“If it’s not too bad the men can have a fair start on it by the time the horses arrive. Might even get it finished soon enough to start the morning after.”
“Beyond that, twenty miles to a washed-out bridge. That will mean a portage, and it’ll take a full day. At least. We’ll have to knock everything down, pack it upstream to a crossing, then back down and onto the rails.”
“Doable. The average is working out acceptable, sure and it is. Next?”
“We only went twenty miles beyond the bridge, but no obstacles on that beyond a little brush trimming.”
“Man - sign?”
“None that we could be sure of. But if we go much beyond there, we’ll be into Bekwa territory.”
Ingolf grunted. “After what happened at the Six-Hill Fight, I doubt if any of those tribes are going to get in the way of five hundred Norrheimers. Or listen to the Cutters much.”
“Unless the survivors are mad for revenge,” Artos pointed out. “And they might harass us—arrows in the night, that sort of thing. But I know what you mean. If they didn’t lose three of every four men able to carry a spear, it’s surprised and astonished I would be. Once we’re past the Montreal area . . . Royal Mountain, our hosts call it . . . we’ll be into fresh territory. There some of the wild-men may try to bar our way. Still, at need we can cut our way through most savages by sheer weight of men and metal, where we couldn’t on our way east. Five hundred spears are a good many, and they’re thinly scattered there at best.”
“We’ve been lucky so far, too,” Ingolf observed.
He poked at the fire with a stick and stared at the embers, then coughed a little as the wind shifted a gust of smoke his way. His eyes were looking beyond the present.
“Lucky?” Artos said.
“The way this area here is completely clear of people. It’s just wilderness, not . . . haunted. I went through to Boston south of here back when I was on my way to Nantucket that first time, and it was a nightmare every step, even with my Villains and all our gear. Not fighting every day, no, but you never knew when the Eaters would try something, try to snatch someone. And you knew they were always watching, waiting, looking for a moment when you let your guard down.”
“Does it really matter if you know they’re going to eat you after they kill you?” Mary asked curiously.
Ingolf nodded. “Yeah, darling, it does. Feels different, anyway. Every one of my Villains was pretty much a hardcase even before they went into salvage work—”
“Went in viking,” Artos said.
Ingolf nodded, but his mood didn’t lighten: “And I didn’t know one of them who wasn’t creeped out by it. Even Kaur and Singh, and half the time they didn’t care whether they lived or died.”
Artos nodded. Much farther south and there would be at least scattered bands of Eaters—the savage descendants of those who’d lived through the Change Year even in the heart of the death-zones of megalopolis. Never very many in any one spot, but there were a great many spots.
Such wild-men were not always irredeemable. The Southsiders had been a band who’d started as near-children in the outskirts of Chicago before drifting to the banks of the Illinois River, and though pathetically ignorant of even the simplest arts they’d been good-hearted. But most Eaters were considerably more vicious than any animal, if only because they were more cunning; their parents had generally made it through the first year by hunting and eating men, that being the easiest source of food and the only one they had skill to catch at first. Being raised by insane cannibal murderers didn’t make their children more agreeable and often they were just as crazed themselves.
The Powers have a good deal to answer for, Artos thought.
His hand caressed the pommel of the Sword, and images flitted through his mind. The alternatives to the Change were something They could show him. He shook his head violently, pushing the thoughts/visions/knowledge away; there were worse things than the Change, evidently, but he didn’t want them paraded always before his innermost eye.
I’m a Changeling. I wasn’t hag-ridden by seeing the old world die; hearing about it and coming across the leavings is bad enough. Leave me that, will you!
Ignatius seemed to sense his mood, and returned to practical things, tracing his finger westward: “Then south of Montreal . . . Royal Mountain . . . southwest through the old province of Ontario to the ruins of Windsor-Detroit, then across the base of this peninsula . . .”
“Michigan, they called it,” Ingolf said. “That whole part that looks like a thumb. There’s some farms and little towns up north. Nothing near those cities but wild-men.”
“Then a swing south of Chicago and back north, and we will be in striking distance of your home, Ingolf. By Readstown we’ll be out of the Wild Lands, and back to the settled realms.”
“Readstown’s my former home,” Ingolf said, and looked over at Mary. They reached out and wove their fingers together for an instant. “I guess home’s in Mithrilwood, now, even if I’ve never been there.”
Mary smiled, a remarkably piratical expression with her eye patch.
“For a while!” she said. “I don’t want to drive you away! I’m not inclined to hang around Aunt Astrid all my life. That can get a bit tiring. I don’t think you’ll want to either. I’ve been thinking—”
Which means we’ve been thinking, Artos thought. Ingolf may have wed only the one of them, but he’s gotten a conspiracy as well as a bride.
“—and when the war’s over, we could lead some of the Dúnedain southward, south of Ashland, the way Legolas did from Mirkwood to Ithilien after the War of the Ring. The Westria project will be getting under way, and settling new land they’ll need Rangers. More even than in the older parts of Montival. It’s beautiful country, from the stories and the pictures, and the first comers will have their pick.”
“Redwoods! They say they make Douglas fir seem like saplings,” Ritva said. “What a place to build a flet.”
“Sounds like fun,” Ingolf said, stretching with a faraway look in his eyes. “I would like to have a homeplace for ourselves, and that’s a fact.”
“Let’s win the war first,” Artos said dryly. Then: “But kinship apart, Ingolf, you’ve been a true right-hand man to me and will be even more in the days to come; and so have you been a strong support, my sisters.”
He made a gesture, the Horns with his left hand: “Fate and For-tuna willing, vacant lands will be in my gift, and you won’t find me niggard. They say there were fine vineyards in old California. I’ll expect many a glass of the best when I come visiting, to play bear with my nieces and nephews before the hearth!”
Ritva cleared her throat. “Ah, Rudi . . . Artos . . . Mary and I were thinking.”
Something warned him as he looked up into her turquoise-blue eyes, as innocent as the gaze of heaven. Behind the two women Ingolf held both hands up palms out, waved them a little as if to say Don’t blame me! and walked away towards the horse herd. There was always something a man could find to do there convincingly. Ignatius seemed to evaporate; he was an exceedingly quiet man, both in his body and in the calmness of his mind, and could do that without fuss or bother.
“Thinking of what?” Artos asked. “Because the last time I saw you thinking with just that expression was when you two put garden slugs in my bed when I visited Stardell Hall in Mithrilwood.”
“Oh, Rudi!” Ritva said. “That was years and years ago! And it was just a joke.”
“Not to the one whose toes were covered in cold dead slug.”
“We’d only just decided to become Rangers. We were just kids then!”
“Says the crone of twenty-one summers,” Artos said dryly. “Get to it, please!”
“No, no, this is serious.”
“Very,” Mary added.
“It’s about the Sword.”
“Ah, is it so?” Artos asked.
He sank back against the stump, hitching up the blanket a bit and laying the scabbard across his knees.
“We
ll, you see, it’s a sword of the far West,” Mary said, a slight frown knotting her yellow brows. “Isn’t it?”
He nodded at the rhetorical question; the compass directions had special significance for the Rangers, since the Histories made goodness proceed into or from the West, rather like an ethical version of water running downhill.
“True,” he said cautiously.
“And it’s supposed to defend the Uttermost West. Which Montival is, because if you go farther west it turns into East, since the Straight Path to Aman the Blessed was closed back in the Second Age at the Fall of Numenor, you see.”
“True,” he said, his voice even slower. “According to the Histories at least.”
And everyone’s entitled to their own beliefs. Though sometimes not to their own facts.
The other twin took it up—it was easy to see that it was Ritva because she had two eyes, unlike the old days when they’d often tag-teamed him and others. It was still a little disturbing, like listening to someone with a stutter.
“And have you noticed that when you draw it there’s this sort of flame? At least it seems like a flame. And it’s going to be the sword of the Kings of the Men of the West, too!”
“So it’s the Sword of the Lady, but it’s also the Flame of the West, and it would make Aunt Astrid so happy if—”
“NO!” Artos roared, leaping to his feet, almost entirely Rudi again.
Mary and Ritva bounced erect too, moving back with graceful speed, hands held up in a soothing, placating gesture.
“Now, Rudi, don’t be silly. You have to see that it’s sort of fated that—”
“I risked my life for this! Men died for this! You are not renaming the Sword of the Lady Andúril Flame of the West and the suggestion itself is enough to warrant a hiding—”
Artos was very fast. Mary and Ritva were very nearly as fast and fifty pounds lighter per head; they accelerated more quickly, and they were even able to fit their climbing claws from their belts to their hands as they ran, inches ahead of his swatting scabbard. Each picked a tree and leapt, scampering upward like cats a stride ahead of an angry dog.
“Rudi! You’re being unreasonable again!” Ritva called.
“Ingolf! Do something!” Mary shouted.
“What, help him?” Ingolf called over his shoulder. “It’s a fucking silly idea, sweetie, and I told you so. Told you he’d be pissed off, too.”
Artos stopped, suddenly conscious of how many people were looking at him. Then he began to laugh, tossed the sheathed Sword into the air and caught it by the hilt and pointed the chape on its end at his half sisters.
“It’s a bargain I’ll be making with you,” he said.
“What?” Ritva said suspiciously.
“You agree to never mention this nonsense again.”
“We still think . . . well, and what do you do?”
“I agree not to whale the stuffing out of you both and throw you in a mudhole.”
He was still chuckling when he settled back on his bedroll and watched Mathilda combing her hair; the rhythmic movement was both pleasing and soothing somehow. Garbh lifted her head and growled slightly, but he’d been aware of ex-Major Graber’s approach. The man had stayed in the background, helping to look after the little boy living in the shell of the High Seeker and doing his share of camp chores uncomplainingly and skillfully despite being alone and unarmed among those whose feelings towards him ranged from indifference to bone-deep hate. Nobody had dared attack him against Artos’ order reinforced by Bjarni’s, but it could not have been an easy passage. Now his face had more of its customary granite rigidity than ever.
“My lord,” the man from Corwin said. “I am obliged to speak to you.”
“You’re welcome to, Major Graber,” Artos said courteously, laying aside his sword belt wrapped around the scabbard.
Silence still stretched; a muscle twitched on one cheek, and there was sweat across the older man’s forehead. “I . . .”* he began.
Artos glanced aside to give him space to speak. He cleared his throat and began again.
“I have been reconsidering many things. I must tell you of the conclusion I have reached.”
“Yes?” Artos said, meeting his eyes steadily now; he stayed seated to remove any possibility of looming over the man.
“I . . . have been misled. Those in authority over me have distorted the meaning of the Church Universal and Triumphant’s teachings. I do not think that they are truly in the service of the Ascended Masters at all.”
Rudi sat up cross-legged, conscious that Mathilda’s hands had halted their steady movement; Edain was gaping at the man’s back, Asgerd was glaring, and Father Ignatius looked back down at the pages of a small breviary with the merest fugitive hint of a smile.
“Yes, I would agree with that, Major Graber,” he replied, his voice pleasantly neutral.
This is not a man you can push; he will neither bend nor break, only die. But a rock may move of itself, at times.
“Accordingly, I withdraw my allegiance from them. They have misled me and caused me to mislead others. Many of my men . . . my entire regiment . . . died in pursuit of a mission I led them on. I must accept responsibility for this.”
“You did as you thought best, given what you believed and as you were raised, in a cause that your men also followed,” Rudi said, choosing each word with exquisite care. “A sorrow it is that they died; but that they were brave and steadfast is a good and lovely thing in itself and by itself. And they were both, as I can testify from my own knowledge.”
Graber swallowed and looked down. “The responsibility is still mine. And my . . . my country and my family are still mine, and the men of my service, even if they would kill me for an apostate. And there must be truth in the teachings of the Church Universal and Triumphant, even if it has been perverted. Therefore I must think more on the best course for me to atone for the sins of which I have been guilty. Thank you.”
He turned on his heel and walked towards the small tent he shared with Dalan, the ex-priest of the Corwinite cult.
“Well, well, and three times, well,” Artos said into the silence that followed. “Sure, and no man is all one thing or all of a piece.”
Ignatius nodded. “While we live, there is always the possibility of redemption and atonement.”
“I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him,” Virginia Thurston said with conviction.
“Trust him not to decide he must fight us?” Artos said. “No, that’s possible. But I think I’d trust him to do what he thinks right. And after this, I think I could trust him to inform me if that meant to take up arms against me again. That at least.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
COUNTY OF THE EASTERMARK
BARONY OF WALLA-WALLA, NEAR CASTLE WAITSBURG
PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY SOUTHEASTERN WASHINGTON STATE)
MARCH 31, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
“Were they really evil?Whatlies orthreats brought them here to die . . .” she began, looking down at the dead men sprawled beside their dead horses. You’re quoting again, Astrid! Eilir signed. I’ve been listening to you do that since we were both fourteen!
“That doesn’t make it any less true, soul-sister,” Astrid Loring said calmly. “They’re not necessarily bad men, even if they are Cutters and from Montana. Good and ill are not one thing in the Third Age and another now.”
The identity of the men they’d ambushed was fairly clear from their mixed gear, which was the sort of thing a Rancher’s retainers put together from what came to hand, and from the common element: the rayed golden sun of the Church Universal and Triumphant. The younger Dúnedain behind her nodded solemnly; those words were from the Histories after all, and apt.
It was the quiet time when sick men died, not-quite-dawn, and the blood of men and horses looked more black than red; chilly enough to make it smoke a little too, though the days were already mild even this far
inland. It made an iron undertone to the sweet cool smell of spring and green growth; a few trees beside the roadway had already burst their swelling buds to show a mist of green. A quivering birdcall sounded, and the Rangers on the slope looked sharply southwestward. Another call followed and they relaxed; just afterwards the first clatter of hooves sounded on the old asphalt of the roadway, patched with pounded gravel. A spray of light cavalry went through first, several score local levies riding with arrows nocked on the strings of their recurved saddle bows.
I’ll go with them, Eilir signed. We’ll have to coordinate.
She swung into her saddle and trotted over to the local nobleman leading the horse-archers, who was in three-quarter armor himself; this far east the Association produced its own ranch-style fighters. John Hordle followed—he rode a destrier-bred warmblood even when in light gear, as at present—and a file of a dozen Dúnedain ohtar.
Then a heavier drumbeat on the broken, patched asphalt, and a long column of heavy cavalry came up the roadway, the butts of their twelve-foot lances resting on their right stirrup-irons and their kite-shaped blazoned shields across their backs. The riders were knights and men-at-arms in plate cap-a-pie from the sabatons on their feet to the bevoirs that guarded their chins, the metal of their harness bright with the polish and chamois leather and elbow grease of squires and varlets.
They’re going to fight¸ she decided. The destriers are barded. She might have told me in advance, rather than just saying “if circumstances allow.”
The figure at their head reined aside, warhorse looking almost insectile behind the laminated armor; the raised curved visor of the sallet showed a face which was . . .
Not all that different from me, Astrid admitted grudgingly.
They were both around five foot ten, both blond, both in their late thirties, and both moved with a leopard’s assurance. The Grand Constable had gray eyes rather than blue, and her face was a little harsher-boned, but otherwise they might have been sisters.
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