The Sword of the Lady (20 page)

″Cryptic,″ Nigel said.

″No, my love. Some things have to be said in such fashion. I like the man′s style, sure. And he′s shrewd. We owe him a debt, for the rescue and the care of our folk and the help they gave.″

″He wasn′t entirely disinterested, old girl,″ Nigel said dryly. ″His people are having their problems with the Prophet and the CUT as well.″

Their daughters came in—Maude, calm and quiet at fourteen, with hair halfway between brown and dark auburn, and yellow-locked Fiorbhinn, ten and carrying the miniature but quite functional harp that seldom left her; they′d eaten the midday meal with their schoolmates. Even Maude′s preternatural gravity dissolved at the sight of Rudi′s letter, and Fiorbhinn squealed openly. They read it over her shoulder, agog.

″Rudi will find the Sword of the Lady and put a stop to the black wickedness of those Cutter folk,″ Fiorbhinn said decisively.

″He
is
the Lady′s Sword,″ Maude pointed out. ″It was Herself who said so, at his Wiccaning!″

Juniper′s fingers moved unconsciously as if on strings, while she wove the girl′s words into a song she′d been making. How much of the letter to put into it? The earlier ones she′d made of Rudi′s journey had already traveled from here to the Protectorate and back, sometimes with changes that surprised her. Then she′d weave them anew . . .

Fiorbhinn′s turquoise gaze met hers, and the girl smiled and nodded, knowing what she was about. Maude was solid and good and clever, but fey little True-Sweet was the one who′d inherited the music, running like a tang of wildwood magic in the blood.

Nigel knew as well. ″Have you considered what you′re doing, Juniper?″ he said quietly.

The girls huddled together over the pages she′d allowed them—there were a few things in the letter she didn′t want
anyone
else seeing just yet, and a few others not for a child′s eyes. They whispered excitedly to each other, reading out the choice bits, gasping when their elder half brother was in peril, Fiorbhinn jumping from foot to foot with excitement at each escape or wonder.

″I′m making him a hero, poor boy!″ she said, trying for lightness and failing.

Nigel shook his head. ″You′re putting his name on everyone′s lips from woods-runner cabins south of Ashland to the Okanogan baronies, but that isn′t the same thing—he was born to be a hero, I′m afraid, and famous already. What you′re doing, my love, is making him everyone′s hope in a time of fear—which is to say, you′re setting out to sing him onto a throne, if he lives. It′s a cruel thing, for a musician to sit and shape a man into a King, like a reed cut and hollowed out to make a flute.″

His gaze turned inward for a moment, and then he quoted from a poet they both loved:

Juniper sighed and closed her eyes for a second. ″I know,″ she said softly. ″And it′s a bitter thing to do to a child you love.″

″If it′s any consolation, my darling, Rudi would do the job very well indeed.″

Unwilling, she laughed. ″No consolation at all . . . well, not much. But there′s no choice in the matter, none at all. I′m a musician, and before that a mother . . . but at seventh and last, I am
Her
priestess, though that road lead through the hard and stony places.″

Nigel picked up a letter that bore Edain Aylward′s laborious scrawl on its envelope of coarse handmade paper. ″I′ll send this along to Sam; he′s out observing the maneuvers. He′ll be pleased at how young Edain′s done.″

″Proud as punch,″ Juniper said, grateful for the distraction. ″As proud as I am of Rudi, and with near as much reason.″

″Proud as punch, but in a very understated way.″

″He′s English, poor man.″

 

 

 

When she was alone in the upper room, Juniper read Mathilda′s letter and smiled, as much at the things not said as the words themselves. She murmured those aloud to herself:

″Rudi and I keep thinking how nice it would be if we could just go off together and start a farm, or run an inn, or wrangle caravans. Sometimes I look into his eyes in the evening, watching him watching the fire and thinking, and he′ll look up at me and smile and it′s like taking a long soak in hot rosewater after a hard day. Does that make any sense? And we′re far from home, and lonely, but I really didn′t feel
alone
until he was so sick, and we thought he might die. It′s not just that we′re friends. All the others here are good friends now, even the ones like Fred we′ve met along the way. It′s as if Rudi and I have only now gotten to really know each other—which is funny, since we′ve been
anamchara
since we were kids, more than half our lives.″

Juniper chuckled to herself: ″Since we were kids! Says the withered crone of twenty-three!″

Then she continued reading: ″Maybe it′s that we′re so far away from home, and duties, and rank—so that it′s just
us
now.″

She sat in thought on the bench before her big loom where the brightest lantern hung, turning the paper between her fingers and thinking. Thinking long enough that the flame died down, and she needed to stand and adjust the wick in a smell of scorched linen and oil.

She had loved Sandra Arminger′s child as if she were her own—perhaps not
more
than that strange weaver of secrets and hidden plans did, but more warmly, and she believed she′d had some hand in the shaping of a young woman they could both be proud of.

Foster daughter, you were never just a pawn in the game of thrones. How I would delight to see my grandchild in your arms! Friendship, love . . . it′s odd how they can tip the one into the other. And Love is a tricksy God, wearing more faces than the stars or the leaves of autumn or the snowflakes in winter, terrible and beautiful, sweet or deadly. Even your evil
tuilli
of a father truly loved you, I think; the one wholly good thing he did in all his monstrous, wicked life. What one of Their gifts brings us more joy, or more suffering, than love? Love between you and my son there has always been, since first you came here captive, proud little spitfire that you were! So brave and so lonely, and Rudi was your only friend. But not passion of that sort, not until now . . . though thrown together in desperate peril as you′ve been . . .

She stood and went to face the northern wall, where her Book of Shadows stood on its lectern, and her private altar with the blue-mantled figure of the Ever-Changing One crowned with the Triple Moon, and the Horned God dancing in ecstasy amid skyclad worshippers with the panpipes to his lips. She unpinned her plaid and draped it over her hair like a hood; then she made certain signs and murmured invocations and held up her arms with head bowed and palms to the sky.

″You powerful God, You Goddess gentle and strong! You have demanded much of my son and he has never refused You, Lady and Lord. A warrior he is in Your service, and a strong man to ward Your world and folk and law; but he′s still the child I bore beneath my heart.″

A questioning, like a pressure on her soul. She drew a breath and went on:

″Give him this, at least, on the road You have chosen, the one
he
has chosen to walk willingly with open eyes, consenting to his fate. Let him know the sweet before the bitter. Let him know the arms of a lover who loves him heart-deep, with mind and soul and body. Let him know the gladdest and deepest Mystery; let him see the child of his love born and raised up before Your altar for the naming.
So mote it be
.″

The words were quiet, but they dropped into a silence that echoed; she felt as if a hand had brushed her eyes, and a faint scented warmth elusive as the memory of a dream.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sunlight blinked off metal far ahead as the road wound downward. His warrior′s eye recognized that rippling sparkle: polished mail, perhaps, or lance heads, or helmets. Someone was coming who didn′t much care whether anyone spotted him, which meant it was
not
any native dweller in these lands. Hiding was ground into their souls by now, hiding and skulking and the grisly game of stalk and ambush that had killed their parents young.

By what the oldsters say, soldiers all fought like that in the days before the Change,
Rudi Mackenzie thought.
Not just bandits and savages, scouts and Rangers. No wonder, when they all had weapons that could kill at a thousand paces like a catapult, and shoot so fast, too! Anyone who could see you could kill you.

It wasn′t like that now. Men who fought with discipline, shoulder to armored shoulder, could plow through those who scattered. Many scorned to conceal themselves at all, thinking it the heart of a fighting man′s pride to stand and meet the battle-rush, or to lock shields with their oath-brothers and stride unhesitating towards a line of bright spears in the hands of angry strangers. The Clan were less prickly, but in anything like a pitched battle even Mackenzie longbowmen had to pack pretty tightly together to brew an arrow storm dense enough to stop a charge.

″Whoa!″ he said aloud, shifting his balance back, and then reminded himself to pull firmly on the reins; he wasn′t on Epona now.

Over his shoulder he called to the woman sitting on the wagon′s board:

″Brake!″

The slug of a horse he was riding was both stupid and malicious—either that, or it missed its former Knifer master so much it was grieving-mad.

Which I doubt,
he thought with exasperation, while worrying whether the other vehicles would notice in time.

The brake lever locked padded drums against the axles; it was that more than his efforts that made the improvised team stop. He used the slack of the long rein to give the horse a sharp
pop
on the nose as it responded to the halt with its usual attempt to turn its head and bite him on the knee. It took the rebuke as a signal to try and buck, bolt and kick sideways at its teammate in the traces beside it, and it took a few more moments to convince it that was a
bad
idea. The fact that it would break its legs and die if the eight beasts hauling the first wagon were to be thrown into a struggling heap didn′t seem to matter to it—probably it was too dim-witted even to fear for its legs, which . . .

″Puts it about on a level with a sheep,″ he said with disgust. ″Except that sheep are usually better natured.″

And to be sure, he had to make certain Epona wasn′t in view while he rode with the team here. She didn′t like it when he rode another horse, even her own get. She
definitely
wouldn′t like him riding this crowbait. Horses could be as difficult as people, sometimes. And the thought of trying to put
her
in harness made him shudder. She might or might not have the HorseGoddess for which he′d named her as her dam, but she certainly acted as if she did. In her pride not least.

He grinned, tired but reasonably contented. Horses and their crotchets he′d have to worry about the rest of his life, he supposed, but this part of the journey was about over and with any luck at all he could get back to the
real
quest. The road stretched ahead; he could see the screen of Southsider scouts appearing and disappearing ahead as they fell back towards him.

To his left was about a mile of floodplain, densely wooded but mostly with new growth, here and there a pre-Change tree towering with the height that abundant water and the rich silty soil would endow. Others were dead and gaunt and bleached bone white, killed out when their roots were smothered by the spreading water of renascent swamp. Parts of it were full marsh now; he could smell it, the sweetish-rank scents of black muck and vegetable decay, and see the glints of water where the old levees along the Mississippi had broken. It had probably been cropland before the Change, and very good land at that.

The reeds were brown with the late season, and a few of the velvet sausage shapes of the cattails were beginning to shed white fluff. The leaves of the maples hadn′t started to turn, but their green had a faint, almost subliminal hint of yellow to them, and all the trees had a bit of tatter, like a shirt worn until the cuff and tails started to unravel. A string of geese took off as he watched, gusting upward like a spray of black dots before they formed into a V and headed southward. The long slanting rays of afternoon made the great river painful to look at, light breaking and blinking off its rippled surface; despite that the Southsiders trudging along on foot were pointing and peering and exclaiming in delighted wonder, with parents putting their infants up on their shoulders to see. They were nomads, but like most such they′d traveled on a fixed seasonal round in a narrow compass, one that didn′t include the Mississippi.

Off to his right was hilly land, the bluffs that edged the floodplain. The rumpled surface had a pelt of old forest, with here and there brick snags through tangled vines and saplings marking where buildings had stood, and brush growing over stands of thick short bluish grass interrupted by sandy spots.

The underbrush had been cleared back about half a bowshot on either side of the road, and the rust-rotted hulks of automobiles and trucks were missing. That meant that they were within the area regularly patrolled by Iowan troops from their beachhead in East Dubuque. Edain came trotting up from farther south, with Garbh at the heel of his horse.
He
was riding the quarterhorse he′d picked up in the Valley of the Sun, in what had once been Wyoming, a decent and civilized beast who didn′t even object when the great dog leapt up to sit behind her master.

″Those bearings on the third wagon′s rear axle aren′t going to last much longer, no matter how much lard we bless ′em with, Chief,″ he said. ″Then we′ll be worse off than with an ordinary iron collar and no fancy salvage. But I′m thinking we could—″