it again … and they'd also agreed they could wear what they liked when visiting their kinfolk.

  I used to think this was goofy, she mused, rolling her eyes down at the tunic for an instant. Of course, I did always think they were sort of cool as well, and it looks less goofy with us all dressed this way.

  The Larsdalen artisans had done them well, and the mesh-mail-and-nylon lining was very comforting, when you didn't have time for real armor.

  Dread Lord and merciful Mother-of-All, I don't even really remember what it was like when nobody was trying to kill me.