Edain listened and snorted quietly to himself. He’d seen enough in this visit to know that any Association aristo would say that sort of thing, and a lot of them were right bastards all the same. Evidently Rudi thought this one meant it, though—he’d gotten to know the man while he was up north in Protectorate territory on his yearly visits.
That was why Juniper Mackenzie’s son and tanist had agreed to speak for the wagon train’s owners. Edain and his three friends had come along for the fun of the thing, this being after Mabon and slack time on their parents’ crofts. There were casks of Brannigan’s Spe cial and carved horn cups from Bend and raw turquoise and such packed in the wagons, and blankets and cloaks woven on Mackenzie looms—his own mother’s and sister’s among them.
He let the conversation blur into the background noise of hooves and wheels on gravel and looked around instead; he’d come along on this trip with Rudi to see new things.
That I have! he thought.
The ruins of Salem, the steel gates of Larsdalen, great empty-eyed skyscrapers in Portland staring like lost spir its of the past at the present-day pomp of tournament and court, the majesty of the Columbia gorge and hang gliders dancing through it like autumn leaves, Astoria and its tall ships and crews from as far away as Chile and Hawaii, Tasmania and New Singapore and Hinduraj . . .
And the sea, the Mother’s sea. And whales! And sea lions!
His eyes went left, towards the ocean about a mile away. The great gray vastness of the Pacific was out of sight now—fog still clung in drifts and banks over the flat green fields of the Tillamook plain.
It gave them glimpses as if curtains were drawn aside for an instant and then dropped back. They rode past drainage ditches and levees and rows of poplars with leaves gone brown-gold and the skeletal shape of a windmill that pumped water to dry out the soggy land. Cows with red and yellow and brown coats grazed between rose hedges, mostly on the rich grass of the common pastures; now and then there were fields that looked like reaped oats, and potatoes; others bore ranks of rosebushes, an odd looking thing to be grown like a crop, and he wished he could see them in summer’s glory.
He could smell the sea, though, the wild deep salt of it, and the rich silty scent of the vast salt marshes on the seaward edge of the plain. They were full of wildfowl at this time of year too, and the gobbling and honking and thrashing of their wings came clear.
A village passed, stirring to the morning’s work and giving off a mouthwatering scent of cooking and baking; there was a roadside calvary; then a manor’s sprawling outbuildings, and ahead the gray concrete of a castle’s tower on a hill, with the town walls of Tillamook glimpsed at the edge of sight when a gust parted the fog for a mo ment. A fisherman had told them there would likely be an onshore breeze most mornings. The view would be better from the castle where they’d be guesting. . . .
And I’m sharp set for breakfast.
They did an excellently good veal and potato pie here, and fine things with seafood you couldn’t get in the Clan’s home territory.
The baron’s young son dropped his pony back from where the talk had turned boringly to trade. His father’s men at-arms and crossbowmen rode on the left side of the road, and the four Mackenzies who’d come with Rudi on the right, and behind it all the wagons and the clansfolk from Sutterdown who were wrangling them. He angled back towards the fascinating strangers and gave a would-be regal nod.
“The best of the morning to you, young sir,” Edain said.
That was polite enough, and Mackenzies didn’t call anyone lord—even the Chief herself herself, the Mac kenzie, much less some foreign kid in strange clothes.
The boy was dressed in a miniature version of his father’s green leather and wool hunting garb, down to the arms in the heraldic shield on the chest of his jerkin—a round cheese one-half sinister, with a Holstein head dexter, a crossed sword and crossbow below. He also had a real if boy sized sword; otherwise he looked like any tow-haired and freckled seven-year-old.
“You guys sure talk funny,” the lad said seriously.
“And sure, we think you northerners are the ones who talk funny,” Edain replied, exaggerating his lilt and winking.
The youngster laughed, but Edain did think that; the Portlanders’ accent was flat and a little grating to an ear accustomed to the musical rise and fall the younger clansfolk put into English, and the nobles here sprinkled their talk with words from some foreign language in an absurd, affected fashion.
The boy threw a look at their kilts and plaids and bon nets; Rinn Smith and Otter Carson had painted up too, with designs on their faces in black and scarlet and green and gold—designs of Fox and Dragon, for their sept to tems. Not from serious expectation of a fight, but to play to the Clan’s image and look fierce for the outlanders. Rinn thought it impressed outlander girls no end, often onto their backs in a haystack, to hear him tell it, but then he was a boaster who’d have worn himself away to a shadow in the past couple of weeks if everything he claimed was true.
And he’s not traveling with his girlfriend.
“And you wear weird clothes, too,” the nobleman’s son went on. “Even weirder than Bearkillers or the people from Corvallis.”
“They are strange there,” Edain agreed gravely. Though not so strange as you Portlanders.
“You’ve been to all those places?”
“To most of them. The wagons have come direct from the Clan’s land, but the young Mackenzie and we have been wandering with our feet free and our fancy our only master for weeks now, and only joined them these last days.”
Pure sea-green envy informed the look he got. “Cool! I’m going to go to be a page at the Lady Regent’s court in a couple of years, in Portland and Castle Todenangst and places. So I can learn to be a squire and then a knight and stuff. That’ll be cool too.”
Edain found himself grinning; he’d come into the wide world himself now and seen some of the wonders of it, but to the lad this little pocket of farm and forest by the sea was the world, just as Dun Fairfax had been to him at that age. More so, because he’d had Dun Juniper just an hour’s walk away, with all its comings and goings, and the Mackenzie herself dropping by to talk with his father. This place was a backwater.
The boy drew himself up then, consciously remembering his manners.
“I’m Gaston Strangeways,” he said, left hand on the pommel of his miniature sword. “Son and heir of Baron Juhel Strangeways—Lord Juhel de Netarts, guardian of County Tillamook, with the right of the high justice, the middle and the low.”
“It’s an impressive array of titles, that it is,” Edain said, and they shook hands solemnly, leaning over in their saddles.
“And his father was a knight, too. Even before the Change. He died a year ago, the same time the count did.”
Edain had suffered through hour after hour of tedium in the Dun Fairfax school from his unwilling sixth summer to glad escape at twelve, and some of the pre-Change history lessons had rubbed off.
“I don’t think they had knights or barons or counts before the Change, the old Americans,” he said. “They had lobbyists and presidents and consultants instead.”
“In the Society,” young Gaston said. “Granddad told me about the tournaments and things.” Then he cleared his throat and went on formally: “Welcome to our lands.”
Edain grinned again; toploftiness like that was irritating from a grown man, but funny when it was a kid.
“And I’m Edain Aylward Mackenzie,” he said. “My sept’s totem is Wolf.”
The boy’s eyes went a little wider. “You’re Aylward the Archer?” he said breathlessly.
Then an accusation: “You’re not old enough! The Archer fought in the Protector’s War, and my dad wasn’t old enough for that. Granddad fought in that war and he got his limp then.”
“That’s my dad you’d be thinking of,” Edain said, a little sourly. “Sam Aylward, first armsman of the Clan. Well, he was until a couple of years ago.”
Hecat
e of the Crossroads and Him called the Wan derer, hear me; now wouldn’t it be a braw thing to travel far enough that people think of me when I say my name’s Aylward! I love my dad, but it’s like being a mushroom growing on an old oak, sometimes.
“Oh. Well. That’s cool too, you’ve got ancestors. . . . Did the Archer make your bow? Can I see it?”
“He did that, and you can. Careful now! It’s well oiled with flaxseed, but I’d not want to drop it in this wet.”
Edain reached over his shoulder and slid the long yew stave free of the carrying loops. It was strung, and the boy tried to draw it after he’d admired the patterned carving of the antler horn nocks and the black walnut root riser. The young Mackenzie let him struggle with it, and there were chuckles from the rest of the clansfolk as the youngster handed it back and said gravely, “That’s a pretty heavy draw.” He looked at Edain as he returned it. “I’ve heard a lot about Mackenzie archers. Is it true you guys are witches and can make magic, too?”
“Well, I’m not much of a spell caster myself, beyond the odd little thing to keep the sprites and the house-hob friendly, or for luck when I’m hunting—”
“I shot a rabbit with my crossbow just last week. It was eating the cabbages in Father Milton’s garden.”
“Sure, and if the little brothers won’t mind your gardens, that’s what you must do. Also a rabbit is good eating.”
“Could you teach me a spell for luck when I’m hunting?”
“Mmmmm, I think your Father Milton might not like you making luck spells, so you’d best ask him for a prayer to your saints, instead. We’re followers of the Old Religion, which you are not,” he said, touching the Clan’s moon-and-antlers sigil on his brigandine.
Then he glanced aside at his lover, Eithne.
“Now, this one you’d better be careful of!” he said, teasingly solemn. “A priestess of the second degree! She can sing a bird out of the bough, and ’chant a cow’s teats to give butter ready churned, and blind a man’s eyes with love by a rune cut on a fingernail. The fae themselves give her a wide berth, hiding beneath root and rock unless she bids them fetch her tea and spin wool for her, the which they do in fear and trembling before her power, so.”
The boy looked at her wide eyed and crossed himself. “Is that why you’ve got a girl along?” he said, loading the descriptive word with scorn. “ ’Cause she’s a real witch?”
The mounted Mackenzies all laughed. The four of them were every one younger than Rudi; old enough to travel and fight but not solid householders weighed down with responsibilities like the group by the wagons. Eithne stuck out her tongue at the boy, or possibly at Edain. She was eighteen too, a tall lanky brown eyed girl with skin one shade darker than olive and long black braids falling from beneath her Scots bonnet. The clasp on that held a spray of feathers from a red-tailed hawk, to show her sept totem, and she had a round yel low flower tucked behind one ear, late-blooming coast maida.
“It’s because otherwise the boys wouldn’t know what to do, the dear creatures, without a woman along,” she said, her tone mock-lofty. “Pretty? They are that, but dim. Ná glac pioc comhairie gan comhairie ban, as the Chief would say. It’s a female’s guidance you need when advice is given.”
“Very true! That’s why I’ve got Garbh with me,” Edain said guilelessly.
The big rawboned bitch walking at his horse’s heels should have looked up at the sound of her name. Instead she made a sound halfway between a whine and growl, stopping stock still and looking westward, the heavy matted fur over her shoulders rising and her ears cocked forward.
“Aire!” Edain shouted, loud as he could. “Beware!”
He blushed furiously as his voice broke despite the sudden sharp stab of alarm, but the clansfolk stiffened at the danger call.
He had just enough time to flip off his bonnet and slap his sallet helm over his curls before he heard something. Something familiar as breathing: the wshhssst sound of arrows cleaving air, but this wasn’t a practice ground back home, or a riverside thicket with an elk in it. Some one was shooting at them, and doing it while he couldn’t see three times arm’s length.
“Down!” he yelled, conscious of eyes turning towards him. “Incoming!”
Young Gaston was still on his pony, gaping. Edain kicked his feet out of the stirrups and dove off his bor rowed mount, grabbing the boy as he did and hugging him to his chest, turning his back to the deadly whistle. Black arrows with red-dyed fletching went smack into the mud around him. There was a harder, wetter thwack as one struck flesh, and someone screamed, and a horse bugled pain and fear. Then a hard bang and something hit him between the shoulder blades, also hard. Pain lanced through him, but it was gone in a moment—the little steel plates riveted inside his brigandine had shed the point.
“Down and stay down,” he shouted to Gaston, throw ing the boy flat in the roadside ditch. “Garbh—guard! Stay!”
Then he had his own bow out, slanting it to keep the lower tip off the ground as he knelt. As he whipped an arrow out of his quiver, he was suddenly and wildly certain that someone out there was trying to kill him, and felt an indignation he knew even then was absurd.
A high screaming rose from the misty field west of the road, and spears and axes glinted through the fog.
“Haiiiii-DA!” they called, a rhythmic screeching. “Haiiiii-DA!”
His father had told him that it was the waiting beforehand that was the time of fear, and you were too busy for it when the red work began. It turned out to be not quite that way for him; he was aware of being afraid, but he didn’t have any attention to spare for the emotion.
Most of the strangers’ arrows hit the Protectorate men on that side of the road, or whistled past into the fields and fog. Then there was a roaring onrush of half-seen figures, running in to strike in the confusion.
Edain drew and shot and drew, shot and drew and shot again, the deadly fast ripple he’d been taught from infancy, something else he didn’t have to think about, and the other Mackenzies were with him. His quiver was half empty when a man in a helmet with a raven beak covering half his face came at him no more than arm’s length away, spear drawn back for a thrust, a shield cov ered with blocky angular patterns in his other hand. Edain dropped his bow and snatched for shortsword and buckler, feeling as if he were moving through thick honey. . . .
The snarling tattooed face behind the mask’s beak went slack with shocked surprise as a horse floated by behind him with a flash of steel.
“Morrigú!” Rudi Mackenzie shouted in a voice like brass and steel as he struck.
He swung the long blade in an arc that crunched into someone who staggered back in ruin on the other side. His black horse reared, its milling forefeet smashing heads and shoulders as he called again on the Crow Goddess.
“Morrigú! Morrigú!”
Edain had his own sword out now, and the buckler in his left fist. His friends were with him and they rushed across the road, shouting their totem war cries; some where he could feel part of his mind gaping in bewil dered horror, but he was too busy for that, too busy howling and hitting, spinning and dodging and leaping over a hiss of steel and stabbing as he came down. . . .
Shapes loomed up out of the fog, a man swinging an ax at a fallen crossbowman. Edain punched him with the buckler before he could look up and felt a shivery sensation as a jaw broke beneath the steel.
There were shouts all around him. Haiiiii-DA; calls of Haro! and Saint Guthmund for Tillamook! Farther off a church bell started to ring, and a hand-cranked siren wailed from the castle’s tower.
Then suddenly there was nobody within sight standing up except the people he’d started with. A man sprawled in unlovely death at his feet, dark eyes wide in surprise at the arrow in his chest. A broad built broad-faced man not much older than he was, very dark, with blood in his black hair, wearing a jacket of sealskin sewn with bracelet-sized steel rings. A short thick bow of yew and whalebone and sinew lay near his hand and a dented steel cap not far away.
>
Edain stood panting and glaring around; Eithne handed him his bow, and he checked it automatically be fore sliding it back into the loops. He still had half of his arrows left. The fight had been too brief and too brutally close-quarters to shoot them all away.
Rudi cantered up, the visor of his helm up, and the baron with him.
“They must have come in before dawn,” Juhel Strange ways de Netarts said, and then swore lividly: “Satan’s arsehole, with piles like fat acorns! They’ll be all over the country between the bay and the hills by now, stealing and kidnapping—”
“So we’ll cut them off from their boats, before they can get back with loot and prisoners,” Rudi snapped. “Where will they have come ashore?”
“Over there,” Juhel replied, pointing a little south of west with his red running broadsword. “It’s the best spot near here—where we pull up the boats—no water deep enough anywhere else short of Bay City. They’ll have one of their schooners off the coast. They tow the landing boats down from the islands for longshore raids, damn them. It’s a good idea to take their boats, but I have to rally my retainers and the militia! Otherwise we can’t hit them hard enough to overrun them.”
“Juhel, we Mackenzies will keep them busy. You get your people together and relieve us—get them ready, but for the sweet Lady’s sake, don’t take too long!”
He swung down from Epona’s back and looped up the reins to the saddlebow; the horse followed him like a dog, but this wasn’t the weather for playing at knights, nor were there many Mackenzies besides Rudi who could. Edain and the clansfolk fell in behind him, his friends and a round dozen from the wagons, led by a lanky man named Raen with the twisted gold torc of a married man around his neck; he was old Tom Brannigan’s son in-law.