The Sword of the Lady (56 page)

″They′ll come at us now!″ he said. ″Wait . . . wait . . .″

The enemy trumpet screamed
charge
. The Cutters cased their bows, drew shetes or leveled their lances, booted their skinny garrons into motion. Rudi shot, again, again—the range was closing, and nobody was shooting
back
right now.

″The which is a great aid to concentration. Wait . . . Wait . . .″

Even a bad horse could cover ground very fast indeed.

Every one of them wheeled their mounts and set them going. Rudi focused on the markers;
left
and then
straight
and then
right
and
straight
—Epona′s great muscles bunched beneath him, her body an extension of his own as it had been since his boyhood, as if their thoughts meshed through the same fire of nerve and balance. The seventeen-hand warmblood
danced
.

He heard a sudden scream to his right. Mary′s horse had broken through; she catapulted out of the saddle, landed rolling and spraying arrows from her quiver.

″Rochael!″
she shrieked.

The dappled Arab mare′s forehooves hammered at the broken, floating ice before her. Mary started to run back to help her, but Ingolf swung inward on her blind side. He leaned out of the saddle with skill that made Rudi blink and snatched with a huge and desperate strength at his wife′s quiver, throwing her across the saddle in front of him. Boy′s rear hooves slipped and the surface cracked beneath them, but he scrambled free and onto the unweakened section of the ice. Tears ran down Mary′s face as she slipped free, but she reached over her shoulder for one of the remaining arrows.

 

 

 

″Clear!″ Mathilda shouted.

″Pump! Pump!″

Round shot this time, the six-pound cast-iron sphere arching up like a blurred black dot. It landed behind the oncoming figures that marked Edain and his archers . . . right among the pursuers. Water gouted skyward, and men slid down tilting slabs of ice. Suspiciously regular slabs in part, where they′d patiently drilled holes to be covered with snow. More and more of the weakened ice broke, away from the jagged paths the retreating archers trod, carefully calculated to look like panic-stricken men dashing about witless. The forest-runners′ shrieks turned from triumphant to terrified in an instant.

She could see a war chief with bars painted across his face throw his arms out in a frantic
halt!
gesture, but it was too late. Three men tumbled into him, and they all rolled together towards a stretch of black water where ice bobbed and men thrashed. To their left the horse soldiers of Corwin were in a worse state; a galloping horse
couldn′t
stop quickly. One went right into the spot where Mary′s horse had broken through, and the slim mare started to
climb
it, hammering the rider under her hooves. Another went through, and another.

″Clear!″

A lumpy, gritty stuff was packed around the frame of the scorpion. Thermite ignited easily, and they wouldn′t be leaving the engine intact.

″Pump! Pump!″

 

 

 

″She′s just limping!″ Mary said, joy shining in her one eye as she looked back at her Rochael.

″Mary,″ Ingolf said, a little reproof in the tone.

Rudi frowned at them, and Mary dropped her eyes as his flicked to the limp burdens the other horses bore. Pierre Walks Quiet′s face had fallen in on itself a little in death; the stiff red ice on his parka hid the wound that had killed him in five seconds of startled agony. Jake sunna Jake simply looked surprised, his hands still clutching at the stump of the javelin that had taken him in the throat. Bodies stiffened quickly in this cold.

″Pierre Walks Quiet was your friend, Ingolf,″ Rudi said. ″What words would have pleased him?″

″Pete wasn′t Catholic . . . or anything, that I knew of,″ Ingolf said. ″Said he could talk to God out in the woods with the animals, better than in any church. I don′t think he′d mind anyone he liked saying words over him, though.″

″Now he walks beneath the forever trees,″ Rudi said quietly.

Ingolf nodded, lost in his own thoughts. Rudi looked at Jake′s body.

What will I tell his woman?
he thought.
Or how explain to his children what their father was?

He helped the others bear them into the barn; Father Ignatius murmured the service for the dead beneath his breath. There was still a heap of loose hay; the bodies were laid in it, a faint scent of summers past rising amid the iron smell of blood.

″Ingolf?″ Rudi asked.

The big Richlander swallowed, then spoke: ″I knew Pete . . . Pierre Walks Quiet all my life, from the Change. It′s hard to realize the old man′s dead. He was like . . . like one of the
manitou
he used to tell me about. Taught me two-thirds of what I know about woodcraft and beasts and I wouldn′t have learned the rest without the start he gave me. Taught me to love it, too. Good-bye, Pete. Damn and
hell
, I′ll miss you.″

He turned aside, as his voice went thick. Rudi nodded and stepped forward.

″I knew Jake sunna Jake for a far shorter time, but in that time we fought side by side, and saved each other′s lives. He was called a savage, but I never saw him kill without need, or heard of it. He was untaught, but he learned more quickly than many I′ve met who are called great scholars. He saw the beauty in the world the Lord and Lady have given us, though nobody had given him the words to tell of what his heart said. And everything he did, he did first for his people. There were the seeds of greatness in this man, and now all that he might have done and been is sacrificed for us, his friends. Let us remember him, and be worthy of it!″

Rudi′s voice rose
: ″Lords of the Watchtowers of the West, ye Lords of Death and Resurrection.
We light the torch for Jake sunna Jake, brave warrior who fell for his kin and friends, face to the foe; and for Pierre Walks Quiet of the Anishinabe folk, who left comfort and safety to aid in the world′s need. Aradia and Cernnunos, accept Jake′s spirit in the Land of Youth.
Manitou
, bring Pierre′s spirit to the council fires of his people in their long home—″

The fire flared up, and they retreated through the doors; the barn was tinder-dry wood and beam, and it would go up like kindling. Already the fire was beginning to roar. Rudi paused for a moment to lay his hands on the shoulders of Tuk and Samul, Jake′s half brothers.

″He′s a good one, us′n bro Jake,″ Tuk whispered, his hands tight on his bow. ″Done good for Southside.″

Rudi nodded. ″He was a man I was proud to call brother-in-arms,″ he said soberly. ″I will help raise his children as my own. Dun Jake will bear his name. Now let′s go! Mounted until we′re well clear, then back to skis; the horses can′t keep going fast with burdens in this.″

Ingolf swung into the saddle and drew in beside Rudi. ″Think we should have tried to finish them off?″ he said.

Rudi shook his head, looking out through the thickening snow. ″Too risky. There were still more of them, if they rallied. Now their spirits will be . . . dampened, I think.″

 

 

 

Major Graber looked down at the body of the High Seeker. The shaven-skulled face was blue with cold, and a slow trickle of water oozed out of its mouth, glittering in the torchlight that drove back the night a little. Snow hissed into the burning wood. Somewhere a man sobbed and then shrieked as their surviving field medic went to work.

″We could try resuscitation,″ his lieutenant said.

″After more than an hour in this water? No, the Ascended Masters have welcomed his lifestream—″

High Seeker Dalan opened his eyes with a jerk, as if they were pulled up by fishhooks. Then turned his head to vomit out a stream of water. His breath rasped in, then out, and then he coughed—a curiously mechanical sound, like a forbidden engine was working in some mill of the unbelievers.

″I—see—you,″
he said, and smiled.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

″Stop the sled,″ the old woman said, peering out from under her wolfskin hood.

The bricks under her booted feet were cold again now and so was she, even beneath her winter gear and the thick bearskin traveling rug. The wind was rising, hard as the teeth of Hella, full of a hard mealy scent. It flicked kernels of dry sharp snow through the laden branches of the pines, and the bare fingers of the sugar maples and birch writhed. At least it was at her back and the arched cover of the sled broke most of it.

″Are you sure, Heidhveig?″ Thorlind said, speaking a little loudly to be heard over the storm.

″Of course not!″

She regretted the snap even as the words left her lips; but she felt the cold in her bones, more every year, an ache that never quite went away. The sun and warmth of her girlhood suddenly came before her, for the first time in years.

For a moment her eyes teared with longing for a world as legendary now as any hero tale; then she blinked and with the discipline of long practice shut those memories away.

″Sorry,″ she said. ″Just . . . a feeling.″

″You don′t just have feelings,″ Thorlind said. ″Not
you
, and not
just
.″

The girl′s no fool,
she thought. Then:
Girl! I
am
getting old! She′s a grandmother this year!

Thorlind pulled on the reins with a
whoa!
The two shaggy horses slowed and stopped as she threw the drag lever and the claw dug into the hard-packed snow, and the outriders drew rein and swung down from their mounts.

Heidhveig let them help her down; Thorlind handed her the staff, and one of the guards brought the lantern from its hook at the rear over the baggage compartment. It shone for a moment on the silver cat′s heads on the front corners of the sled, the jet glitter of the raven′s heads behind, and the intricate carving that laced the wooden panels of its sides with intertwined figures of elongated gripping beasts, wolves and dragons and birds. In a sudden moment of doubled vision she saw the Oseberg wagon in one of the books she had pored over so diligently when she was young—probably one of H.R. Ellis Davidson′s. And now she
was
the seeress in the wagon . . .

It was the kind of dizzying juxtaposition she used to experience often when they were building Norrheim, after the Change.

The winter′s afternoon was already growing dark, and the gathering snowstorm gusted, sometimes clearing for an instant and then cutting visibility to barely beyond arm′s length. The woods ended here—the solid forest, at least—giving way to rolling fields and scattered shaws, hidden now in the storm but letting the wind run free. She could just see the high white bulk of the barrow. Before it was an upright slab of granite, roughly shaped, a carved tangle of gripping beasts bordering the runes. The light was too dim to read them, but she didn′t need to. She murmured them aloud:

″Hello again, Erik, my old friend,″ she added softly. ″You built well. Watch over us all indeed.″

In the first years after the Change they had expected Ragnarök every winter, and looked to see the gods themselves come riding down the sky, for surely trolls and etins walked among men. But the heroes they had were men like Erik, the
godhi
of an Asatru kindred who had tried to get closer to the old Gods by studying the old ways. He had the skills they needed for survival and the will to inspire or bully others into using them. Folk had followed him, growing like a snowball rolling downhill around that first core until Norrheim stretched mighty across leagues of field and forest, an island of life in a sea of wilderness and death.

Skis hissed in the dimness, and three bulky figures appeared on the edge of the light cast through the lantern′s bull′s-eye lens. They were muffled in fur and quilted wool until nothing of them showed save their eyes, but they moved with easy unconcern in the gathering storm. All of them kicked the toes of their boots out of the ski loops as they stopped and jumped to their feet, agile as cats. One had a long bow in his hand, one a great bearded war-ax with a straight four-foot helve, and one a spear; all had double-edged swords and seaxes at their belts, and round shields slung over their backs.

″Who comes to the steading of
Godhi
Bjarni Eriksson on the sacred eve?″ one said importantly, hardly even waiting to halt before he spoke; his voice was a young man′s. ″All who come in peace and fellowship are welcome to share the Gods′ feast, but reivers and evildoers and troll-men stay wide of our land, if they′re wise. If not, they get a warm welcome and an everlasting bed to lie in.″

The guards bristled and fingered the shafts of their broad-bladed spears. Heidhveig braced herself upright on her staff and Thorlind let the light shine on her, so the Eriksgarth men could see clearly even with the storm in their faces.

″
One comes
who saw you all in your cradles, and crawling and squalling butt-naked beneath the benches,″ Heidhveig said tartly. ″You, Roderic Karlsson, and you, Thorolf Pierresson, and you too, Olaf Davesson!″