The stories said that in those days people had com monly lived to eighty or a hundred or even more . . . but then, those stories said a lot of wild things: flying to the moon, talking-machine servants, sword blades made of fiery light, and islands filled with dinosaurs. Nowadays sixty was old, most places he’d seen, and few reached the Bible’s threescore and ten.
“I hear you’re from Wisconsin, Mr. Vogeler,” Brannigan said, his voice a deep rumble.
Ingolf noted that he had less of the lilting local accent than his daughter, but there was wonder in his tone as he went on:
“Wisconsin! Haven’t seen anyone from that far east since before the Change—wait, no, there was one, came all the way from upstate New York on a bicycle that first year. Big guy, went up north and became a knight or something. None since, though.”
“We haven’t seen many from the West Coast, either, Mr. Mackenzie,” Ingolf said.
Brannigan chuckled; he seemed to be one of the jolly plump innkeepers of song and story. Which was lucky; in Ingolf’s broad experience they were just as likely to be skinny po-faced tightwads soured on humanity in general and their customers in particular.
“Mackenzie is the Clan name, Mr. Vogeler, and there are going on for sixty thousand others! Just Tom will do, anyway.”
“How much do I owe you, Mr. Brannigan . . . Tom?”
“Normally, half a silver dollar a day for a man and two horses, not counting drinks. Today and tomorrow, nothing.”
At his puzzlement: “It’s Samhain Eve. We set an empty place for a stranger at sunset tonight and tomorrow. A stranger from far away means double luck.”
Brannigan’s grin got wider. “You could be a god in disguise, after all!”
“I thank you kindly.” He sipped the cider, and his brows went up. “And I thank you kindly! This is the best cider I’ve had since I left the Kickapoo country!”
He smacked his lips meditatively. There were herbs in it, and the scent had a deep fruitiness that was like a memory of September afternoons in the hills of home when the maples blazed. For a moment homesickness seized him, and he was back amid the bee murmurous orchards in April, looking down from a bluff across fields like rolling snow, with petals blowing in drifts over his father’s house and onto the stark blue water of the river. . . .
“Thank you for a taste of home,” he said sincerely. “Join me in one? And that I will pay for.”
He’d directed the invitation to both of them. Brannigan shook his head. “Maybe later. Business to attend to,” he said.
A little to Ingolf’s surprise, Saba nodded. “I will . . . if we’re not too busy, Dad?”
“Nope, it’s a slow night, everyone’s getting ready for tomorrow,” Brannigan said.
Then he made a gesture, index and little finger out stretched, the middle two folded down under the thumb. “Or out defying the fae, the young idiots. See you later, Mr. Vogeler.”
She returned with the platters and some cider of her own, and sat across from him. He grinned and clinked his glass mug against hers, happier still when he saw she meant to eat with him. The odd grace she said over the food didn’t put him off; you expected to meet strange customs far from home, and nothing here was as weird—or as nasty—as what he’d seen in the Valley of Paradise among the Prophet’s folk.
“Your health, Saba,” he said.
“And yours, Ingolf. To the Lord, to the Lady, to the Luck of the Clan!”
He was hungry enough that even with a pretty woman smiling at him the plate was the first priority. Everything that went into the food was something he might have had at his family’s board—roast pork with cracklin’ gravy, potatoes, carrots and cauliflower and broccoli, applesauce on the side, brown bread and but ter. The details were different; the outer cuts of the pork were crusted with herbs, chopped dried cherries in the gravy, potatoes whipped creamy with dill and garlic and chives, the vegetables steamed rather than boiled, and a fruity red wine to go with it all when his cider was drained.
Wholly homelike was the wedge of apple pie with whipped cream, and a piece of yellow cheese beside it, sharp and dry and crumbly, just right to cut the rich sweetness of the pie filling and the buttery taste of the crust.
“Now, that’s real cheddar,” he said, sighing with con tentment. “We Richlanders make good cheese; it was famous even before the Change, and this matches it. Is it yours?”
“No,” she said. “It’s from Tillamook—on the coast northwest of here, in Portland Protective Association country. That’s where my man Raen was, trading for it, when the raiders landed.”
“Sorry,” he said awkwardly.
She smiled and sighed and patted his hand. “It’s a year ago now, and he’s in the Summerlands, waiting to come back . . . and he helped burn their ships at the water’s edge. The Haida carry people off for slaves and steal and burn everything if they get a foothold; the raids are worse every year. . . . Battle luck comes from the Mor rigú; a dozen others of our folk were there that day....”
She shook off the thought. “That’s an interesting name, Ingolf. It sounds like one of ours.”
“It’s not usual back on the Kickapoo, either; it’s after my grandfather’s uncle,” Ingolf said. “People used to tease me about it, when I was a kid. What are your children’s names, if I may ask? You do have unusual ones here, except for a few like Tom.”
“Ioruath’s my boy; he’s three,” she said; her smile grew broader. “And Emer, my girl, she’s just one; never saw her father, poor thing.”
“Pretty names,” he said. “But I haven’t heard them before.”
“We used to have the same names as most people—some of the older people still do; you know, Tom and John and Mary and David, that kind, like Dad. But a lot of people took other ones after the Change, when we turned back to the Old Religion. Names from the an cient stories that teach us about the Gods. Or they gave names like that to their children—my mother changed to Moira, and she changed me from Sally to Saba.”
“I like Saba better,” he said.
“So do I,” she said, and wrinkled her nose at him. “I like Ingolf . . . and nobody will tease you about it here. It isn’t silly, like some of the ones they use up in the Protectorate. Odard and Raoul, I ask you!”
He took a moment to admire the sight of her. She’d switched to just her kilt and shirt and shoes, and everything he could see was just as he liked it; she was broad in the hips and shoulders and narrow in the waist, long legged, with strong round arms and the full bosom of a woman who’d borne and nursed children. Ingolf liked her frank eyes too, and the way she returned his interest without being coy about it.
He learned that she wove, and embroidered, and played the guitar, liked to hunt and fish in season. There was a small tattoo above the upper curve of her bosom and below the finials of her torc, a miniature strung bow that also suggested the crescent moon.
“What’s that?” he asked, indicating it with his eyes.
She grinned at him. “Never seen a woman’s breasts before, you poor man?” she teased, and laughed with him. Then she touched the tattoo. “That’s the Warrior’s Mark. I got that when I turned eighteen and passed the tests for the First Levy . . . the militia, you’d probably call it.”
When she gathered up the empty plates and took them back to the kitchen he watched the sway of her kilt with unfeigned pleasure.
I could stay here awhile, he thought. I’m not broke by a long shot, and this is where the Voice and the dreams pointed. His mind tried to turn aside, but he forced it back. I’ll need a base while I look around for . . . whoever it is I’m supposed to find.
The door to the vestibule opened as he mused, and he looked up with the wariness his wandering years had bred. A group came in, three women and two men, all younger than him but not by that much; they all wore longswords and daggers, which they racked by the door. They moved as if they knew how to use them, too.
He noticed the twin girls first, since they were identi cal and dressed so alike he guessed they worked
at it. Both were tall, five-nine or so, with yellow-blond braids down their backs, dressed in dark trousers and boots rather than kilts; when they took off their jackets, they revealed sleeveless jerkins of black leather over their shirts, blazoned with a white tree and seven stars surmounted by a crown.
The other girl was a year or two older and an inch or so shorter, with brown hair cut shoulder-length and brown eyes and features a little too bold for beauty. She was in pants and a short-sleeved thigh-length tunic of fine-woven wool, forest green, over a full sleeved shirt of indigo dyed linen. The tunic had a slit-pupiled eye wreathed in flame on a black shield woven over her chest, and the same device showed on the buckle of her silver-chain belt; it carried a rosary of worked coral and crucifix opposite a dagger.
Saba returned with two small glasses of applejack. Ingolf smiled at her, lifted his and tasted cautiously. It was potent but made from good mash, light-crushed and well strained, and aged a couple of years, just right for sipping liquor.
“Who are those?” he said quietly, nodding to the group as her father bustled over to them.
VIPs, he decided by himself.
Tom Brannigan wasn’t in the least servile, but there was an indefinable air of respect. Ingolf’s eyes narrowed slightly in professional appraisal.
“The big fella with the bright hair particularly,” he said.
One of the men was in a kilt and was about Ingolf’s own height, six-one or a little more; a bit lighter than his own one ninety, he estimated, but not much. Broad shouldered and long-limbed, well muscled but moving like a racehorse, looking like he was about to leap even when completely still. And strikingly handsome in a way that was almost beautiful without being in the least pretty, down to a cleft in the square chin.
“Oh, that’s Rudi Mackenzie,” Saba said, with the tolerant tone of a woman towards a younger man she’d known when he was just hitting his teens. “The Chief’s kid.”
Ingolf’s eyes flicked to look at hands and wrists, the way the young man held himself and moved. And at the scars that showed when a sleeve of his saffron yellow shirt of linsey-woolsey fell back from a muscular fore arm; there was another along the angle of his jaw. He looked young—probably looked younger than he was; the well-to do didn’t age as fast as ordinary folk—but formidable.
“That’s not just a kid,” he said. “That’s a fighting man. And a very dangerous one, or I miss my bet.”
“Well, yes. He fought with Raen . . . and very well, by all accounts. Took that cut on his face pulling my man out of the water with a Haida trying to spear him, but it was too late.”
“He’s your bossman’s son? The heir?”
“Our Chief’s a woman,” Saba said. “Juniper Mackenzie, herself herself. But he’s her son, right enough—and her tanist.”
At his inquiring glance: “A tanist is . . . sort of an un derstudy. His father was Mike Havel—Lord Bear, some called him, the head of the Bearkiller Outfit, over west of the river. The twins are Havel’s kids too, Rudi’s half sisters; their mother’s Signe Havel . . . He fathered Rudi with the Chief before he married Signe.”
“Yeah, there’s a family resemblance,” Ingolf noted.
High cheekbones and slanted eyes; a trace of Injun there, he thought. The man’s eyes were a light change able gray-blue-green, the girls’ the bright blue of corn flowers; his hair was worn shoulder-length and there was a strong tinge of copper red in its yellow curls. He looked as if he laughed a lot; right now he was grinning at the innkeeper.
“Greetings to the Mackenzie!” Brannigan said grandly, then winked and made a sweeping bow. “You honor our humble establishment.”
“Hey, Tom, I’m not the Mackenzie,” the young man—Rudi—said, shaking his hand; that lilting accent of Saba’s was stronger still with him. “My mother is the Mackenzie. I’m just a Mackenzie, like you and the rest, to be sure.”
“You’re just a clansman, and I’m the Horned Lord come in the flesh,” Brannigan said.
“Well, you are,” Rudi pointed out.
“Only in the Circle,” Brannigan said.
Ingolf looked a question over at the innkeeper’s daughter. “Dad’s High Priest of the Sunhill Coven here,” she said casually. “So when he Calls, the God comes to him. Mom’s the High Priestess. Lady Juniper is High Priestess of the whole Clan, of course—she’s the Goddess on-Earth. The living vessel of the Mother.”
“Oh,” Ingolf said. And I’m not going to ask more about that until I know my way around! he thought.
“You’re not staying at Raven House?” Brannigan went on to . . . Rudi, Ingolf thought. Rudi Mackenzie.
“Nah, Mom and Sir Nigel and the infants are in, and some guests from overseas, and a whole lot of other people from Dun Juniper, so we just dumped the hunting gear there, said hello, and came on over. You mind putting us all up? The girls can share a room if it’s tight, and you can put me and Odard in another.”
“You snore, Rudi,” the other man in the party said; that must be Odard.
He was dressed like the brown-haired woman in T-TUNIC, shirt and pants; his were of beautifully woven dark blue cloth embroidered around the neck and hem with gold, but there was a circle on his chest with what looked like a Chinese symbol in it—Ingolf knew enough to recognize them. He went on with the air of a man making a concession:
“You could chivalrously sleep here on the floor by the hearth and give your room to the Princess. It would be more suitable to her state to have one all to herself.”
“I’m not sharing with you, Odard,” the brown-haired woman said, pointing a finger.
“Oh, of course not, Your Highness,” the man said smoothly. “I said all to yourself, didn’t I?”
“Then you’d have to sleep on the floor too, Odard.” Rudi grinned. “Which isn’t like you. Chivalry or not.”
“No, no, you sleep in front of the hearth, Rudi, and I’ll share with the twins.”
“And then you wake up, Odard,” one of the siblings said.
Her sister just snorted; they both looked down their noses at him—about half-serious, Ingolf thought.
“No, plenty for you and the princess and your friends to have one each,” Brannigan said, laughing at the by play. “Business gets slow after the Horse Fair, and slower after Mabon. Highway 20 won’t be open much longer—it may be closed now. They’ve already had snow up there, though we got one in from over the Santiam Pass just a little while ago—that’s him. He’s from far back east, way far. East of the Mississippi!”
He nodded towards the booth in a corner; Ingolf raised his glass politely as they nodded at him; they looked in frank curiosity, then gave him what he recognized as the same expert’s once over he’d given Rudi. There was a little more than that in the way the three young women looked at him; they put their heads together and said something in a language he didn’t recognize, and giggled for a moment.
Then they went off to their own table, still bickering amiably. Like pups in a litter, he thought tolerantly, from the lofty height of twenty-eight, and asked: “Princess?”
“Oh, that’s Mathilda Arminger,” Saba said. “She comes from up north; her father was the Lord Protec tor of Portland, and she’s his heir, so they call her the princess. Mike Havel and he killed each other in the War of the Eye, eleven years ago—no, sure and I’m lying, it’s twelve years the now. By the Sun Lord and the Foam-Born, but the wheel turns faster each time!”
Ingolf felt his brows go up. “Their kids seem awful friendly,” he said.
And meant it. He recognized the playful banter, of a style you used only with those you knew well, and it brought a pang of loneliness. He hadn’t had the like since the Villains were wiped out last year.
“Long story,” Saba said. “Part of the peace agreement was that she’d come here for part of the year, and Rudi . . . Artos . . . would go north.”
He nodded thoughtfully; that sort of mutual exchange of hostages was common enough. The Bossmen of Richland and Ellisworth had a similar arrangement bac
k home, which was a big improvement on calling out your farmers and their following of refugees to burn down barns and chop one another up.
“And the other guy is Sir Odard Liu; he’s a knight of the Association—the Portland Protective Association, that’s what their top people call themselves—who comes down with her. His father was a nasty piece of work, too; Lady Eilir and Lady Astrid killed him—”
At his inquiring look she amplified: “Lady Eilir is the Chief’s eldest child; Lady Astrid is the twins’ aunt, their mother’s sister and Mike Havel’s sister in law, she’s the Hiril of the Dúnedain Rangers. They’re anamchara, soul sisters. Astrid’s married to Lord Alleyne, the son of the Chief’s husband, Sir Nigel. His son by his first wife back in England, that is . . . he and the Chief have two daughters. Sorry to dump all this on you!”
He filed away the unfamiliar names and relationships; family was usually the key to understanding politics, which could mean life and death.
“And Odard?”
“Odard’s not bad . . . except that he thinks he’s the Lady’s own gift to women.”
“That’s a delusion I’ve never had,” Ingolf said. “I always thought it was more that women are God’s gift to an undeserving mankind.”
That got him a laugh. He went on: “You’ve got a mixed lot in here.”
“We do,” she said pridefully. “The Sheaf and Sickle is famous all through the valley.”
She pointed out a few. “Those two are Bearkillers, from over to the west of here; Mike Havel founded their outfit.”
A tough-looking pair, with bold challenging eyes.
“See those little blue scars between their brows? That means they’re initiates of the A list—sort of like being knights, but they’re a lot less likely to be assholes than the ones from the Protectorate, sure. And that’s a monk from Mount Angel. Father Ignatius—if there were more like him, I’d think better of Christians. No offense.”
“None taken,” Ingolf said, sincerely enough.
The cleric was a spare muscular young man in a black hooded robe; Catholic clergy were still thin on the ground back east, but Ingolf would have pegged him for a fighting man, except for the dress. He read from a small book and told a rosary with his left hand, occasionally taking a sip of wine or a bite of a frugal dinner of bread and cheese and smoked fish.