The Tears of the Sun (13 page)

Then she made claws of the fingers and raked them outward sharply, twice, making the gesture broad and obvious. That was Sign for
tiger
, and her honorary Aunt Eilir had made the visual language part of the Dúnedain curriculum, back when she refounded the Rangers together with Astrid in the years after the Change. That was probably because she'd been deaf since birth, but also because it was extremely useful to be able to exchange complex information silently.

Two more of the party trotted back on the other side of the remuda, pushing the beasts towards the marsh and its fringe of woodland despite their unease. The commanders came up;
Hiril
Astrid was casing her binoculars in their padded-steel case.

“That was good scouting, Ritva,” she said with a nod.

“Thank you, my lady,” Ritva acknowledged.

Which was a bit formal, but they
were
in the field, not sitting over wine in Stardell Hall listening to a song or a reading from the Histories. The four older Rangers looked a little more worn than their followers; not that they were anywhere near their limits, merely that there was more discomfort behind their hard-held faces.

“Scout net,” Astrid said, and two more of the Rangers trotted away.

Alleyne brought out a map, and everyone else squatted around it with their reins looped through their belts and their horses occasionally taking a nuzzle at their hair.

“This marsh isn't mapped, but I think it's
here
,” he said, tapping a spot. “The wetland's probably recent. Within the last twenty years from the trees, though cottonwoods grow bally fast.”

“And this St. Hilda's place should be about six to eight miles south and west,” John Hordle rumbled, his finger moving over the waxed linen like a sausage with auburn fuzz.

Astrid sighed. “This all looks so different from when Signe and Mike and Dad and I came through in the first Change Year,” she said, gesturing at their surroundings. “Most of this was plowed land, winter wheat and black fallow, with gravel roads every mile. See where the dimpled lines run, with more sagebrush and less grass? That's the old roadbeds.”

“The ironic thing,” Alleyne said, his eyes still on the map, “is that there are probably more people living here now than then. There wasn't any famine here, and this Lewiston place over a bit west was a substantial city and the ranchers here must have taken in some of them. And of course everyone's been breeding like rabbits since.”

That's an odd thing for him to say,
Ritva thought absently.
Uncle Alleyne and Aunt Astrid only have three themselves. That's not many at all.

“There was black plague in Lewiston,” Astrid said, her weirdly beautiful face looking stark for an instant. “Pneumonic form. It came in with refugees from Spokane; we heard about it, and Mike turned us back when we saw the smoke from where they burned the bodies. Saw it. And . . . we could smell it. But I know what you mean.”

It took a moment for Ritva to follow the thought; she was distracted by the casual mention of a journey that had become a legend in itself, and hearing her father—whom she barely remembered herself—referred to so humanly as
Mike
. It had been Astrid who coined the great title of Bear Lord for him, much against Michael Havel's liking, from what she'd heard.

But I've been on a longer trip, and one that will be more of a tale!
she thought suddenly.
All the way to Nantucket and . . . well, not quite back, for me, not yet. Dad would have been so proud!

Ian nodded agreement.

“It's the same where I come from, sir, ma'am,” he said, in English—he'd been following the Sindarin conversation fairly well after a spell of total immersion and a lot of saddle-time studying a borrowed phrasebook. “We have more people now than before the Change in the Peace River country too, but there are abandoned fields and big grain elevators and such all over. We only need . . . oh, about one twentieth the tilled land. Less, maybe. I guess it must be like that in a lot of places.”

“Lot o' people fed from these fields,” Hordle said. Unspoken:
And they all died when food couldn't travel far anymore.
“No need to farm most of it now, loik the lad says.”

Eilir Signed:
But we know St. Hilda's still there. Sheriff Woburn said it's thriving, in fact. And it's friendly; it should be, the way you guys rescued them from those awful bandits back in the day. He said he'd have the Abbess . . . Reverend Mother Dominica . . . warned to expect us. We need local help approaching Woburn at his own ranch. There's sure to be some sort of government surveillance.

Ritva winced slightly at the reminder of what was fairly ancient history to her, because the tendrils of it came down to her own time. The bandits' leader, the self-proclaimed Duke Iron Rod, had turned out to be working with Norman Arminger, who'd tried to push the PPA's borders this far in the early days—Lewiston was the head of navigation on the Columbia-Snake system. Eddie Liu, the first Baron Gervais, had been his liaison with them, supplying weapons and advice; he'd been the Lord Protector's right hand in any number of malicious plans. But his son had been Odard Liu, and
he'd
been one of the nine questers who'd gone to Nantucket. He'd saved Mathilda's life in battle at least once on the journey, and might well have saved them all in Iowa by the way he'd kept the mad tyrant Anthony Heasleroad amused and distracted.

And he'd died just short of the goal on the shores of the Atlantic, in a last stand that left him lying like some paladin from a
Chanson
with a broken sword in his hand and dead Moorish corsairs in a ring around him. She'd watched him die, making his last farewells calmly despite the bone-spears in his lungs and smiling as he felt the breeze of Azrael's wings.

“We should approach them carefully, even with the password from Woburn,” Astrid said. “The probability of running into enemy agents goes up very sharply from now on, and nothing attracts the eye like group movement. This here would be a good place to keep the horses; there's cover, water, and grazing. And the tiger's scared off a lot of the game, so hunters are less likely to stumble across us.”

Hmmm,
Ritva thought.
You know, she's right. I haven't seen any elk or black-tails or buffalo or antelope for the last hour or so. And there should have been sign of muskrat and beaver around here, it's prime for them.

“Kitty might 'ave a go at the 'orses,” Hordle mused.

“Not too likely, with say, four guards,” Alleyne said and nodded thoughtfully. “This is rich land in high summer, and a tiger would have to be very hungry indeed to try for something guarded by that many humans. Easier to go out where it usually hunts, and cats don't go looking for fights.”

Eilir nodded.
Unlike humans. We should do a sneak. Here, west of the monastery, through these wooded hills. Then we can send one or two people down to make contact.

“Let's do it,” Astrid said. “Time presses, the armies are already moving toward battle in the West, and Operation Lúthien
must
succeed in time. Coneth, you're in charge here.”

A short, olive-skinned young woman silently bowed with hand on heart.

“I'm leaving . . . Hírvegil, Tarachanar and Ýridhrenith with you. Hold and keep close concealment for three days, and then use your initiative if we haven't returned.”

Ritva felt a moment's sympathy as Coneth gulped slightly and bowed again.

“N'i lû e-govaded ' wîn, Hiril,”
she said, which meant
Until we meet again, Lady
, roughly.

Rangers had discipline; within fifteen minutes a rope corral had been made on a dry spot shielded by half a dozen willows for the remuda, the pack-beasts offsaddled and the gear and supplies covered by camouflage nets, and the stay-behind party were busy building a concealed blind—what Dúnedain called a
flet
—in the limbs of the biggest cottonwood. The rest of the band switched to fresh horses and remounted.

“By pairs, at ten-minute intervals, and be careful not to cross each other's paths.
Gwaenc
—we go!” Astrid said.

 

Why did I have to be the
one person
sent down to make contact?
Ritva thought a little sourly underneath the pine trees.
I'm not really a diplomatic type. Oh, well, it's part of the job.

Most of the Rangers were farther back, keeping watch in all directions. Eilir looked at her and smiled a little impishly; you could see her mother Juniper Mackenzie in her then, though her face was longer.

Then the world seemed to shift a little. With a tiny shock Ritva noticed that there were more small lines beside her eyes, and not just weariness and the weathered look of those who were often outdoors regardless of rain or season. Eilir Mackenzie-Hordle was growing older.

Eilir was a mother and near to middle age now, though it would be a trim handsome middle age. It was natural, the Doom of Men . . . but somehow it felt as if the ground had stirred.

Mary and I went to join the Rangers because
Mom
seemed like a prematurely old fuddy and granddad was dead and the Rangers were all young like us . . . and because the Histories spoke to our souls, of course. And Aunt Astrid was family, and Eilir was for all practical purposes except Mom never really liked Lady Juniper but come on, Rudi's my half brother, get over it, Mom. Mithrilwood was like an endless game that never had to stop. But it's not a game, it's life. I'm grown up now.

Eilir's grin got wider; a lifetime spent lipreading had also made her uncannily acute at following expressions.

You're growing up, niece of my
anamchara
,
she Signed.
Even Astrid and I did that, you know, eventually. Mithrilwood isn't Neverland, nor yet Aman the Blessed. It's just home and the place my children were born, which is fine enough and more.

Ritva replied in Sign herself, which was policy where even low voices might be overheard:
Ah . . . sorry . . . I was just wondering, Why me? really. For this contact mission.

When you were used to it, Sign could convey dry pawky irony as well as any tone of voice.

Eilir went on briskly:
Well, we picked you because you're the most experienced Ranger we have here who's not well known yet. We four are. I'm deaf, my beloved little John's freaking fee-fi-fo-fum
huge
, Alleyne looks like, well, Alleyne, and Astrid is ... Astrid,
she Signed.
And because you're younger and people pay less attention to the young. Because you're a woman and people feel less threatened by women—Manwë and Varda alone know why. Plus tall fair people fit in even more here than most places. Take a look, familiarize yourself with the layout.

She handed over the precious Zeiss glasses and Ritva leveled them across a low-cut stump; the woods on the hill above the settlement were obviously carefully managed and healthy. St. Hilda's Monastery lay below them, the shadows just beginning to lengthen. From the look, most of it had been there before the Change, but there had been a great many alterations and more than a few additions. The core building was built of bluish-gray stone, twin-towered, as much like a castle as a church, and surprisingly modern in appearance; the lower windows had been sealed. There was a brick wing that had the alien boxy look of late pre-Change work, and a stretch of buildings off to the north.

Farther out were truck gardens, fairly substantial orchards, and a big neatly laid-out farm with fields of varied crops separated by board fences and rows of poplars; a few hundred acres of wheat and barley rippled, yellow streaks showing amid the light green. More recent construction surrounded by fenced paddocks was probably barns, storehouses and workshops; the tall arms of a timber-framed windmill were unmistakable, though the sails were feathered and bare right now. Several well-kept dirt roads led away, east and north and south; they were fairly busy, wheeled traffic and bicyclists and folk on foot.

All in all it looked like a prosperous town, or perhaps a great noble's estate, except that there were no obvious defenses. Though the twin-towered church could easily be turned into a fort: the chronicle Astrid had written of the Bearkiller journey westward,
The Red Book of Larsdalen
, said that the bandit lord Iron Rod had done exactly that.

They all gathered at the back of the hillock to see her off, except for the lookouts, of course. Most of that was to take turns examining her from head to toe; you always did that when you could, before a clandestine insertion. Nobody caught everything, and a different pair of eyes was always welcome.

I'll look less conspicuous without this sword,
Ritva Signed, though she'd feel naked without it, too.
Straight long swords aren't much used here, from what we've heard.

Ian hadn't learned the finger-tongue yet, but he understood when she undid her weapons belt, and silently held out his own with the stirrup-hilted curved saber and bowie. Sabers were the second-most-common long weapon in Idaho, after the wider-bladed cutting sword known as a shete. She slipped it out of the sheath and tried the balance; somewhat heavy for her wrist, but the weight wasn't thrown as far forward as she expected. You could thrust with this, though not as well as with the double-edged blade the Dúnedain usually carried.