"Kumite!" said the Ranger acting as referee. Fight!
The point of Astrid's sword flicked out at his eyes, seeming to float and then blur like a frog's tongue after a fly. Fast, he thought admiringly, and smacked it aside with a two-inch movement of his shield, whipping the longsword down in an overarm cut.
Crack!
The hard polished leather of the targe shed the edge, precisely angled to throw him off-balance and jar every bone in his body down to the small of his back. He recovered with a skipping hop like a child jumping rope as her blade hissed in from the side in a hocking cut at the side of his knee; she blocked his counterthrust with an upward flick of the practice blade, striking from the wrist…
Just under ten minutes later they stepped back by unspoken mutual agreement, both breathing deep and quick, sweat soaking their gambesons in huge fresh patches and making runnels down face and neck. A circle of Rangers gave an admiring cheer, and several of them clapped him on the back.
"That's a lot longer than any of us has ever gone with Astrid without her getting a touch home," someone said. "Except Eilir, of course."
Remind me not to think bloody nonsense, Alleyne thought, bringing his blade up in salute with a wry grin.
Astrid's face had been inhumanly calm during the bout, except for a disconcerting small smile. Now she grinned back, then quickly looked aside, her eyes fluttering unconsciously.
That's a good sign, Alleyne thought. Except that it might not be…
"Hey, let me try," a brash youngster named Kevin said. "Let's see how you handle short sword and buckler."
After a more few bouts of his own Alleyne found himself watching Eilir working with Crystal, the newcomer, who was grimly determined as she hefted the practice blade of alderwood, double the weight of the real thing.
No, Eilir signed, stepping back after a brief slow-time passage and letting her practice blade swing on its wrist-thong for a moment. Remember, keep the buckler towards me, not swinging behind you, slightly ahead of your sword point.
"Whenever I try to think of what I'm doing with it, I lose track!" Crystal grumbled.
Everyone starts that way. That's why we do it slow to start with. You practice until you don't have to think about it. Once more. You attack.
Crystal did, bringing the short broad-bladed sword up in a stab towards Eilir's stomach. The deaf girl's buckler came down in a sweep that knocked it out of line. In the same motion she stepped forward and continued the arc, ending up with the bowl-shaped boss of the little shield in front of Crystal's nose. Then she stepped back again.
You can punch the buckler, or strike with the edge of it. It's a weapon too—believe me, when you've whacked someone hard in the face with a two-pound steel weight, they lose all interest in hitting you. And don't block the opposing sword directly—bat it away as if the buckler were an extension of your hand. It's not like a man-at-arm's shield, or even a Bearkiller targe, it's supposed to redirect force, not absorb it. Now back to the basic position—crouch a little, left foot forward and knee bent. Sword… buckler… sword. One-two-three! Let's go!
They engaged again; even in slow motion, Eilir's darting grace was impressive. So was the gentle patience she showed in the face of the girl's clumsiness. He guessed that that was why Astrid worked with the more advanced students.
Better! Eilir signed, stepping back again when Crystal had turned puffing and red and the weapons started to quiver in her hands.
A dozen yards behind her Astrid smiled as she took a dare and went to one knee, her eyes closed; then they flared open as she rose, twisting and drawing and striking in a blur of speed. Her long blade hissed in a horizontal streak and she was extended in an impeccable follow-through. The severed dragonfly dropped, spiraling towards the ground in neat halves.
Alleyne caught it out of the corner of his eye. She's not human, he thought, with a slight inward quiver.
"This is a lot harder work than I thought it would be!" Crystal said to Eilir. "I thought I was used to hard work since I was a little girl!"
There's nothing harder than sword work, Eilir signed sympathetically. It uses different muscles from almost anything else. Let's go try you on the pells again. You've got to go full-out to build speed, and get used to the shock of hitting something. Remember, most of the people you fight will be stronger than you are. You have to be quicker, and you build speed like you build muscle.
A rock-fringed natural swimming pool not far from the buildings had been reconditioned—diverted stream water in at one end and out the other replacing the chlorine cycle. Nobody minded a few floating leaves anymore. Al-leyne ambled down a flagstone path towards it, with the clatter and bang of combat fading behind him, stripped and dove in; the other Englishman joined him. Alleyne rested against the steps and spoke low-voiced to Hordle: "Having a good time, Little John?"
"Well, I'm not the one with the two best-looking girls panting after him," the big man said, grinning. "Seriously, I know you're the one who looks like a prince, and I make people think of fee fi fo fum and grinding the bones of an Englishman. Which is a bit hard, innit, seeing as I am an Englishman?"
"Luckily, women aren't as fixated on looks as we males," Alleyne pointed out.
Hordle's grin got wider. "No, but looking good doesn't hurt much, does it? Still, I reckon my charm and wit will win out in the end."
They both laughed; Hordle's voice was like a monstrous frog croaking. "That was quite a display you put on with little Astrid."
"Christ! But it's not that which makes me hesitate."
"Her relatives?"
"No… no. I like her brother-in-law and most of the others seem good sorts at heart, though Signe Havel is just a trifle too carnivorous for my taste; and that man Hutton is a magician with horses. Nor am I so noble and pure as to spurn the thought of being related to the local royalty. And she's good company, we've got a good many common interests, she's clever, and a stunner… well, you've got eyes, don't you, man?"
"She's not pretty, sir. Eilir is pretty, pretty as a man could want. Astrid is like something you'd see in a painting, the type you're not allowed to get close to because your breath might pollute it."
He ducked and came up blowing and rubbing at his thatch of dark red-brown hair. "Let me guess. It's the fact that she's bloody barking mad that's giving you the collywobbles?"
Alleyne made a gesture, and tried to keep the defensive tone out of his voice: "She's not mad. She couldn't have put this Ranger thing together if she was mad. She doesn't actually think she's living in the Third Age of Middle Earth, or that she's a warrior elf-maid fighting the Dark Lord, though when you think of what that man Arminger is like… But she is… obsessed.The problem is that I share her obsession… in a very, very much less intense fashion. And seeing how it might flower into full-blown form is rather frightening." He sighed. "I meet a beautiful American heiress, I like her, she likes me… and then she turns out to be a fundamentalist with a more literal interpretation of scripture than I feel comfortable with. Only our bible was written by an Oxford don about sixty years ago."
Hordle thought for a moment, his heavy brows knotted in thought. Alleyne waited; one of the advantages Little John Hordle had in life was the way people assumed his massive size and strength meant he was stupid. It wasn't so. . "Well, I wouldn't be quite so frightened as all that, if I were you. I would if this were the old world, but it isn't."
Alleyne's fair eyebrows went up further. "What difference does that make?"
"Look at it this way, Mr. Loring. If this were the time before the Change, what use would it be to be obsessed with horses, and swords, and bows, and living in the woods like a poncing elf and fighting bandits and man-eating beasts and evil kings? As opposed to here and now, where she can actually do all those things—has to do most of them, in fact."
Alleyne opened his mouth, then closed it again; it was his turn to frown. "You know, Sergeant, that is a very acute observation. If it's madness, it's a very practical form of insanity. N
ow that I think of it, even if she's living a fantasy she's gone about it in a very practical way."
Hordle shrugged. "Think nothing of it. Sergeants are supposed to figure things out and let officers take the credit."
"Of course, the fact that if I were to make a play for Astrid, her friend might have time to think about someone else has no bearing on your advice."
Hordle rolled his eyes upward and put his hands together in an attitude of prayer: "Of course not, Mr. Loring! I deny everything! How could you think such a thing?" He clutched at his chest. "I'm wounded, wounded, I tell you!"
Alleyne laughed. "We'll see what develops. What do you think of settling here? Father's giving it serious consideration."
"And I know why," Hordle said with a wink. At Al-leyne's blank look he chuckled and went on: "Seriously, it's pretty country, right enough, nice climate—a lot like Hampshire, only better—there's plenty of land for the asking, and the hunting's good. I could get myself a bit of a farm, or even a farm and a pub. Incidentally, they're not bad, themselves, this Ranger lot, even the girls. I thought they were a bit, mmmm… informal-like, but they know what they're doing and they don't waste time talking when it's important."
"Not surprising, when you consider that Sam had a say in training them early on. Not to mention Mr. Havel. And they've had real work to do here, with bandits and raiders and the prospects of a pukka war hanging over them. More than we did in England, when we weren't sent abroad. Being in the regulars back home was too much like being a policeman at times for my taste, this last little while."
"Right. Never did want to be a copper. Still, at first I thought…"
Alleyne grinned at him. "Thought they were too given to playing dress-up here, like me, eh?"
Hordle shrugged his massive shoulders. "I deny everything!"
That evening was pleasantly cool, enough for the fire they lit in the big fireplace to be welcome for more than the leaping flames. Dinner was a whole young pig just past weaning, butterflied and grilled with a hot sauce, potatoes roasted in the ashes, and a heaping salad of wild greens. The interior of the lodge was big enough for the full score of Rangers; everyone lay around on cushions after the meal, facing the fire and sipping at wine or cider, singing and talking as the flames illuminated the corners of the room with flickering ruddy light. The warmth of the flames
I
brought out the spicy scent of the heavy myrtlewood furniture. A chorus ended:
"I watch the deer and geese go by, fox-foot in the
snow;
Climb the peak of Washington mountain, looking to the valley below—"
"Hey, people," Astrid said when the tune died down. "Business for a minute. Look, we've been using this place for years, but only on and off. What the Dunedain need is a base. Someplace we can train new members, store our goods, an armory, have a few people always on hand. I've talked to Lord Bear about it…"
And I've spoken to Lady Juniper, Eilir added. She thinks it's a good idea.
"We could claim this whole area—the old state park, and say another ten thousand acres around it, and manage the woods. Nobody's using it much and we did run those bandits out of here; Mark got killed doing it. And it's such a good hideout more would be sure to come here if we didn't patrol."
The Rangers looked at each other. The redhead—Kevin, Alleyne thought. The one with the medical training—raised a hand. "How would we live?" he said.
Partly by hunting, Eilir said. That's good here even in winter—animals come down from the high country. We could swap the surplus for things, and eventually sell some timber, and things like nuts. And we wouldn't be here all the time, not all of us. Plus we could contract for special jobs. We already get paid for tracking down man-eaters, and we could do more guarding caravans south past Eugene, or out east over-mountain. We already get top rate for road-guard work, a lot better than the scruffy thugs who usually get hired. They'd know we wouldn't rob them.
"And since what we do here in the Valley helps everyone, I think we can get a contribution from the Mackenzies and the Bearkillers both," Astrid said. "Maybe from Cor-vallis and Mt. Angel, too. You know, flour and cloth and spuds, horses, some cash, too, that's only fair. There's enough meadow near here for our horses, and we could have a few milch cows and a garden, if there were someone here to keep an eye on things. Shall we try it?"
The youngsters looked at each other. "Beats spending all your time farming," one said meditatively. "Beats it all to hell and gone."
"Rangering's the most fun I've ever done," another said, winding a braid around her finger. "It would be nice not to have to give it up. But what about kids and stuff?"
"Well, the original Dunedain were Rangers for generation after generation," Astrid pointed out. "It ran in families… I mean, most jobs do, these days, don't they? There's plenty of places like this we could have bases—call them Ranger-steadings, say. Like the hidden city of Gondolin, or Thingol's hidden kingdom, but on a smaller scale."
Like Imladris, Eilir signed.
The discussion went on into the night. The proposal passed on a show of hands; then Astrid went and stood by the mantelpiece with its load of books.
"What'll it be tonight?" she went on brightly. "Silmaril-lion, Book of Lost Tales, History of Middle-Earth, the Bestiary, or the trilogy itself?"
And here I was going to suggest a walk in the moonlight, Alleyne thought. Then he saw Eilir glancing at him. Of course, I hadn't quite decided whom to ask.
Dun Laurel, Willamette Valley, Oregon August 14th, 2007 AD—Change Year Nine
"Eilir!" Juniper Mackenzie called, waving broadly. "Astrid! Over here!"
The site of Dun-Laurel-to-be was swarming with workers under the bright August sun, filled with wagons, teams of oxen and horses, heaps of logs, timber, cement, and wheelbarrows, and loud with the sounds of saws and axes, shovels and hammers and ratcheting winches. Laurel Wilson's people were there, all eighty-nine of them, plus another forty who'd decided to join the new settlement, and a good three hundred from elsewhere in the Clan's territory, plus quite a few wanderers and gangrels come in to earn a little by casual labor. Three sides of the palisade were up, with blockhouses at the corners—a new refinement—and the rest of the great logs were ready, left down to make access easier for the work going on apace within. One old farmhouse was already there, now repaired and made weathertight again, and other buildings were already frames or sheathed in planks; houses, a meeting-hall-cum-bad-weather-covenstead, barns and sheds and smithy, weaving shops and granary. Enough space was left for small gardens, herbs and flowers; outside, below where the little creek broadened out into a pool, pegs marked out truck allotments.
Most of the fields about were shaggy-overgrown, or grew nothing but tents and temporary paddocks, but a start had been made on clearing a few, and they showed as neat squares of brown tilth, plowed and harrowed.
Near Juniper, Laurel Wilson, Alex Barstow and Nigel Loring bent over a table crowded with drawings, and weighted down with slide rules, compasses and set squares. Laurel frowned and hitched at her plaid as Nigel traced a line with one finger.
"And once the windmill has pumped the well water there, Ms. Wilson, you can lead it by gravity to all the houses and to your livestock as well. Then waste drains into this artificial-swamp system; first these covered pits full of chopped bark and sawdust—or straw and leaves, anything like that will do—to take the raw waste, then through the reed-bed, into the pond with willows around it, and at the downstream end of that you've got clean potable water you can use for stock, or irrigating your truck gardens. The reeds are very useful, the composting pits give you fertilizer when you dig them out every few months, and you can raise fish in the pond, as well."
"You'll be the envy of the Clan with that," Juniper put in. "We're putting one in at Dun Juniper ourselves, and it's a lot better than what we had. Sir Nigel gave us the idea."
"Not mine, not mine," he said modestly, smoothing his mustache with one finger. "His Majesty has a s
ystem like this at his country estate, Highgrove. I've overseen building dozens of them in England. All you need is a head of water for the flow."
Tom Brannigan of Sutterdown was there as well; a large contingent of the volunteers was from his settlement, with the experience of putting up their own town wall fresh in their minds and hands.
"Could we hire you to put one in for us?" he said hopefully. "Our present system is expensive as hell, and we're running out of those treatment chemicals."
"Possibly," Nigel Loring said, starting a little as Juniper trod on his foot.
"Don't do it for free!" she whispered in his ear. "Laurel needs all the help she can get without adding to her folk's debts, but Brannigan can afford to pay."
"Ah, perhaps we could discuss it later," he said. "At this horse fair you were telling me about, perhaps?"
The mayor of Sutterdown nodded. Just then Eilir and Astrid pushed through the crowd, blinking at the worksite, followed by the two young Englishmen.
Aha, thought Juniper, reading the signs. You could tune a harp to the tension there. No resolution to that little problem, yet.
Astrid whistled. "Lady bless, but you've made a lot of progress on that!"
Eilir nodded emphatically. What's with, excellent Mom? You've got twice as much up as I thought you would! At this rate, we'll be able to break a lot of land for the Dun Laurel folks before everyone has to go home to get their own crop in. . "Nigel here has been a wonderful help," Juniper said, squeezing his arm. "With tricks of the trade, and organizing."
Nigel Loring shrugged. "Experience, don't you know. Glad to be a bit of help. And I had basic engineering training."
"Speaking of helping," Astrid said, and pointed.
The Rangers were coming down the road, striding out beside a long train of horses with packsaddles loaded high.
We've got half a ton of meat, Eilir amplified. Wild hog, mostly, and some deer, and a feral cow. I don't suppose you could use any of it, Tom?
Tom Brannigan grinned; he was in charge of feeding the workforce. In theory it went towards the debts Dun Juniper would owe the Clan as a whole, but it would be years before those tallies were paid in full. Even if the first draft was Dun Laurel folk helping harvest his vineyard' that Mabon season, and prune it over the winter.
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