Prince of Outcasts (6 page)

They all do that,
John noted privately.

He'd noticed since he first met them months ago that the Nihonjin carefully examined everything they saw done here in Montival—machines, tools, weapons, buildings, methods, organization. They were intensely proud, but didn't let that get in the way of a relentless pragmatism; anything useful they saw would be taken to pieces, examined, and if they saw potential advantage in it would be modified, adapted and made their own.

When we get to Dai-Nippon, I think it would be a good idea if we cautioned our officers and engineers and artificers to do likewise,
John thought.
Because I don't have the slightest doubt they'll find tricks it would be to our advantage to copy. We've spent the last two generations learning how to do things in the Changed world, but I doubt we've found it all.

Feldman turned to the Bosun. “Right, Smith, let's finish up.”

The Bosun nodded. “Aye aye, skipper.”

Finishing up
turned out to mean another thick layer of the tarry, chemical-smelling glue applied to the rope, and then a cylinder of rawhide—bull-hide dragged overside a day to soften and stretch it— wound around the woolding and fastened with three rows of the nails from top to bottom. The whole affair looked like a bandage, or the splint on a broken leg, which he supposed was an apt metaphor; he peered intently to fix the image and the form of words away. Everything was grist to the mill. . . .

Deor was grinning at him. “You have the poet's itch, true enough, Prince,” he said. “Storing that up, weren't you?”

“I was, fellow-guildsman,” he said. “Though it had also occurred to me that this is like nursing along a sick horse!”

Deor chuckled. “More like a machine,” he said. “As it was in the ancient days, a machine and we all depending on it for our lives.”

“Now that's a striking image!” John said. “Unusual!”

I knew ships were machines,
he thought, musing.
I hadn't appreciated how much sailing was like living in a machine. And we are the way the machine keeps itself alive, like the things inside our bodies that heal wounds and fight off disease.

They climbed another wave. Feldman trained his telescope to the rear. John did likewise; he was catching the trick of keeping his binoculars steady from a moving surface. The topmost sails on the masts of the pursuer showed for an instant against the dark water and iron-gray sky before they slid down into the trough.

“That Korean is persistent,” Feldman said.

Then he looked at the mizzenmast. “I'd prefer to wait for three days of hot dry weather, but only the Lord can deliver that, and He, Blessed be the Name, hasn't seen fit to give us any.”

“His judgments are just and righteous altogether,” John agreed. “But this storm . . .”

“Isn't natural,” Feldman agreed in turn. “It's more like weather in the Roaring Forties than this part of the Pacific. Mr. Mate! We'll see if she'll bear sail. Raise the gaff; six reefs.”

Sailors hurried to the winches, and lined the boom for a moment to untie the reefs that held the sail down. The gearing whined, and the gaff began to rise; then they paid out, and the boom swung to starboard. The motion of the ship changed, and the Captain and First Mate spent a long moment staring at the woolding.

“She holds, Cap'n,” Radavindraban said. “Tight.”

“For now, Mr. Mate, for now. Binnacle!” Feldman said. “How many knots?”

“Twelve even, skipper!”

John did a quick mental calculation; he didn't have any natural aptitude for mathematics, but his parents had seen that he learned the basics, which were essential for a ruler or a commander of warriors both. Sea miles were a little over a tenth longer than the land variety. . . .

He winced mentally. They were making better than two hundred and fifty miles a day, nearly as fast as a hippomotive. That put them a
long
way from home, and farther every hour. . . .

Feldman collapsed his telescope and stood tapping it into his left palm for a moment. “That Korean is hard to shake,” he said. “But there's more ways of killing a cat than drowning it in cream.”

From the look on his face he had something unpleasant in mind for their pursuer and John heartily approved; he'd already come to hate the lookout's morning call of
sail ho to sternward
!

And it's not natural we can't shake him, too,
he thought.
I wish the Sword of the Lady was here. And Órlaith to carry it. It would be a relief to have her being bossy! I wonder what she's been doing?

C
ASTLE
T
ODENANGST
, C
ROWN
D
EMESNE

P
ORTLAND
P
ROTECTIVE
A
SSOCIATION

(F
ORMERLY
NORTHERN
O
REGON
)

H
IGH
K
INGDOM
OF
M
ONTIVAL

(F
ORMERLY
WESTERN
N
ORTH
A
MERICA
)

S
EPTEMBER
15
TH

C
HANGE
Y
EAR
46/2044 AD

T
he audience chamber gave out onto a D-shaped antechamber occupying part of the north side of this level of the tower, lit by pointed-arch windows through the thickness of the outer tower wall. This high up they could be large, and there was none of the funeral gloom you usually associated with castles. Crossbowmen raised their weapons to the present as Órlaith came through and a stream of Delegates came out behind her. The mild humid warmth of a Willamette summer came in through the open panes, carrying scents of woodsmoke and greenery and flowers, to mingle with the stone and beeswax scents of the building. The silver-gray tile of the wall was divided by thin upright panels of stylized ceramic vines and flowers and birds in blue and crimson and green; niches held the fruits of her maternal grandmother's expeditions and patronage—here a celadon vase made in old China, there a blue-robed, gold-crowned modern Madonna with a soft secret smile as she gazed down at the Child in her arms.

“Phew,” Órlaith murmured as they turned left and walked briskly
towards the elevators and her waiting followers. “That was bad, Herry. Not as bad as I feared, worse than I hoped.”

“Sort of like life that way,” Heuradys said dryly. “But look at it like this, my heroic but fretful liege: Reiko got her sword, she's getting the alliance she needs and which in the long run
we
need, John's alive, and in a bit less than five years you're going to be High Queen.”

“I'll be a High Queen with a reputation for reckless indiscipline,” she said gloomily.

“No, that would have been if we'd screwed up. Right now you're a Crown Princess with a reputation for being smart and daring enough to bring off impossible stuff. Sort of like your dad! Or your mother, before she got all stodgy.”

“No, she was always a stickler for rules and procedures, from what I hear. She just loved Da so much she took off after him anyway.”

“Ah, I hadn't thought of it that way! Still, while it's not a perfect result, I'd give it a nice solid as-good-as-can-be-reasonably-expected.”

Órlaith stopped for a moment and lowered her voice still more. “Remember the beach in Topanga? For John . . . death isn't the worst thing that can happen.”

Heuradys winced slightly. Reiko had met
her
brother there, a brother long-lost and thought to be dead for more than half a decade . . . and he'd been a tortured slave of the sorcerer-lords of the enemy who'd broken his soul in captivity. She'd tricked him into taking the Grass-Cutting Sword in his hands and drawing it, and in a single instant it had quite literally burned him to a thin drift of ash before she seized it back and used it to call upon her Ancestress and crush the Korean ships.

That was . . . alarming. It gives me an idea of how it must be for others around the Sword of the Lady.

“There's absolutely nothing we can do about that right now, Orrey. Except win this war we're starting.”

“They started it,” Órlaith said and made a vexed sound. She shook her head. “It's odd how you can love someone and they you, and the two of you still just can't get along sometimes.”

Heuradys mimed clapping for an instant. “My little baby liege is growing up!”

“Says the Wise Crone of twenty-three!” Órlaith replied.

Then she caught the look in Heuradys' eye and knew she was being a little annoying on purpose to jar her liege out of her gloom. It was good to have friends to do things like that for you.

“And she could have done a lot worse,” her knight said more seriously. “She let those men-at-arms from the Protector's Guard Sir Aleaume brought with us go back to their posts, for example.”

Órlaith nodded. “Mother can be harsh but she isn't vicious,” she said. “The problem is she thinks she's going to teach me patience; in fact I'm just going to be wasting time twiddling my thumbs and grinding my teeth when there's
work
to be done.”

“Thumb-twiddling and tooth-grinding is what's supposed to teach you the patience, if meditation in Moon School didn't.”

“I could never meditate worth a dog's breakfast—you may notice my totem is a bird and a very active one. And if we'd been
patient
we'd still be doing a diplomatic fencing game with Reiko and the enemy might have gotten the Grass-Cutter. Or used Reiko's brother to divide Nihon beyond repair.”

“Alternatively we could all have gotten killed. You roll the iron dice.”

Her remaining folk were over by the fretted bronzework elevator doors—one of three functioning elevators in all Montival, to her knowledge, and the only one built since the Change. She nodded to them and put on a mostly-genuine smile.

Her greathound Macmaccon was the only one wholly reassured, and came over panting happily with his nails clicking on the marble. He thrust his barrel-shaped shaggy head under one hand while he leant against her, with his tongue lolling over very impressive fangs in a grin of joy. In peacetime Mackenzies used greathounds for guarding herds and homes, and hunting things like boar and tiger.

In war they hunted men.

“Sit, Macmac. At heel!” To the others' anxious expressions: “Not as
bad as it might have been. I'm to go contemplate my sins for a bit, some place with few people and many sheep. Finding a magic sword and adding two realms to the High Kingdom seems to count for a wee bit of a something, as opposed to leaving on a Quest without telling her first.”

Though misplacing my brother and a ship-full of others . . . ah, that's a different matter. I can't even blame her for blaming me. It's not exactly fair—none of us knew what
Kusanagi
would do, not even Reiko—but I was in command. It's even a relief to have Mother blame me. It distracts me from blaming me, you might say.

Everyone looked relieved, though; she could have been confined to a fortress somewhere.

“Diarmuid,” she went on.

Diarmuid Tennart McClintock nodded, his dark hair curling around his shoulders and brushing the thin wrought-gold neck torc that marked a married man in the Old Faith. He was slim but broad-shouldered and of middling height, which made him an inch shorter than her, and blue curling tattoos on face and arms echoed the sinuous pattern of the jeweled disk that pinned the plaid of his Great Kilt at the shoulder.

“Aye, lass?” he said in the growling accent of the hills and mountains and high valleys beyond the Willamette's southern boundary where his family were tacksmen, sub-chiefs. “Herself herself is nae in the mood for the loppin' off o' heids?”

It was perfectly respectful, by Clan McClintock standards.

“Oh, she's in the mood, sure and she is, but she won't be after the
doing
of it this day, you see,” she said, letting her own Mackenzie lilt grow stronger.

They were comrades now, and still warm friends and had been lovers once; he'd been her first man, at a Beltane festival the year she turned sixteen, when he'd been a Fire Squire and she one of the May Queen's Maidens.

“Diarmuid, you followed when I called,” she said, resting a hand on his shoulder; the muscle under her fingers was pleasantly like hard living rubber. “And you a newly-handfasted man and Caitlin with a babe on the way. I count that true friendship and worthy of a brave man's honor; the
Morrigú witness, and Lug of the Oaths who loves a warrior's faithfulness.”

She pitched it just a little louder so the double-handful of his clansfolk at his back could hear it clearly. They bristled with pride; honor done their leader was done to them also and their kindreds and home-ranges and Clan.

“And folk of yours fell on our faring. Praise they shall have so their names live; and their families their honor-price. Gold and gear cannot give them back to their kin, but what gold and gear can do will be done, so.”

“Aye, well, they fell bravely in a guid cause, no' just a scuffle over the reiving of cows or some drunken boast at a feast, and they can say it to the Guardians of the Western Gate,” Diarmuid said, though there was sadness in his midnight-blue eyes.

Dryly: “And you'll not see McClintock crofters turning down gold and gear, either.”

His followers chuckled; they were a stark people.

“What next, then?” he asked.

“Next you go home,” she said, and held up a hand at his protest. “Not for long! I took you from Caitlin at a bad time, for needs must when Anwyn's hounds are at your heels. Go home and see the babe born, which you can do if you hurry; harvest your own fields and hunt your own hills, play with the little one and make some memories to warm your hands at later. There's a fight coming, like none our lifetimes have seen.”

“Aye, something tae that,” he said. “We missed the grain, but I'll be back in time for the last hay and the grapes and fruit, and for the fall salmon run and the fat elk comin' down from the mountain meadows.”

She leaned closer, smiling and whispered in his ear: “And tell Caitlin my reply to her private message, which is this: I
am
after sending you back alive, and I
did
keep my princessly hands off.”

“Aye, I'll say that—it may shorten the time I spend sleeping in the hayloft and suppin' on a dish o' want.
Soraidh leibh,
then, and merry part!”

“
Slán leat
: and merry meet again,” she replied.

The McClintocks all bowed and trotted off in a flurry of kilts, heading
for the stairs they trusted more than the dangerous northern elevator contraption with its moving room, which they thought against nature.

She put her hands on her hips and looked at the rest of them. There were ten Mackenzies led by the Aylward brothers Karl and Mathun; one had died on the journey, and one had gone off with John.

Or more precisely, Ruan went off with Deor because his lover died and they found each other. Joy and luck to them both, and guard my brother!

The Dúnedain Rangers Faramir and Morfind, who were the son and daughter of her father's younger twin half-sisters; and Susan Mika—Clever Raccoon—a small wiry young woman in fringed leathers with a pair of eagle feathers tucked into her raven-hued braids. She was Lakota, more or less an exile and a member of the Crown Courier Corps, or had been up until she volunteered for Órlaith's little conspiracy and used her job as a cover for the messages they needed to keep private.

“So, would any of you be off the now? I'll not grudge it, for it's grand companions you've all been, and this is the end of the venture you joined me for.”

Some bothered to say
no
; the rest just snorted or rolled their eyes. Sir Droyn Jones de Molalla threw back his handsome head and laughed outright, teeth white against his light brown skin and tossing black curls; he was three inches taller than she and his wine-red houppelande and tight blue hose showed his tiger build to admiration.

“My liege, I don't think my lord my father is any more pleased with me than Her Majesty is with
you
!” he said, with a sweeping bow. “Since I'm your vassal-at-arms”—he made a slighter bow to Heuradys, acknowledging her senior status in that category—“I claim aid and maintenance and the protection of your arm! I can hope that as a belted knight of twenty I'm too distinguished and too old to
be
belted by my lord my father and then sent to my room without supper, but it's a
faint
hope.”

Count Chaka Jones de Molalla
was
inclined to be a bit choleric, though to be sure she'd never yet met a Count who liked being defied. And under the jest were serious matters of honor. Droyn had sworn to
her personally, and she'd knighted him with the Sword after the battle on the Bay.

The other three present had come north with them after Topanga, but they weren't exactly her followers, though in a sense she was acting as their patron: Meshek ben-Raanan and his large, hairy, silent brother Dov, and their sister Shulamit bat-Raanan. All three were the children of the
Shofet
—Judge and ruler—of the
bnei Yaakov
, and it showed in a family likeness of wavy black hair, black eyes and long rather boney proud-nosed, full-lipped faces as well as their camel-hair robes and billowy pantaloons tucked into soft goatskin boots. Meshek and his brother were here to investigate the wide and dangerous world of which his desert-dwelling nomad folk knew much less than they now realized was wise or even safe after their long post-Change isolation. Shulamit was seventeen, and she was here because she'd threatened to stow away or walk if they didn't take her. They'd believed it, since she'd absconded from their father's tents without permission in the first place and joined the party heading for Topanga when they were too far along to send her back into the desert alone.

Usually she was a chatterbox; all through Astoria and the trip up the Columbia she'd been a mass of observations and questions—all intelligent ones, if endless. Todenangst had her quiet and wide-eyed, though.

Meshek made that graceful gesture his people used, bowing and at the same time touching the fingers of the right hand to brow, lips and heart and then sweeping it down. The wide sleeve of his robe nearly touched the floor.

“Nisicah,”
he said, which was a title that translated as
woman of high rank
in Ivrit, and was what he'd first called her outside the burning wreck of the cursed castle in the Valley of Death. “My brother will depart now with our first report for our father, if it pleases you. I and Shulamit—”