Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (75 page)

“Yes . . . I'm the one brought you here, after all. But while he has Godric, my father has no need for me.”

“Trade is not all that could come of this, you know,” Thora said then. “If you're not required here, you could come back with us to Montival.”

But that would mean leaving Mist Hills . . .

Suddenly uncomfortable, Deor swung his legs over the bench and stood.

“There'll be no dessert till they're done,” he said brightly, “but if I ask nicely Auntie Hilda will give us a pie. Come along and I'll show you round the burg.”

*   *   *

The morning had dawned crisp and clear. Men and horses filled the space before the Gatehouse as Duke Morgruen prepared to escort the Montivallans and a party from the burg to his hold. Godulf's raven fluttered in the wind. The duke's banner, gules five bezants in annulo, had been stiffened with a rod to hold it steady in the still air.

As the baron had put it, Captain Feldman already knew what Hraefnbeorg had to offer, but if Morgruen tried to underbid him he wanted to be there to get his counteroffer in. Deor suspected he also wanted a new look at Morgruen's defenses. They might have something to fight over now.

Captain Feldman was giving his son some last directions for the work on the
Ark
. As Godulf kissed his lady and swung up on his big bay, Deor stepped forward.

“Father, will you give me leave to accompany you?”

“You ran off to Albion Cove without telling anyone,” his mother's gray eyes narrowed. “And you expect to be rewarded?”

“To see Morgruen's rock pile? Hardly a reward,” murmured Godric. Deor sent his brother a grateful glance. Godric had teased him unmercifully when he was a child, but fatherhood had mellowed him.

“Not as a reward,” he said loudly, “as a responsibility. If 'twere not for me the Montivallans wouldn't be here!”

“I don't like the way Orsa looked at you . . .” his mother muttered.

Deor glanced across the courtyard, where Duke Morgruen and his consort were already mounted. Had they heard? He suppressed a shudder. If he wasn't tempted by the girls his mother sent his way surely he wouldn't succumb to a painted hag like Orsa!

“They won't do anything dishonorable. They want to impress the captain with how civilized they are. If 'tis safe enough for Father, surely I'll come to no harm!”

Thora took a step forward. “I owe your son my life. Will it content you if I pledge to ward him?”

Alfwin and some of the other lads snickered and she glared them to silence. Girls in the barony trained in archery, pole-arms, and fortress defense, not swordplay, but Deor felt an odd relief. Thora didn't boast of her deeds, but she had let fall enough in passing to convince him that she could hold her own against any man here. Captain Feldman's own escort included several stout sailors, but only Thora had been trained in land warfare. He would need her expertise to interpret what he saw.

Eorl Godulf sighed and nodded, and Deor swung into the saddle, smirking at Alfwin.

Avisa lifted her hands in blessing. “Thunor give you good weather and Woden show you the way! May all the Powers watch over you and bring you safe home once more.”

The gates swung open, and Deor followed the fluttering raven banner through.

*   *   *

Thora straightened in the saddle and looked behind her. The night before they had camped at the old tourney site near the point where Highway 128 joined 101. Now they were leaving the first range of coastal mountains behind them and coming into a long valley where the Rushing River flowed close to the highway.

“Forth, Eorlingas!” she grinned.

The dozen Hraefnbeorg huscarles had clearly taken their inspiration from the Warrior Series Number Five:
Anglo-Saxon Thegn
. There was a copy in the library at Larsdalen too.

“What?” asked Deor, bringing his mare alongside.

She gestured at the knee-length mail-shirts and the gilded boars on the ridges of the conical helms. Deor himself had exchanged his leather jack for a shirt of gleaming scales. “The Rangers are going to love you people. You look just like the Rohirrim.”

“Do you think so!” Deor sounded pleased. “I found those stories in my father's bookcase when I was small. They made a lot more sense than most of the books that were there.”

Thora snickered. “Just remember to refer to them as the
Histories
and you'll do fine. Though Mithrilwood is well worth a visit, I must say.”

The valley began to open out. To the east, a tangle of willow mixed with oak and poplar and western maple marked the course of the river. On the other side mounds of underbrush showed where the ruined town had been. The occasional rusted vehicle, covered now with wild blackberry, had been pulled to the side of the road. Farther along, native shrubs were competing with tangled vines to which a few withered grapes still clung. From time to time they glimpsed deer and once some kind of horned beast that bounded off as if on springs, pursued by a tawny streak with a spotted hide whose scent made the horses snort and plunge.

“Cheetah—” said Godulf when the captain asked. “There was a Safari Park a little south of here. The rhinos couldn't take the cold and the giraffes and the zebras got eaten, but the antelopes and the cheetahs survived. They do well where there's open ground.”

“Up north, it's tigers,” Captain Feldman grimaced. “They like heavily forested mountains just fine, and after the Change they developed a taste for men. When there's a man-eater in a district, the local lord has to go after him. Sometimes the High King himself leads the hunt. He says it's duty, but I suspect that he feels the need for an occasional challenge, now that the Cutters are gone.”

“Those were the foes you were speaking of last night—” said Duke Morgruen. “That was a great victory.”

“Thanks to the Lord of Hosts, it was indeed,” said the captain, “and a great evil banished from the world. I was in the Corvallan contingent there at the Horse Heaven Hills where we broke the Prophet's army, with the field-catapults. A sailor learns that trade.”

Eyes distant for an instant, he added softly, “It was . . . a long day. Very long.”

“And now your king rules all their territories as well?”

“He keeps the peace.” Captain Feldman shrugged. “I've heard him say it's more a matter of
reigns over lightly
than
rules
. We have pretty good communications via courier and the trains, but you can't maintain the kind of Federal government we had before the Change. Each land is governed in its own fashion, whether that be the ways of the Seven Council Fires of the Lakota tunwan or the Faculty Senate and Popular Assembly in Corvallis, or the neo-feudalism the Armingers set up in the Portland Protective Association.”

“
Norman
Arminger?” asked Godulf.

“Blackthorn of Malmsey?” echoed Morgruen.

For a moment their eyes met with a shared speculation that held no hint of rivalry.

“I fought him at the eighth West/An-Tir War,” Morgruen said then. “He was an arrogant son of a bitch and a period-Nazi, but very, very good with the blade.”

“Yeah,” agreed Godulf, “I suppose he would survive.”

“He's dead now. He was killed by King Artos' father in Change Year Ten,” Captain Feldman said dryly. “Though Sandra Arminger . . . the Queen Mother—her daughter is High Queen Mathilda—is very much alive, up in Castle Todenangst. She ruled the Association territories, the Protectorate, for a long time after the Lord Protector died, and she's still . . . very influential.”

Duchess Orsa laughed, a sound that seemed bitter and amused at the same time. “I'm even less surprised to hear that. That woman was always so twisty that she could have met herself coming down the stairs.”

“They call her the Spider of the Silver Tower,” Thora blurted; she'd heard her elders say the like more than once. Captain Feldman gave her an odd unreadable look and nodded.

“Her Majesty is known for her . . . ah . . . very keen intelligence. It's said she was the one who proposed that California be called the Province of Westria when it's reclaimed . . .”

For some reason the three older local nobles all laughed at that.

“The same King Artos who now claims California . . .” said Eorl Godulf thoughtfully.

“In theory—” Captain Feldman smiled. “But you needn't fear he'll come marching in any time soon. Even if the High King wanted to impose one system on everybody, helping the places that were hit worst by the war to get back on their feet is enough to keep any ruler busy just now. His rule is to confirm anyone who'll swear allegiance to him and the Great Charter in their own lands and local law and customs; he says that is Montival's strength. But one of these days he will send colonists to the empty spaces down here, and they'll be glad to have allies already on the ground.”

Thora nudged her horse closer to Deor and grinned. “All the better for you. King Artos' sept totem is the Raven, and they say that She who the Mackenzies call the Crow Goddess claimed him when he was a boy. I expect he'll call you folks at Hraefnbeorg his kin!”

Presently the course of the river veered away from the highway. To the east, forest rose above what had been a sizeable town. On the bank of the river she could see what looked like a tannery and a mill. To the west, tilled fields reminded her of the heavy cultivation around Corvallis, with plots that lay fallow alternating with those that were being plowed and those in which the winter wheat had already been sown.

Gray figures moved in the fields. As they got closer Thora realized that it was not the people but their garments that were all the same—rough gray woolen smocks on both men and, she thought, women too. Since all of them had their hair cropped close it was hard to tell. She glanced ahead, where Duke Morgruen was talking to Captain Feldman about wine, and edged her horse closer to Deor's.

“Are those the duke's workers?” After a quick glance, most kept their eyes on the ground, but a big fellow with Hispanic coloring straightened, glaring, and Thora recoiled from the rage she saw in his eyes.

“You joked about Morgruen's thralls at the cove, but this . . .” She shook her head. “Are those neck rings made of iron?”

He nodded. “Sometimes a man escapes to us, and our smith has to cut it off. We hide him at an outlying hold till his hair grows.”

“Deor—this is wrong!”

He turned to her, eyes wide. “Do you feel the evil too? For the past few miles I've been wanting to turn my horse and head for home. I . . . sense things sometimes. Even before I saw your ship my heart was pounding though I didn't know what I was waiting for.”

Thora's indignation had been at the injustice. Clearly Deor meant something different.

“Does that happen often?”

“All the time when I was little—one reason, I guess, my mama tries t' protect me. Then I learned to get it under control by chanting the runes. But here”—he signed himself with the protection rune—“it's all around us. I never felt anything quite this bad before.”

He was staring at a stand of trees, no, at the rising ground on the other side of the river where a fortress of yellow stone squatted toadlike atop the hill. “Guildengard . . .” he whispered.

Thora was familiar with castles. This one had a curtain wall with four towers and a gatehouse, surrounding a keep. A good siege-train with artillery could take it down, but clearly they had never had a modern war here. Compared to Gervais or Molalla it was a minor fortress, but crude as it was, it menaced the valley.

“Before the War of the Eye, in the PPA the peasants used to be tied to the land,“ she said softly. “They wore thrall-rings too. If they escaped to our territory we protected them, but we weren't strong enough to take on Portland alone.”

“I think my father would like to free them,” Deor replied soberly. “But if Guildengard and Hraefnbeorg fought in earnest we'd destroy each other, and only cannibals and the wild men would remain in this land.”

She nodded. Deor might feel dread, but outrage was burning in her belly, kindled by the glance of the man she had seen in the field.

*   *   *

“At least once a year I send a party down to the dead cities.” Morgruen gestured with the hand that was not holding his wine. “There's still a lot of good stuff to be had . . .” He pointed a ringed finger toward a corner where bolts of bright fabric leaned against the wall. The previous room had been full of brown boxes inscribed with the faded printing of the olden times. Deor wondered why one would make towels out of paper, and what Huggies were for.

“Even Lady Orsa can't wear all that,” hissed Thora, “and he's certainly not using it to clothe his household—why is he saving all those things?”

“For some future that's only in his head? Or maybe for replacement wall hangings? I think mice have got at some of the ones in the hall.” He gave her a doubtful glance.

Dinner had been served in a chamber hung with lengths of multicolored silk, even the ceiling, with paintings jostling for space on every wall. The beefsteaks were tough and the vegetables overdone. Deor could tell when food had been prepared with care, and there was none here. When he tried to pay his respects to the house wight he got only a resentful turmoil in return.

“These are your trade goods?” asked the captain.

The huscarles had been given a feast of their own in the barracks with the duke's men, and were probably having a better time. The food might be uninspired, but there was nothing wrong with Morgruen's wine.

“Some of them, certainly,” Duke Morgruen smiled, “but some must be saved for our own needs. When I have enough land under cultivation to support my city we'll need supplies.”

“A city? And who will live there?” Godulf said sharply.