The Scourge of God, page 11
“It was her idea,” Mary and Ritva said in perfect unison, each pointing at the other.
Odard’s smile grew a little strained. “All right; thank you to whichever evil, teasing bitch preserved my lute. I’m fond of it.”
“She’s evil teasing bitch Number One,” one of them said, pointing to the other. “And I’m evil teasing bitch Number Two.”
“You are not! I’m evil teasing bitch Number Two!”
Ingolf laughed, which did Rudi’s heart good to see. The big Easterner extended a hand.
“That’s a pretty instrument,” he said. “Could I see it for a moment?”
“It’s not a guitar,” Odard said in warning as he handed it over.
The man from Wisconsin touched his strong battered fingers to the strings with a tender delicacy.
“I know. My mother’s sister was a luthier. Aunt Alice loved the oldtimey music. She was a bit touched after the Change—she was in Racine on the day of it, showed up nearly dead at our door in Readstown six months later, never talked about how she came through—but she could make ones almost as fine as this, and play them too. Taught quite a few people.”
Odard’s instrument had a spruce sounding board with a carving of vines over the sound hole, and touches of mother-of-pearl and rose-wood along the edges of the swelling body. It was actually his second-best lute, of course; you didn’t take the finest on a trip like this. Ingolf began strumming.
“You don’t have fireflies out here, do you?” he asked. “Not that I’ve seen, anyway.”
“No,” one of the twins said. “We’ve heard of them . . . bugs that glow?”
“Glowing bugs? Like the stars are little lights in the sky,” he said, and his fingers began coaxing out a tune from the six-course instrument, plaintive and sad. “It’s a pity you’ve never seen ’em. There’s nothing prettier than fireflies on the edge of a field in a summertime night, with that sweet smell off the corn, and a little mist coming up from the river. Like stars come to earth, winking at you . . .
“Like the lights I shall never see again
The fireflies come and sing to me
Of trains and towns and friends long gone—”
He had a deep voice, a little hoarse but true; the twins began to sing along after a while, and then some of the Mormons joined in. Most people were happy to learn a new tune, since it was about the only way to increase your stock of music.
“Alice made that one; she surely did love the fireflies, and it was a pleasure to hear her singing while she watched them from the veranda. We kids caught some in a jar once and gave them to her, but she cried until we let them go. She was a bit touched, like I said, but good-hearted.”
He passed the lute back to Odard, who gave him a considering look and played another tune. Rudi rested his chin on Mathilda’s head while they listened. Yawns signaled the end of the impromptu sing-along.
“Did you bother to take a bath?” he said teasingly, sniffing loudly.
“And on that note!” she replied, and headed off for her bedroll.
Rudi yawned himself and stretched, looking up. The stars grew as his fire-dazzled sight adjusted, even more thickly frosted across the sky than they would be at home; the air of this high desert was thin and dry, and the Belt of the Goddess shone in red and yellow and azure blue. A little away from the fire Ingolf sat looking at the embers, rubbing his hands across his face occasionally. The relaxed pleasure that had shown while he sang was gone.
There’s a man who’s afraid to sleep, Rudi thought with concern. And he isn’t a man to be governed by his fears, usually. I wish I were better at mind healing, or that Mother or Aunt Judy were here!
Father Ignatius came back from an inconspicuous tour around the outer perimeter of the camp, left hand on the hilt of his sword and the right telling his beads. He bent to speak softly to the man; Ingolf shook his head with a moment’s crooked smile, and the priest went to his own sleeping place. A little way from that, something flashed in the dying light of the fire. Rudi turned his head and saw Mary snatch a gold coin out of the air; Ritva looked a little put out, and watched carefully as her twin slapped the little ten-dollar piece on the back of her left hand and uncovered it.
Rudi wouldn’t have been entirely satisfied with letting that stand. Both the sisters were cat-quick, and they practiced sleight of hand for amusement and use as well, and while both were honorable neither had much in the way of scruples—you had to know them well to know how they saw the difference. Evidently Ritva felt the same way. The two young women spoke a moment more, then faced off and did scissors-paper-rock instead. Ritva lost two out of three, shrugged and rolled herself in her blankets.
I wonder what that was about, Rudi thought. He looked up; they’d take the third watch together, when that star was there. So they couldn’t be settling that.
His own would start in three quarters of an hour, which was not enough time to be worth sleeping. Instead he pinned his plaid, picked up his sword and walked a little out of camp, then climbed the rock under which they’d camped. The steep crumbling surface required careful attention in starlight, particularly as he went quietly, but in a few minutes he was atop it, six or seven hundred feet above the rolling plain.
It stretched on every side, dark beneath the stars, pale where the green of sage or the bleached straw of the summer-dried grass caught a little light, the shapes of the conical hills curiously regular, and there a glitter on a stretch of obsidian. He controlled his breathing, deep and steady, and opened himself to the land, to the smell of dust and rock and the coolness of night.
“Well, perhaps they were wiser than I thought, the old Americans, to make this a monument,” he murmured.
No light showed in the circuit of the horizon, and he could see for many miles from here. A few minutes, and an owl went by beneath the steep northern edge of the rock, a silent hunter’s rush through the night that ignored him as if he was part of the landscape. Far and far a lobo howled, a sobbing sound deeper and more mournful than a song-dog. Its pack echoed the call, and Rudi nodded; he’d amused himself by counterfeiting that sound many a night when he was out in the woods and wilds, hunting or traveling, and having the fur-brothers answer him as if he were one of theirs.
What are our wars and our kingdoms to them? It makes you realize our littleness, and how everything has its own concerns, he thought. But the Lord and Lady have given us power to mar or mend the world beyond what the four-foot brethren have. So it’s for the world and all Their children that the Powers are concerned with humankind’s doings, as well as for our own sake.
He knelt and drew his sword, laying it on the sheath and sitting back on his heels, with his hands on his thighs and his vision centered on it. The forge marks in the damascened steel were like ripples in watered silk, dim and sinuous in the starlight; Mathilda had given this blade to him for his birthday when he turned eighteen and had his full height, though it had been a touch heavy for him then. The blade proper was just long enough to reach his hip bone with the point on the ground, tapering gradually from three fingers’ width to a long point, and the cross-guard had been forged of a piece with it, something that took a master smith. The hilt was long enough for both single- and double-handed grips, wrapped with breyed leather cord and brass wire, and it had a plain fishtail pommel; you had to look closely to see the Triple Moon inlaid there, rose gold in silver.
Rudi Mackenzie had grasped the Sword of Art in his infant fingers, when Juniper had held him over the altar in the Nemed at his Wiccanning. Something, Someone had spoken through her then, and she’d made prophecy. He’d been but a babe, of course, but he’d heard the words often enough since. Now he spoke them softly to himself:
“Sad Winter’s child, in this leafless shaw—
Yet be Son, and Lover, and Horned Lord!
Guardian of My sacred Wood, and Law—
His people’s strength—and the Lady’s sword!”
A sword isn’t like a spear or an ax or a knife. It’s the tool that humankind make only for the slaying of our own breed, Rudi thought. So You have chosen me for the warrior’s path. And as husband to the land, father to the folk, I must walk in the guise of the God, the strong One who wards Your people. But You know my mind. I don’t fear death; when it’s my time to walk with You, Dread Lord, and know rest and rebirth, I am ready. I don’t fear battle, though I do not delight in it. It’s . . . that others depend on me and look to me that harrows my heart; my friends, my kin, those I love, those whose need I must serve. I fear to fail them.
He’d made the usual evening devotion, but a sudden sharp need seized him; he wasn’t one to be always bothering the Powers, like an importunate child tugging at his mother’s kilt and whining for attention, but . . .
Rudi raised his hands above his head, palm pressed to palm:
“Bless me with your love, Lord and Lady, for I am Your child.”
The hands moved to his forehead, thumbs on the center where the Third Eye rested:
“Bless my vision with the light of wisdom.”
To the throat, and:
“Bless my voice, that it may speak truth.”
To the heart:
“Bless my heart with perfect love, even for my foes, for each is also Your child.”
To the spot below the breastbone:
“Bless my will with strength of purpose, that I may not falter on the red field of war.”
To the loins:
“Bless my passions with balance, making even hate serve love.”
To the root chakra, at the base of the spine:
“Bless my silent self with clarity, that I may shun error.”
To the soles of the feet:
“Bless all my journey in this world, that my path be the path of honor, until my accounting to the Guardians.”
Then he held his hands up, palms before his face:
“Bless my hands, that they may do Your work on this Your earth.”
Finally pressed together above his head once more:
“Bless me and receive my love, Lord and Lady, for You are mine as I am Yours; you powerful God, you Goddess gentle and strong, hear your child.”
Smiling to himself, he took up the sword and sheathed it, a quick flick and a hiss of steel on wood and leather greased with neatsfoot oil, and the ting as the guard met mount at the mouth of the scabbard. Suddenly a shooting star streaked across the dome of heaven, and he chuckled.
“Well, I can’t say You don’t have a sense of timing!”
Edain was waiting for him at the base of the rock. Garbh sat at his heel and grinned with the tongue-lolling happiness of a dog about to take a country walk with two of her people-pack amid thousands of interesting new scents.
“Did you see the falling star?” the younger Mackenzie said.
They headed off to the northwest, which would be their watch-station.
“I did that,” Rudi said, grinning in the dark. “I did that.”
“Huh?” Ingolf Vogeler said, startled out of an evil dream.
Someone was close, very close. He pretended to drop back into sleep, but his hand crept to the staghorn hilt of his bowie, beneath the folded blanket he was using as a cover for his saddlebag pillow. The rough horn slipped into his palm, and he prepared to coil up off the ground . . .
“Well, I’m not here to have a knife fight!” someone whispered.
“Oh,” he said; it was a woman’s voice.
The face of one of the twins was close to him as she knelt, smiling. “Though I could probably have killed you if I wanted to.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, true enough. Ah, Ritva—”
“Mary,” she said. “But I sort of like you, actually, Ingolf.” A smile. “That was really pretty music.”
The smile was expectant; that gradually turned to a slight frown as he shoved the bowie back into its scabbard and sat up, scrubbing at his face. That was a mistake, since the bruises were still fresh enough to make him wince. His wits returned, enough to realize that she was carrying her bedding and dressed only in her shirt . . . though she had her scabbarded sword in one hand with the belt wound around it, like a sensible person in the circumstances.
It was late; his eyes flicked automatically to the stars, and read them as past midnight. Nobody would be up now except the lookouts.
“Uh . . .” He flogged himself to full awareness as she sat beside him and put an arm around his waist. “Umm, I sort of like you too, Mary.”
I must be older than I thought, ran through his mind. Or more depressed. A beautiful half-naked blonde is propositioning me, and I’m not actually leaping at the chance. Well, part of me is, but the rest isn’t.
Her smile returned and got broader—the part that was leaping was sort of obvious through the blanket. He was suddenly aware of the sunny smell of her hair, still slightly damp from bathing in the spring-water, and the way her breast brushed against his arm where she leaned against him.
“If you want me to get specific,” she murmured into his ear, “you’re brave and smart and you’ve got a good sense of humor when you’re not depressed and you’ve got a really cute butt. And I’ve known you for months now, so that’s not a snap judgment.”
“Well, I was real sick for the first couple of months.” Then he realized why he was oddly reluctant, enough that his mind was overriding the hammering of his pulse.
Saba. We’d only just met that night I rode into Sutterdown, and that was the last time I was with a woman.
The curved Cutter knife had been rising above him as he woke beside her. He swallowed as he remembered the way she’d shrieked as the Cutter’s knife went in, and the way it had looked and smelled. Far too much like the sound and smell when the hog butcher put his spiked pincers on the beast’s nose in the fall . . . and that lay over the memory of what had gone before.
“Look,” he said slowly. “I . . . last time . . .”
“Ah,” she said sadly, and put a hand on his arm and squeezed the thick bicep. “Saba. I’m sorry to bring it back to mind, but she’d smile at us from the Summerlands, really.”
“I don’t seem to be good luck for women,” he said. “Not since, well, not since Corwin. My luck generally speaking sucks since then. I—” He swallowed. “I don’t want to risk anyone else. I like you, Mary. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“That’s all right,” she said sunnily. “My luck’s good enough for two. And I’m a Ranger ohtar, a warrior by trade. Got to take my chances.”
“Ummm—” Christ, but I seem to be saying that a lot. “Look, Mary . . . we’re friends, right? So can I ask you honestly . . . you’re not doing this because you’re sorry for me, are you?”
“No, of course not!” she said. Then: “Well, not mostly. Being sad makes you more sexy; women think that way, you know.”
“You do?”
“Usually. You know, the brooding thing, and it’ll be a big charge to make you happy again. If you’re interesting to start with.” The grin grew broader. “And happiness is on the program.”
She moved suddenly, straddling his lap. His arms went around her involuntarily, and suddenly he could hear her heart pounding as hard as his. The problem with that was that it brought back the memory of the last time really strongly. Mary gave a slight yelp as his hands closed on her, and then she looked down in puzzlement.
“What’s wrong?” she said. “Things were fine, and then . . . look, I did take a bath . . .”
“Ummm, I’m real flattered.” He was; it wasn’t often you got an outright offer like this. Of course, both times it had been witches. “As long as you really want . . .”
“Sure! I won the toss, didn’t I?”
“Toss?” he said, jarring to a halt.
“Well, Ritva and I are identical twins. We usually want the same thing. So we tossed for you. Well, then we did paper-scissors-stone. She cheats.”
Ingolf felt his jaw drop slightly. Girls back home weren’t necessarily shy, or coy about telling a man their mind under the right circumstances, but . . .
“You won me?” he squeaked.
“It’s not as if there’s much of a selection.” At his gape, she stroked his head and went on: “Ingolf, there’s you, there’s our brother, there’s a celibate Catholic priest, and there’s two kids. I mean, Edain? Cradle robbing.”
“He’s about your age,” Ingolf said weakly.
“That makes him younger. And boys that age are even more dicks on legs than men your age. Besides, he’s scared of us.”
“There’s Odard . . .” And I can’t believe I said that!
“Euuu! He’s been trying to get into our pants since we were sixteen! Euuu! He’d smirk. And it’s Matti he really wants. Besides, he’s too . . . smooth.”
“I’m not smooth?”
“No, you’re rugged.”
“Look, Mary . . .” he said slowly. Are these words really coming out of my mouth? “I . . . well, I like you a lot, but I haven’t, you know, thought of you that way.” Except in passing. “Couldn’t we, ummm, get to know each other better—”
That was evidently not the right thing to say; she reared back like an offended cat and moved away from his embrace. Half of him wanted to snatch her back . . . and he was humiliatingly aware that some of the other half was sheer fear that he couldn’t, not after what happened in Sutterdown.
“Eny!” she said, and then a sputter of musical syllables he knew were Sindarin, though he hadn’t learned more than the odd word. “Men!”
Actually, that let’s-get-to-know-each-other-first is usually the girl’s line, he thought, bemused, as she flounced back to where her sister lay.
Slowly a smile spread over his face as he lay back and pulled up his blankets. His body was giving a sharp protest at what he’d done, and a big part of his mind was agreeing, yearning for the sheer comfort of closeness. The rest of him . . .
Maybe she didn’t just set out to make me feel better, but for some reason I do!
CHAPTER FOUR
CASTLE TODENANGST, PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION
