The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) (19 page)

“Royal courier,” Órlaith said after a moment.

She recognized the tack, the breed of the nondescript but enduring ponies, and the tight riding leathers that made it easier, or less hard, to take the brutal pounding of their duties.

“Aye,” Diarmuid said. “Dòmhnall, he’ll need stabling fra those thrae nags.”

“We’ve nae room, nor much hay, nor oats,” the young man with the ragged ear pointed out. “I cannae magic them oot o’ the ground, ye ken, nair pull ’em frae ma backside.”

“Well, find wha’ ye can!” Diarmuid said.

He looked slightly harassed; the Tennarts kept only a few dual-purposes horses of their own, and were massively overloaded with the Royal party’s beasts. The manure for their fields was only a partial compensation.

“We’ll be on our way soon, Diarmuid, that we will,” Órlaith said gently.

It was a perfectly legitimate anxiety, since there was simply no easy way to get more fodder or oats into the steading; no amount of gold could compensate for the simple fact that there was no wagon road. He’d already driven all his own livestock up to the shielings, the mountainside summer pastures, considerably earlier than was wise given the possibility of late freezes or snow on the heights. Bad weather now could cost his family assets it would take years to fully replace. She reminded herself to check on that later; gold
could
replace livestock, since an animal carried itself, and though Diarmuid wouldn’t ask she’d see any losses made good.

The courier drew rein and raised a hand in salute. It was a woman; Órlaith recognized her, one of the small corps of endurance riders the Crown reserved for urgent work. Susan Mika—Clever Raccoon—was a slender dark wire-tough youngster in her late teens or early twenties, with her black braids done up high on the back of her head in a fashion out of the eastern marchlands of the Kingdom. Right now she looked a decade older with exhaustion and a liberal coating of mud and dust and mixtures of the two, and anyway she’d never specified her birth-year.

She’d shown up at court eighteen months ago with a recommendation from the High King’s friend and blood-brother Rick Three Bears, who was prominent in the loose government of the Lakota
tunwan
 . . . and her
uncle. And accompanied by a private note that the bearer had good if unspecified reasons not to want to go back to the
makol
, the short-grass prairies where her people hunted the buffalo. Not anytime soon, if ever, and as a favor to his old comrade-in-arms could Rudi find her something to do anywhere
else
in Montival, please.

Even for a Lakota she rode well and had passed the tests for the couriers with flying colors, though this wasn’t generally the sort of work women did among the folk of the Seven Council Fires. Which might have been involved in her wanting to leave home, though she had said not a word about it. She had all the quick hot pride of the lords of the high plains though, and had added a few Lakota touches to her standard gear: fringes down the outside of her pants, and beadwork on the sheath of her shete, the broad-bladed curved cutting sword common east of the Rockies, and on her bow-case.

“Scephan‚ši, lila tanyan wacin yanke,”
Órlaith said, in her tongue: “Good to see you, cousin-who-is-female.”

It wouldn’t have been polite to use personal names while she was speaking Lakota. Not in public among strangers; and anyway, she actually was a cousin by that people’s rather elastic definition, since Órlaith’s parents had been formally adopted by Rick’s father’s extended family while they were on the Quest before she had been born. She’d spent a long summer stay there in her teens that she remembered very fondly, and had acquired a Lakota name herself:
Wanbli win,
Golden Eagle Woman.

“Han, mis eya, scephan‚ši,”
the courier replied. “You too, cousin.”

In English again, Clever Raccoon went on a little awkwardly: “I’m really sorry to have this duty, Your Highness. Your father . . . sorry if I’m putting my foot in it, but . . . he was always really good to me. He . . . he
understood
and . . .”

It was getting easier to accept condolences. She was starting to feel them as tributes to her father, rather than blows on her own heartstrings to make her soul quiver in pain. She’d yet to come across anyone who’d known him who hadn’t been touched in a good way when their world-lines crossed.

Except for his enemies, and they’re mostly dead,
Órlaith thought dryly.
Though he always said the best way to destroy an enemy utterly was to win them over.

The messages were rolled in sealed tubes of boiled varnished leather. She took a deep breath and accepted them.

The first had the Chancellery seal. It was from Father Ignatius, the priest-monk from the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict who’d been Lord Chancellor of the High Kingdom as long as there had
been
a High Kingdom. He’d also been one of the original nine who’d gone on the Quest to Nantucket with her father and mother after the Sword of the Lady, and was the only person who’d ever made her seriously consider being a Christian. If her father hadn’t been . . . well, her father . . . it might have worked. She could see the calm tilted almost-black eyes and steady, almost compulsively reasonable voice in her mind as she broke the wax, twisted the cylinder open and read.

The first part was simply information, typewritten:
Your father’s funeral will be held at Dun Juniper in late October, with your grandmother Lady Juniper presiding.

She nodded: that was Samhain, the festival of the dead, though the Christian priest wasn’t outright saying so. And who else to conduct it but his mother, she who had been Goddess-on-Earth for so long?

In the interim, Her Majesty your mother wishes you to return to her and the remainder of your family at Castle Todenangst, bringing your father’s remains and traveling as quickly as is possible without giving offense, and recommends that you mainly use the West Valley Railway with as few diversions as possible. A special hippomotive—

—which was a treadmill arrangement with gearing to let horses propel a train much faster than they could on their own hooves—

—
will be waiting at the Eugene salvage station and relays of fresh horses at the appropriate rest points. The High Queen strongly recommends that your Japanese guests be invited to stay at an appropriate estate near Todenangst until the most urgent family matters are concluded. I concur.

Beneath that was a note in his own neat script:

My child, your father was my King, who it was an honor to serve before all others, saving only God, the Virgin, and Holy Mother Church. But even before that he was my comrade-in-arms, and we fought together against the Adversary’s minions.
Presiding at his and your mother’s wedding was the proudest purely human moment of my life as a priest. Above all, and always, he was my friend. No man ever had a better. Beloved child, I grieve with you as at the loss of a dear brother.

Her mother’s was shorter and simpler:
My golden girl, bring him home to us.

She shuddered and bent her head, holding the stiff rolls to her forehead until a stab of physical pain broke the moment. Then she took a long breath and looked up. Heuradys was standing ready, not pushing forward, just . . . there.

Thank her Gray-Eyed Lady, Herry always
will
be there for me, all our lives.

It made everything seem less . . . crushing. Not less painful, but less hopeless.

“Herry, Mom wants me to join her at Todenangst. And . . .”

She handed over the messages. “Family only,” Heuradys said, reading them quickly and nodding. “I completely understand, Orrey. Look, why don’t I put up Her Highness and the rest of her
menie
at Ath?”

“Can you?” Órlaith asked, sighing a little with relief; that would be very convenient, since Barony Ath was close to Todenangst—not to mention being near a railway line and hooked into the heliograph net. “They’ll be there for a while, not just a day or two. They’re probably going to feel isolated enough without trying to split them up. But Mom and the Chancellor are right, it’ll be better to keep them out of town or Todenangst for now. Close but not right there.”

“I think so . . .”

She paused to consider. “Right, my lord my father is out at Campscapell being Count—there’s some vassal dispute that needs to be tamped down before the swords come out, barons being barons—and Lioncel is with him and so are Audiarda and the kids, by Hera of the Hearth it’s almost indecent how much my lord father loves being a granddad . . . Diomede is out on Barony Harfang with Ysabeau and the rest of my disgustingly numerous nieces and nephews.”

“Who swarm like vermin upon the earth,” Órlaith said with a faint smile; that was an old joke between them—in fact, Heuradys delighted in being an aunt and was an adored presence in their lives.

“Exactly. No rugrats in residence, so it’s just Mom and Yolande the Little Sister from Hell and Auntie Tiph at the manor house. Between Castle Ath and Montinore Manor there’s plenty of room and supplies for the whole Nihonjin party. We’ll put Reiko in the Royal Suite.”

“Tell your lady mother to bill the Crown.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, she’s never shy about sending in receipts. And Mom will love having exotic guests, an Empress will be just nuts and cream to her, and Auntie Tiph will want to know what’s going on and take a look at their gear and methods, so it’s no problem at all. I can shuttle back and forth to Todenangst as needed, then bring them up when it’s time.”

“Let’s do it, then,” Órlaith said. “I want to see Mother and John and Vuissance and Faolán . . . but I’m afraid of it, too. It’s going to tear everything open again.”

Heuradys put a hand on her shoulder, and then they hugged.

“It’s like pulling out an arrowhead,” she said. “You have to go through it to get to the other side.”

“If there’s time,” she said. “Da . . . what happened to Da was just the beginning, I think. You know the saying: sometimes you just have to go on fighting with an arrow in you.”

Ithilien/Moon County, Crown Province of Westria

(Formerly Marin and Sonoma Countie
s, California)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

May 10–12th (Lothron 9–11th), Change Year (Fifth Age) 46/2044 AD

F
aramir leapt over a rock and ducked under a madrone limb as he ran, bow pumping in his left hand and right a little up to protect his face. You could run full-tilt along a rough trail you knew well, even if it was through thicker brush than this, if you didn’t care how much of a track you left. They’d all practiced that many times over the years, on paths all over Ithilien. You could even talk as you ducked and wove and leapt and sweat rolled down your face to sting in your eyes and in scratches and nicks.

Of which he now had plenty. You
couldn’t
run this way and never get lashed across the face, not on this sort of narrow track. If he hadn’t been wearing a helm there would have been raw scrapes in his scalp too from times he’d ducked to save his eyes.

“What . . . the . . . fuck . . . was . . .
that
?” Malfind gasped as he hurdled a log.

Even with the effort of the run his teeth seemed to be chattering. Faramir understood how he felt, but they couldn’t stop to have hysterics now, strong as the impulse to gibber and beat his head on a rock was.

They were gambling that the Eaters and Haida and whatever wouldn’t leave
two
ambush parties behind them. It also just felt good to be running
away from what they’d seen, even if they were running straight towards more of the enemy.

“Gollor,”
Morfind said waspishly; that was the way she dealt with fear. “A magician, or didn’t you
notice
?”

“Skaga,”
Faramir agreed. “Slow down to sustained pace, you two. We may need our wind pretty soon.”

There was just no
time
to be terrified right now, though some things were much more exciting in the Histories than when they happened in real life. Or more heroic in print and less . . . obscurely disgusting than they were in reality, somehow. The more he thought about it, the more he profoundly didn’t want what had just happened to have happened, or even be a possibility.

“Malfind, when we get there, you and I will distract them. Morfind, fire the woodpile when you hear the horn. Then we all run for the Eryn Muir or a good hide, whichever you reach first.”

That gave them
some
chance of living through this. Though not much.

Morfind slid the arrow on the string of her bow back into her quiver and took out another to replace it, something that needed real agility to do without looking around, especially when you were moving along at a pace one step down from a dash. Then she took out a second just like it and held it between her index finger and the riser of her bow. Both were slightly longer than normal arrows, and they had heads that were pointed cylinders shaped like fat pencils as long as a man’s middle finger. From the point of each extended a stubby pin with a flattened end; you twisted that until it clicked, then shot.

“Break left!” Faramir said to her.

The trail forked here. She turned and dashed down the left-hand branch. Faramir and her brother took the right-hand way; the trees were larger and fewer here.

Don’t think about it, don’t think about it,
he thought.
Come on, Ranger, just keep breathing.

They were in deep shade, the crowns of the trees meeting high overhead, but he could see the diffuse golden afternoon gleam of an opening ahead. Three hundred yards, then two hundred—ten-score paces was
long bowshot for him but doable. Hopefully just
beyond
long bowshot for the Eaters and
not
doable.

How far . . . I’ve got to give Morfind a decent chance . . . closer . . .

The underbrush got thicker as they neared the beams of light spearing down from above. There was a glitter of metal ahead, which there shouldn’t have been. Then he could see several dozen figures ahead and downslope, instants before they saw him. Eaters, more of the Cut-Noses, but also Mud Hairs and Sharp Teeth, squatting in separate clumps. No more Haida that he could catch at a glance—thank the Valar!—but at least four or five men in helmets and mail-coats.

He jerked to a halt and raised the mouthpiece of the horn to his mouth. He had to work his lips and spit because his mouth was so dry, and then he took a deep breath and blew, the fingers of his right hand moving across the three holes.

The sound that it gave was
brighter
than most trumpets made from the horns of beasts, higher and truer and with less of the deep braying note. Two long blasts, then three rising ones, and repeat. The echoes spread off through the forest, fading as they carried in every direction—mostly, he hoped, straight south to the Eryn Muir. The Eaters would most certainly know that call, though the Dúnedain changed the others now and then.

It was:
Enemy! Enemy! Enemy!

Heads jerked around, yelps and snarls rose, metal blinked as blades and spearheads pointed towards him.

“Lacho calad! Drego morn!”
he and his cousin shouted in unison, the ancient Dúnedain war-cry. “Flame Light! Flee Night!”

Some deep corner of his mind gave an actual giggle, and the temptation to shout
can’t catch me you poopy-heads
was strong.

The men in mail turned and would have started running towards him if the Eaters hadn’t thrown themselves in the way, yammering. That was notably altruistic of them, but it was probably simply reflex born of the long war: just chasing someone hell-for-leather was a good way to get ambushed. A squat but massive Cut-Nose led the effort, putting his hands against the mailed chests and pushing. Then he turned and snarled at the
yrch
, and instead dozens of bows were raised. All of them seemed to be aimed at Faramir . . . which was more or less true, if you included his cousin.

As the big
orch
moved to shove his archers into position there was the slightest hint of a limp to his movements. This was the one whose twisted track beside the creek had drawn his eye. His hand chopped towards the Rangers.

“Shoot!” Faramir shouted, and did; Malfind followed suit.

The shafts from the recurves arched out. Two hundred yards wasn’t easy, but he could hit a man-sized target that far away about seven times in ten, if the air was still. Targets didn’t dodge, though; these did, and he couldn’t tell whether he’d hit anyone or not. It didn’t really matter, since two bows weren’t going to make much impression on that mob.

There have to be at least—
he began to think.

Whrrt. Whrrrt. Whrrtt
.

Arrows started going by.

—at least fifty of them,
he completed.

Some of the shafts went
thock
into the tree he jumped behind, but not very hard. Others were falling short. The ski-limb bows weren’t nearly as powerful as the weapons the Dúnedain crafters made, though even a minor wound now didn’t bear thinking of.

He put a shaft to the string, dodged out again and shot, and there was a shriek of pain an instant later. The
yrch
were coming forward in short rushes, pausing to shoot betweentimes. They probably hadn’t coordinated it, but the fact that there were three separate bands of them meant that they were covering each other . . . and once they got close, their bows would be quite deadly.

Then:
crack.

A shaft transfixed an oak sapling not ten feet to his right, the end emerging in a shower of blond splinters through a trunk over three inches thick. It was long and made of bamboo, with a narrow pile-shaped point of tempered steel—designed to pierce armor—and fletchings of pheasant feathers, four of them rather than the three vanes common in Montival. The strangers from over-sea had gotten into the act, and there was nothing at all wrong with
their
bows.

A quick glance around the tree showed them starting forward with three men in the forefront holding up big strong-looking rectangular shields, with only their eyes and the peaked helmets showing behind them, crests of horsehair tossing from their tops. The second rank were the archers, though they also carried swords and wore the alien-looking armor of small plates held together with mail.

He grinned tautly, because he
also
saw wisps of smoke starting up from the great pile of split timber under the roof of the storage shed that stood on the other side of the clearing, near the firepits and the tables where feasts were held in summertime. The wisps turned to streamers in seconds, and yellow flame showed. Morfind had been at work, two arrows that nobody noticed and then away. It must have been tricky shooting to get them in under the eaves of the roof, unless she got very close.

When you turned the pin on a fire arrow, you aligned it with a groove inside the head. Then you shot, and the strike on impact drove the pin back and set a friction primer going, much like a match. That ignited the magnesium fuse, and
that
ignited the thermite packed inside the metal tube with a blaze of sputtering violence that was very hot indeed. At those temperatures steel would burn, much less the soft thin aluminum from salvaged beverage cans actually used. A bucket of water would just spread it faster. The Change hadn’t changed
that
reaction at all.

Dúnedain used fire arrows for many purposes, though swailing was the most common, controlled wet-season burns to manage the vegetation in wild areas. Arrows could be precisely placed in spots hard to get to safely on foot. When you shot a couple into stacked dry timber, though, the result was dramatic.

“Noro lim, Malfind!”
he called, and ran himself.

The danger was worse now, but he felt a curious sense of relief. Whatever happened, every Ranger in the area would see the pillar of smoke that was pulsing into the air. Gongs and horns would be sounding within seconds, bows would be strung and Rangers would assemble. And eventually the
yrch
and the foreigners and please the Valar, the terrifying
skaga
would all realize that their only hope was to get out of here as fast as they could.

More arrows went past him as he ran and dodged and hurdled obstacles; they hadn’t gotten the message yet.

“Look behind you, you Shadow-sucking idiots!” Malfind screamed as he ran not far away, spear held ahead of him like a plow. “Smoke! Stop chasing us and run away!”

Maybe some of them were taking his advice, since the rain of arrows was less. One would do, of course, if it hit in the right place. A shaft banged painfully against the shield slung over Faramir’s back, and he stumbled and cursed and recovered in a flailing scramble. He didn’t see the shaft or pieces of it go pinwheeling past or hear it crack, so it had probably pierced the sheet metal and boiled leather and plywood. There was absolutely no way of telling whether six inches of it was pointing at his liver right now, ready to drive through his jerkin and its light mail lining if he fell the wrong way at speed. The only consolation was that they were almost certainly gaining on the pursuers, because they weren’t in heavy armor and knew where they were going.

Correction. We’re gaining on those foreigners who are
in
heavy armor.

He’d had only a brief long-distance glimpse, but it looked like little rectangular plates set into a knee-length mail coat; at least forty pounds, not counting shields and helmets and swords. That precisely matched the report of the equipment of the men who’d killed the High King.

The Eaters aren’t wearing anything but loincloths or carrying anything but their weapons. On the other hand, at least we
do
know the path better than they do.

Another arrow hit the shield that covered his back from his neck to the base of his spine, and he swayed in mid-stride and recovered again. This one definitely penetrated; he could feel the outer, leather surface of his jerkin catching on the point a little with every long stride. The breath was burning in his lungs now and his pulse was loud in his own ears; he was young and strong, but he’d been walking and running and fighting all afternoon. The sun was low on his right hand when he could see it, but that wasn’t often. The trees were higher now, and more and more were the king redwoods, ones that had been left to complete their natural cycle in a rare act of forbearance by the ancient world.

And that arrow had hit at the very bottom edge of his shield. Which
gave him a chill even with sweat soaking his clothes and running in drops off his chin, because an inch lower would have gone right into his pelvis. But it also meant the foreigners with the powerful bows were farther behind. The yelping of the
yrch
was a little fainter too, though he didn’t dare look over his shoulder.

After you with the ambush, foreign allies,
he thought with flash of grim humor.
That’s what they’re saying. Or maybe it’s a promise to eat their bodies afterwards.

He wanted to get out of this as soon as he could, but he couldn’t look back. He couldn’t run at this pace all the way to Eryn Muir, either. And if he slowed down, the Eaters would send their best sprinters after him, forcing him back to all-out effort and breaking his wind, leaving him exhausted and helpless when the main band caught up. That was standard hunting technique.

He saw a streak to his left past some bushes, left and a bit ahead. For one throat-squeezing instant he thought it was a
yrch
, and then he recognized Morfind . . . or at least another Ranger, and there wasn’t likely to be anyone else in this chase. And Morfind could run down deer; he’d seen her do it, and seen her outrun people with much longer legs over anything but a sprint course. About a hundred yards ahead she angled in to a two-hundred-foot giant with a body seven feet through at chest height.

It was good they were getting bigger; it meant they were closer to home. It also meant the view would open out, because ancient redwoods shaded out most undergrowth, and it would make it impossible to run fast, because they bombed the ground beneath them with a constant litter of branches and chunks of bark. Close to the Ranger station the falls were policed up because they had dozens of uses of which fuel was only one, and they needed the floor free of obstacles. Out here, they weren’t.