The Given Sacrifice c-7

by S. M. Stirling

  “The house is almost modern,” Ingolf said.

  “Yeah, but I’d say it was probably built seventy, a hundred years before the Change,” Ian replied. “That was before they forgot how to do things properly. It’s a pity that other one burned down, from the looks it was even better built and huge. This one will do for now, though, until Ritva and I can put up something and stop crowding you. She’s talking about a multilevel flet in a redwood. Around a redwood, whatever.”

  “That’ll keep you skinny in your old age!”

  Whoever had built the stone house had liked books, too; unfortunately they’d all been ruined one way or another, mostly critters tearing them up for nests and bugs eating them. Whoever it had been that held this land had been called Jack and had probably been English, because the word London regularly appeared around the place, and he knew that city had been the capital of the British Empire before it perished in the Change. The King-Emperors of Greater Britain reigned from Winchester these days, which was supposed to be quite the town.

  Which I have no desire to go see. Ingolf the Wanderer has wandered far enough, thanks very much. From now on I stay here and grow roots like a turnip, and leave only for visits to places I’ve already been. My kids can go on adventures, the poor ignorant little tykes.

  Almost as much of a prize were the stone barns, of similar construction, and what Ingolf’s Kickapoo childhood had convinced him was what was left of an elaborate circular piggery with two tall concrete-block silos not far away. His father might have been a Sheriff, lord of broad acres with Farmers and their Refugees at his command, but he hadn’t believed in letting his sons loll around without chores.

  That experience was the reason Ingolf didn’t particularly like pigs, as animals, though he was fond of dogs and horses, tolerated cats, and had nothing against cattle or sheep in their place. Feeding and slopping them and cleaning out pens had convinced him porkers were probably smart enough to know why people kept them around, unlike sheep and cattle who thought you loved them, and left him absolutely dead certain they were dangerous if you weren’t careful. But he did like ham and bacon and chitterlings and bratwurst and headcheese.

  Which was fair, because pigs were certainly ready to kill and eat people if they got the chance; he’d lost his cookies as a teenager after running across what they’d left of a Refugee farmhand who’d passed out drunk where they could get at him, and that had put him off pork for a while. The great black bristly wild boar common in Montival’s forests and marshes were far worse, like pigs in plate armor with swords in their snouts. They swarmed like giant destructive rabbits around here, with nothing but lions, tigers, bears or people willing to take them on. Good hunting and good eating, though. .

  “That little lake is best of all. It gets really dry here in the summers, from what the books say,” Ian said with satisfaction.

  Someone long ago had made an earth and stone dam in the hills to the east, and it stayed filled all year long. Run-down and a bit silted now, but with a little work it would be full of catfish and perfect for a dip on a hot day with willows and redwoods for shade. The kids already loved it, and they’d been here only ten days. There were channels to bring the water to where it was needed and they were repairable, especially with easy salvage for PVC piping and similar workaday stuff in the towns just to the west.

  “Yah, when we’ve gotten it into shape this place is going to make us all rich,” Ingolf said with satisfaction. “Particularly when more settlers trickle in to the valleys east and west. What with the wine, the fruit, good grazing and timber. And best of all those dead cities on the Bay haven’t been worked over at all, hardly, and we’ve got that nice juicy concession.”

  “We’re a bit far away from anywhere to sell most salvage,” Ian observed. “Lot of big ruins closer to the center of things, eh?”

  “Oh, not bulk metals,” Ingolf said.

  The economics of the salvage trade were something he knew inside out, but they were different up in Drumheller where there were only two lost cities to be mined and both had been thoroughly worked over under tight government supervision already.

  He explained: “Sure, Seattle alone has enough rebar and girders to keep Montival in swordblades and plowshares and horseshoes for a thousand years, but those places south of us are stuffed with real salvage, stuff that repays long-distance transport. Optics, machine tools that can be rigged to work on waterpower, rare metals, bearings, gears, not to mention artwork and gold and silver and jewelry. There were a couple of things in San Francisco I spotted on the second trip that are so pretty I’m going to keep ’em for myself.”

  “And it’ll provide a nice non-blizzards-and-freezing place to spend our declining years in comfort, surrounded by attentive grandchildren,” Ian agreed.

  The Dúnedain were organized as something like an army, something like a feudal lordship, and something like what lawyers called a cooperative employee-owned corporation: Dúnedain Enterprises, Ltd., if you preferred English, or Gwaith-i-Dúnedain, Herth, which was what was printed on the checks from the First National Bank of Corvallis. The business part was more important in peacetime. Everyone who was born into or accepted as a candidate to the Rangers got at least one share, and there were ways to get more. Being one of the Questers had proved to be worth a big chunk of common stock, for example, not to mention other accomplishments like getting this grant from the Crown for the Rangers. Theoretically all the Dúnedain lands belonged to the Gwaith, but they were leased out on a sort of franchise arrangement to the stath, which was Ranger-speak for stations and steadings.

  It doesn’t hurt to be married to Lady Astrid’s sister’s daughter, either, he thought a little complacently; he’d never come across a place where important relatives didn’t count.

  His eldest son and daughter ran up and started using him as an obstacle in a game of tag; they were nine now, tow-haired Malfind and his black-haired sister Morfind respectively as their names indicated. He’d learned to accept the names, after Mary had sternly vetoed his suggestion of Harry and Ethel. Her family was prone to twins on both sides, and they had two sets of fraternals now, boy-girl and two girls for the second, Eledhwen and Finduilas, who both looked as if they were going to take after Dad. Ian and Ritva hadn’t had twins, much to her disappointment-as she said, it meant she’d had a third more work for two-thirds as many children so far-but their boy Faramir made up for it in energy.

  He danced around, darting and lunging at Ingolf’s twins while the adults raised their arms and laughed, until Malfind said:

  “Up!”

  Her brother braced himself behind Ingolf, grabbing at the back of his sword belt for an instant. Malfind ran up him and then up her father like a squirrel, leapt into the lowest branches of the oak, and gave her brother a hand when he followed. Judging by the speed and smoothness of the maneuver, they had a great future ahead of them as special operations types. . or possibly as burglars.

  “No fair!” Faramir shouted up. “Dad, give me a boost so I can catch these cheaters!”

  Ian was grinning as he looked up and shook his head. “I don’t need to. Take a look at what’s above those two-and looking a lot like ’em.”

  Ingolf looked up along with the others. This area also had monkeys, gray-brown critters with naked pink faces and tails. One of the books called them rhesus macaques, and while they were funny as hell to watch they liked to throw things, their own dung when nothing else was to hand. Quite literally to hand. Along with Ian and his son he moved aside quickly, and laughed at the squeals of disgust as it suddenly started to rain young Vogelers, along with twigs and monkey by-products.

  “Look before you leap,” he called. “Pond’s thataway and get it all out of your hair, both of you.”

  They trudged away muttering variations on euuuw. Faramir followed, dancing in glee.

  “Crappy-heads!” he called. “Cheaters and crappy-heads!”

  He stopped with the second repetition; he was a good-hearted kid, though a bit t
houghtless, even by nine-year-old standards. A minute later Elvellon came by, a solid if rather slow woman in her thirties, a former Cutter slave who’d settled among the Rangers not least because being tongueless was less of a disadvantage in a group where everyone knew Sign. She worked for Mary and Ritva as a handyperson, and seemed devoted to the kids without the least desire for any of her own. Nobody asked about her past.

  They OK? Her fingers asked.

  Just a bit smelly, Ingolf said, and explained.

  She laughed without opening her teeth and walked after them, casting:

  I get them ready for dinner. Mothers back soon, over her shoulder.

  Ingolf eyed the tree, where fifteen or twenty of the monkeys were chattering and leaping around to celebrate their triumph.

  “Acting a bit like my boy, eh?” Ian said.

  “We’re definitely going to have to do something about them.”

  “Bobcats?” Ian mused. “Falcons? Baited traps?”

  “Arrows,” Ingolf said. “It’s the only way to be sure.”

  Then their heads turned. The fluting whistle of the sentries’ call came through the afternoon air, only distinguishable from birds if you knew, and they relaxed as it said our people come.

  Mary and Ritva had taken a half dozen of the younger Rangers out, not simply hunting for the pot but to start the familiarization process; really knowing every inch of your territory went with the job. All the hunters had returned, and over the packhorses were. .

  “Venison,” Ian said hollowly. “Oh, boy, what a treat. On days in which the sun rises in the east, we Dúnedain Rangers shall have venison for dinner. I’m going to grow antlers this year, I can feel the buds itching.”

  “Looks like they got a yearling porker, too, and some turkeys. . and hel-lo, there are visitors.”

  A dozen more riders came behind the Ranger party.

  “Edain, by Eru! That’s six of the High King’s Archers and-”

  Órlaith threw herself off the horse and into his arms, a solid weight of fast-growing teenager.

  “Uncle Ingolf!”

  • • •

  “Sorry the house isn’t fit for company, but we’re doing spring-cleaning,” Ingolf said.

  Órlaith laughed as he jerked a thumb at a huge pile of slightly musty-smelling planks and laths that lay not far from the ancient stone building; not far from that was a pile of broken tile, ready to be ground for tempering powder in the new ones that would be made as soon as the kiln was built. The round Dúnedain tents were grouped around their hearth-fires, and they’d pitched their own set-the High King’s Archers had three domed Clan-style bells, and she and Herry had a slightly larger rectangular model. For this trip she’d managed to escape the train of Court servants, all except for a couple of groom-roustabouts and the bowmen.

  It had helped that things at Todenangst had been so frantic. Her father had been quietly and wisely sympathetic to her desire to escape, which had been wonderful but less comfort than she’d expected.

  Even if your Da is wise and strong and King, he can’t make everything better. I must be getting older, she thought.

  There hadn’t been much time to talk with the Rangers, apart from the Alyssa and Cole send their greetings and the youngest is doing fine level. She didn’t know whether to be happy or depressed about that.

  They all lay sprawled about the fire, with sparks drifting upward towards the shimmering roof of the oak’s new leaves. Skewers of boar loin dressed with wild garlic were sizzling, and iron Dutch ovens of biscuits stood in a raked-down section of the coals, and a pot of wild greens was bubbling-amole leaves, with another of mashed dock. The smell made her mouth water despite it all; there was nothing like a long day in the saddle to work up an appetite.

  Da said that getting tired and using my body would help. Hard work keeps sorrow at bay until you’re strong enough to deal with it. He was right. . again.

  Maccon laid his huge gruesome head in her lap and rolled his eyes up at her, and she rubbed his graying chops. He was getting old. . she had that on the brain right now.

  “Yes, you’ll all get even more,” she said, leaning back against her saddle; two of his latest crop of puppies were a little farther from the fire, tall lanky shaggy young beasts named the MacMaccons. “Like you haven’t been gorging on guts.”

  She was in a kilt and plaid again, which was a relief-the long deathbed wait in Castle Todenangst had all been in Associate formal women’s dress, for which at thirteen she was now just old enough. She hadn’t complained under the circumstances, but enough was enough.

  She sighed. You could travel a thousand miles, but you couldn’t run away from your thoughts; her father had told her that, too. She turned to Ingolf instead.

  “It’s good to see you again, Unc’,” she said. Then, peering closer: “Are you going bald? I can see firelight on your scalp.”

  There was a roar of laughter around the fire, which surprised her; Mary Vogeler was laughing harder than any. Ingolf ran one big battered hand over his head, which was indeed getting a bit thinly thatched, though there wasn’t much gray in it.

  “Male-pattern baldness runs in my family,” he said ruefully. “Dad, my older brother. . damned if I’m going to grow a middle-aged Vogeler beer gut, though.”

  Heuradys nudged her with the toe of her boot; she was looking quite dashing in her squire’s hunting outfit, with a Montero hat sporting a peacock feather tilted back on her bobbed mahogany hair; she had the knack of doing that even after hard travel through the wilderness. Unfairly, she’d shot up and filled out over the last couple of years, while Órlaith still had the build of a tall gawky plank. The two years between them still made a lot of difference.

  “Ah, the comfort there’s to be had in the voices of the young!” Edain said, grinning and taking a swig from a jug covered in straw that was doing the rounds. “Fair makes a man spring about like a goat, his youth renewed, it does not.”

  “Edain, you’re ten years younger than me,” Ingolf said, and smiled himself in a mock-nasty way. “Just you wait.”

  “What brings you down this way?” Ian said.

  “Oh. . I wanted to get out of. . of the places I’m usually in,” she said. Then she blurted: “Nona died. My. . the Queen Mother,” she said in a rush.

  There were exclamations, but nobody among the Dúnedain knew her Nona Sandra the way she did. Sandra Arminger had been feared, and hated, and widely respected; she’d also been loved, but that mainly by people she was closer to.

  “We’d heard that she was ill, of course,” Ritva said.

  A slightly awkward silence fell, and Órlaith continued doggedly. “We. . there was some warning, but it came on fast and the end. I was there. . ”

  Memory took her back. The smell of incense, the murmur of chanted prayer in the background. John crying silently, tears trickling down his face from still brown eyes; Maria and Lorcan had said their good-byes and then been ushered out, they were too young yet to understand. Sandra had smiled and managed to squeeze Órlaith’s hand. They were all waiting as the gaslamps flickered, watching the slow rise and fall of the sheet over her breast, and the glisten of the holy oil on her eyelids.

  Then her eyes fluttered open. They seemed to be seeing something. When she spoke, her voice was very quiet but clear, perfectly ordinary:

  “Norman, we have to talk.”

  Órlaith squeezed her eyes shut on the memory: “And then she died,” she whispered. “She was just gone, and I realized how alive she’d always been. There was always this crackle around her. Like somewhere thoughts were coming out like sparks from a burning pine log.”

  When she opened her eyes again, the others were looking at her a little oddly: it was not the time you’d expect her to leave the family to go on a ramble. All those close to the fire were kin to her or the next thing to it, and old companions of her father on the Quest who’d helped raise her on and off.

  “I wouldn’t go attend the funeral mass,” she blurted. “I mean, I wou
ldn’t take Communion at it. I won’t, anymore, I should never have been confirmed. I’ve decided I’m of the Old Religion. I know we’re allowed to see it as. . as you know, another form of the same thing, so we can do the ceremonies if we need to, but I won’t. I won’t deceive Mom. John’s a good Catholic, but I’ll never be. We had a big fight about it-mostly me yelling and her being so quiet. So I had to, to get away.”

  Edain reached over and put a hand on her back for a moment. “That’s hard, my Golden Princess. Matti your mother I’ve known all my life, and she’s a good Queen and an even better friend and a true comrade, but at seventh and last she’s cowan, and. . that means there are things she does not ken.”

  Órlaith nodded, scrubbing at her eyes.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Órry,” Heuradys said, putting her arm around her shoulders. “My lady mother’s a witch and I’ve had some really awkward moments with her, too.”

  “You have?” Órlaith asked.

  “Yes, by the Gray-Eyed! Just a few months ago I had to sit her down and tell her something she really didn’t want to hear. She wasn’t happy about it, either, any more than your mother was.”

  “You did?” Órlaith said; she couldn’t imagine the calmly cheerful Lady Delia de Stafford getting all coldly miserable the way her own mother had. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Sort of embarrassing, really. It was a family council at Montinore Manor back on Barony Ath, when I was back for the Twelve Days. . Yule. . and it was just me and her and Auntie Tiph-”

  She stopped and glared at Ian, who was chortling. “What exactly is funny? I haven’t got to that part yet, unless you think my whole family is funny, Lord Ian?”

  “Anyone calling Lady Death her auntie, that’s funny. Sorry, sorry.”

  “Well, I don’t call her Lady Death, you know. And my lord my father Count Rigobert was there, he spends that season with us mostly,” she went on quellingly. “You see, my lady mother had been throwing nice girls from her coven my way since I turned fifteen, and I just had to tell her Mom, I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I really like boys better.”