Renfrew started slightly. "With an open left flank all the way from Molalla to here, sixty miles as the crow flies and half again as much on foot? Christ, no!" he said.
Then he smiled unwillingly as he realized his younger vassal was teasing him out of his brooding mood, took the plate, ate a spring roll and forked up a mouthful of potato salad. When he'd swallowed, he said: "We should be back up around Mount Angel, doing one thing at a time. It'd take a while, but we could do it, nice and safe, and our good Pope Leo could send the wicked abbot to the stake, he does love a nice cheerful blaze at an auto-da-f. Then we could move on the Mackenzies with Mount Angel as a base of operations, not a hoe handle stuck up our collective assholes."
Sir Buzz looked at him oddly. "Do you think this campaign is in danger of failure, my lord?" he asked.
"Hmm? Oh, no, we'll win all right, there's not much doubt of that. We outnumber them so heavily we can afford to make mistakes, and they can't. I just don't want it to cost us more than it has to. That's why we should have taken Mount Angel first. Then I'd have four thousand men here, and we'd be able to leave plenty west of the river to make sure the Bearkillers didn't interfere, as well. Alexi uses his brains instead of just his balls and his fists like that idiot son of his, but I'd be happier if he had more troops, too."
He pointed his white plastic fork at the symbol on the map that represented
Dun Juniper, less than a day's march away to the southeast, even going around the spurs of hill which thrust out into the flat valley; that would be even nastier to take than Sutterdown, although not as bad as Mount Angel. From the descriptions the terrain would be a nightmare for a large force, and ideal for the sort of sneaking-through-the-trees business the kilties delighted in.
"Besides," he went on thoughtfully, prodding at the map, "I don't think Juniper Mackenzie is home right now."
Near Dun Juniper, Willamette Valley, Oregon
March 5th, 2008/Change Year 9
Dennis Martin Mackenzie stopped with a wheezing groan and shouldered his way through the circle of watchers, his long war ax in his hand. The three-mile run from Dun Juniper had left him purple-faced; he was a heavy-built man, and his usual trades of brewing and carpentry and leatherworking didn't do much for his cross-country ability. But that wasn't what made him feel as if his heart was squeezing itself up through his lungs. He recognized the smell of blood— a great deal of it, like iron and salt and copper, and the other unpleasant scents of death. Two horses down, and—
"Oh, Hell," he said, falling into old habits. Then: "Lords of the Watchtow-ers of the West."
Aoife lay with her head on Liath's chest; from the blood trail, she'd crawled there, though it was hard to imagine anyone having the strength to do so, with those wounds. A man lay not far away with his face cut open, and another with a spear standing up from his chest. The pale features of the dead looked very white in the dusk, but the blood was nearly black.
Poor kids. Too damn young— He'd seen a world die in the Change and its aftermath, but this was far too personal—he'd watched these two grow from childhood. A rising babble of talk cut across his thoughts.
"Quiet!" he said. "In fact, why don't the rest of you folks get back to the Dun? We're going to need some space here and we don't want the traces all trampled over. Jack, Burach, stay up at the edge of the woods and turn people back, would you? And send for a cart."
Most of the bystanders left. His eyes took in the scene and he stooped to examine the bodies; someone handed him a lantern, and he turned up the flame. That gave brighter light, but it made the space under the tall black walnut into a cave of light in a great, dim reach. Leaves rustled above him, turned ruddy by the flame.
The crossbow bolt that had killed Liath was pre-Change, the shaft made of some light metal; so was the one sunk behind the ear of Aoife's horse, lodged immovably in bone. There were three more bolts in the other horse's chest and throat, and another standing three inches deep in the dense hardwood of the walnut tree, at about head height. There was no sense in trying to get that out; instead he gripped one that was sunk in the horse's breast by the inch of wood still showing and withdrew it, the pinch of his powerful hand and thick-muscled arm pulling inexorably. It was modern, lathe-turned from dense ash-wood, the head a simple four-sided steel pyramid designed to pierce armor, and the vanes cut from salvaged plastic—credit cards, Visa, to be precise. "Protectorate issue," he said, swallowing a curse.
So were the mail-lined camouflage jackets on the two dead men; that was what a forester wore in the Association's territory—foresters being a sort of rural police-cum-forest warden. These, however …
He picked up one of the dead men's hands, ignoring the unpleasant limpness, and the little chill that always ran up his neck at the thought that his own hands—those marvelously precise and responsive instruments—could be so easily rendered futile and lax, already blotched purple beneath the skin with settling blood no longer kept in motion by the heart. There was a thick curd of callus on the inner web of the man's right hand, extending up the inside of the index finger and thumb, and more on the heel of his hand. Swordsman's callus, exceptionally well developed. Scars showed white on the thick right forearm; there weren't any scars on the left arm, but it had another band of callus just inside the elbow, where the inner strap of a horseman's kite-shaped shield ran. The man was young, although the great slash across his face made it hard to be sure; he was broad in the shoulders and long in the legs, well fed but without an ounce of excess flesh, and his hair was cut longer at the front, cropped close behind the ears.
"Knight or man-at-arms," Dennis said grimly. "Probably a knight." He looked around. "OK, they took off with Rudi and the girl. We and the Dunedain aren't the only people who can do commando raids. Laegh."
A young man who'd stayed when the crowd left looked up from quartering around the trampled ground. His sister Devorgill had stayed as well. They were both noted hunters, only two years apart in age, tall and lean and with brown hair drawn back into a queue; the quickest way to tell them apart was by Laegh's mustaches. "How many of them?" Dennis said.
"Six came here, Uncle Dennis. Four left—with eight horses, and the one the little princess was riding. First one came up here and climbed the tree— climbed it with irons on the feet, look, you can see where it scarred the bark. The others waited in the thickets lower down. Then they came up to wait in ambush, leaving the horses there with one to hold them, and I think the first, the scout who called them, was a woman. A large woman, or a boy nearly grown. Walking light, not digging her heels in like the others. She watched the Dun for hours from a high branch; it wouldn't carry my weight well. Then she slid down quickly—when she saw the riders headed this way, I guess. First the princess came, galloping fast, and on her heels the Chiefs son—he fell from his horse—and then Aoife and Liath. After the fight the strangers went down the north slope, riding hard, taking both children with them."
"How long ago?"
"Half an hour or a bit less. The trails there are good. They could be ten miles away by now if they headed west into the Valley."
Devorgill touched the blood and smeared it between the fingers of her left hand, sniffing it and then offering him the evidence. "Twenty minutes or a little more," she said.
Laegh's sister was the one who'd ridden out to find what was delaying the children and their escorts; right now she was gripping her horse's reins right under the bit to control its rolling-eyed fear as it pivoted its rear end about that fixed point with nervous side steps, and she was looking pretty spooked herself. Dennis glanced up at the sky and cursed to himself; the sun was already on the western horizon, and it was a wonder even a tracker of Laegh's skill had been able to see anything with the gloom growing beneath the trees.
"Laegh, can you follow them in the dark?"
"Not quickly, Uncle," he said, using the usual term to address someone a generation older. "My dogs can follow the trail if they don't break it in water, though. Worth trying, they'd get
too far ahead if we just wait for dawn. And they might split up."
"Devorgill," he told the man's sister. "Get back to Dun Juniper, fast. Get the hounds, get four or five people, you pick them, the gear, weapons, spare horses and get back here fast. You—" He picked out another. "Get down to Dun Fairfax and tell them what's up and that we need another six who're good in the woods, and some more horses."
The woman vaulted into the saddle, reined her restive, snorting horse around, and switched its rump with the long end of the reins. It neighed and reared and broke into a gallop; the messenger ran in its wake, his bow pumping back and forth in his left hand. Dennis grinned mirthlessly at Laegh's unspoken protest at waiting for a war party.
"Not much use finding them if you can't fight 'em when you do, eh?" he said.
The young man hesitated. "And don't worry; I know I'm about as much use on a hunt as a hog at a handfasting. You're in charge. I've gotta stay here and see to things and figure out what to tell Juney."
There was a rustle through the watchers, and Dennis felt his stomach clench again. And I'm really not looking forward to that. Poor little kid . . .no, Rudi won't be scared, not Rudi. But he should be.
Someone else was coming down the trail, someone on a bicycle. Dennis swore again under his breath, feeling harassed; there were still five hundred people in Dun Juniper, and he didn't want any of them here right now. Then the bicycle came to a halt, and Judy Barstow let it fall and ran forward.
Oh, shit. Sanjay last year, Aoife this time. The dice are being really hard on her and Chuck Thank Everyone that all my kids are still too young to fight.
She halted when she saw her foster-daughter's body. For a moment her strong-featured face was blank, and then she sank to her knees. There was no sound save the soughing of the evening wind in the trees, and the rustling flicker of the lantern flame.
"My little girl," she whispered, touching the dead face, and then holding the eyelids closed and doing the same for her child's lover; tears dripped from her own eyes, runnels along the weathered olive skin of her cheeks. "My little red-haired girl. You were so brave and so scared that day on the bus when we found you, and I loved you then. You grew so fast—"
Her hand shook as she touched fingers to the blood and marked her cheeks and forehead, and then fumbled with the knot that held her hair. It fell loose around her face and shoulders, grizzled and black, as she raised her hands northward.
"I am the mother and I call the Mother's curse on you who did this, by the power of the blood of my child spilled on Her earth! I curse you with cold heart and hearth and loins and colder death! Curse you—"
Her voice broke into a low moan, then rose into a keening shriek—literally keening. Then it sank again, then rose; she rocked back and forth on knees and heels, her hands tearing at her hair as the wailing scream sounded long and lonely in the darkened woods. Dennis stood back from it, shivering slightly under the thick wool of his plaid; so did Laegh, looking more frightened still as his hand moved in a protective gesture—a High Priestess so lost to herself was frightening. Curses tended to spill over and bounce back.
Then the young hunter's sister rode up, a dozen others with her and each leading a spare horse; four big flop-eared hunting hounds trotted along with them, curious and alert but too well trained to break free. One of the riders tossed a spear to Laegh. He caught it with a smack of palm on ashwood, whistled the dogs in sharply, dipped spearhead and head and knee to Judy, and led his hunting-party into the darkness. Before the hooves had faded from hearing the belling of the hounds sounded, echoing through the nighted hills, a hunter's salute to the rising moon.
Others came up the pathway with a cart, and torches trailing sparks. Hands lifted the bodies of the Clan's warriors and laid them on the straw in the cart's bed, folding their hands over their breasts and pulling their plaids across their faces. Others helped Judy to her feet, supporting her as she stumbled blind with tears behind the slow pace of the oxen. Dennis sighed, shouldered his ax and fell in with the rest of the party. Her kin and friends would spend the night at the wake, talking of the dead and keening them … but he intended to break into his own brewer's stock-in-trade more privately, with his family, and then sleep as long as he could.
As he walked, a voice began to sing; one at first, haltingly, and then with more and more joining in to the hypnotic rhythm of the chant:
"We all come from the Mother
And to Her we shall return
Like a stalk of grain,
Falling to the reaper's scythe
We all come from the Wise One,
And to Her we shall return
Like a waning moon,
Shining on the winter's snow
We all come from the Maiden—"
Near Appletree, Willamette Valley, Oregon
March 6th, 2008/Change Year 9
Tiphaine Rutherton looked at her watch. It was a sign of Lady Sandra's favor, a self-winding Swiss beauty made forty years ago, just before electrics became common, with a heavy tempered-glass cover and secondary dials showing the day and month. The glider pilot's timepiece was probably a good deal less fancy, but it would be functional.
In which case, where is the moron? she thought impatiently, scanning the sky above.
They were in the shelter of a patch of Garry oak, not far from a ruined farmstead whose chimney poked up among vegetation gone wild, and well beyond the settled part of the Mackenzie territories, just south of a height called Famine Hill. They were still well within the notional border, and hunters and traders used these lands—they'd seen a small shrine to Cernnunos not far back, an elk's skull and antlers fastened to a tree with the hooves below and signs of small parties camping repeatedly not far away. That made signal fires far too dangerous, or any fires at all for that matter. The men were caring for the horses, feeding them rolled oat pellets from the saddlebags because they couldn't let them out in the open to graze.
She looked over to where the children were seated side by side beneath a tree. The Mackenzie brat had a light chain hobble on, and gave her a steady, defiant glare when he felt her gaze. Princess Mathilda Arminger looked almost as hostile; if Tiphaine had dared, she'd have handcuffed them together. The glare grew narrow as she walked over and went down on one knee.
"Young lord," she said. "I'm truly sorry about chaining your legs, but unless you give me your oath not to try to escape—"
"No," he said shortly.
"And I can't have my men shoot at you if you do try to run away," Tiphaine went on. "Not with the princess so … loyal a friend."
Actually I will, and keep the princess sedated until we get back if I have to, she thought. Once I hand her over to Lady Sandra alive, my job's done. But I can't say that where she's listening. Mary Mother, what a situation!
Aloud she said: "So I have to be very sure you don't try to escape. Please forgive me, but this is war, and I am the faithful vassal of Lady Sandra—the princess' mother. I did what was necessary."
The chiseled features softened very slightly, and the big blue-green eyes grew a little less chilly.
"I understand that, my lady," he said, with self-possession beyond his years, a voice like a well-tuned harpstring, giving promise of a chest-filling resonance when he came to a man's years.
Mathilda looked at him in surprise as he went on: "I don't hate you. You're a warrior doing your duty to your folk and chief, like Liath and Aoife did. I know people die in wars. But … remember it's my duty to stop you doing yours."
He smiled then, and shook back his mane of curling Titian hair, glorious even in the forest's shadow and tangled with twigs and leaves.
Mary Mother, she thought, slightly dazed. What's he going to be like when he grows up? No wonder the little princess was taken with hint!
Normally she just wasn't affected by male looks one way or another, adult or child, but she had to grant Rudi Mackenzie was beautiful by any standard, like a cougar or an otter; and she could see the thoughts moving behind the blu
e-green eyes. He wasn't exactly precocious, but he was disconcertingly sharp for someone his age.
And at nine years old he gave Ruffin all he could handle with a knife right after being thrown from a horse … Well, he's half the Witch Queen, and half Lord Bear … I wish we could have kept that horse. It was beautiful too, and it would be a hold on him.
The wounded man came up with the rations—waybread, cheese, smoked dried salmon, raisins—and handed the children theirs with a smile, despite the pain he must be feeling from the cut arm and the dozen hasty stitches they'd had to put in at the first stop to keep him from leaking all over the backtrail. He said something to the boy; Rudi laughed and made a gesture as if holding a knife, and Ruffin grinned and slapped the hilt of his sword with his good hand.
I hope to hell Lady Sandra knows what to do with him, if she doesn't just have him thrown back at the kilties out of a catapult. Though it'll probably be a lot more subtle than that.
The raisins were lousy, particularly if you could remember what Sun-Maid tasted like, sticky and a little mushy; Oregon didn't have the right sort of climate for drying grapes, and she swallowed them as quickly as she could. The double-baked waybread looked like crackers, and had the consistency and taste of salty, sun-dried wooden slats from a fruit crate; she gnawed at hers cautiously as she ate the perfectly acceptable crumbly yellow cheese and deep pink salmon.
"The kilties are probably still on our trail," Joris observed.
"I think we shook them—" she began. Then: "There it is!"
Bird-tiny, the shape of the glider showed against a cloud. Tiphaine pulled the wigwags out of her saddlebags and stood in the open, signaling Girl-Scout fashion. She'd met Katrina in the Scouts, just before the Change …
After a frustratingly long wait the glider turned and banked lower. Tiphaine repeated the signals patiently, amusing herself thinking how the so-called Lady of the Dunedain was going to react when she heard about Mathilda's rescue— and the capture of Rudi Mackenzie, and that Tiphaine Rutherton had done both, and brought the children through what the murderous bitch called her territory.
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