The Given Sacrifice (11 page)

Mother is troubling, but she’s rarely dull,
Mathilda thought. Then with a rush of anguish:
Oh, Rudi, I wish I was with you! Not safe here, but there where things are happening!

She couldn’t tell if it was normal worry, or her new sense of being linked to everything,
but she could
feel
peril approaching, and that had to mean Rudi was in danger far from the strong walls
that surrounded her.

•   •   •

Seven Devils Mountains

(Formerly western Idaho)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

June 15th, Change Year 26/2024 AD

Cole Salander and his captors moved mostly in single file through mountainside meadow
and forest, with the dogs weaving back and forth to keep an eye and nose on the surroundings.
Occasionally he caught one cocking an eye at
him
in a considering manner, as if to remind him of something.

After a while Talyn pulled out sticks of jerky from his sporran and handed them around.
Cole got one, which surprised him slightly, though Artan and Flan weren’t left out
either. It was a not-too-odd variation on the usual fibrous salty not-much, better
than nothing, and it made him thirsty.

They’d left him his canteen, and they all stopped to fill up at a spring-fed pool.
He noted that they used water purification tablets like his, too; no matter how clear
and cold and inviting it looked, any open water could have giardia in it, or for that
matter a dead animal under a rock or dollops of dissolved deer-crap. You didn’t drink
it untreated unless there was no choice, and the slight chemical tang was the taste
of safety. The dogs didn’t drink at all until their master gave them a nod of permission.

The Mackenzie held out his hand before they started out again: “Talyn Strum Mackenzie,
of Dun—village, you’d say—Tàirneanach; the totem of my sept is Lynx. And this fair
but tight-lipped warrior maid is Caillech Carlson Mackenzie, a neighbor of mine and
oath-sister. And a Raven like the
Ard Rí
himself, as you might be guessing from the paint.”

“Ard Rí?”
he said.

“High King,” Alyssa said. “That’s what it means. Artos the First, High King of Montival.
AKA Rudi Mackenzie, my cousin, sorta.”

Whoa, wait a minute, a cousin, “sorta”? What’s that mean?

“And you talk too bloody much, Talyn, the which is beyond question or doubt,” Caillech
said, but smiled.

Cole shook the offered hands; to his surprise Alyssa extended hers, too. Then he hesitated.
You weren’t supposed to talk . . . but nobody had asked him any military secrets.
Plus there were things
he
really wanted to know. And after all, they were all Americans. That was the official
line too, which enabled him to feel a slight glow of virtue about not keeping his
mouth completely shut. Talyn and Caillech might be the children of people who’d gone
so batshit insane after the Change that they just barely managed to hang on to the
side of the planet with suction cups, but they were also working countryfolk caught
up in the gears of war even if they were on the other side. Very much like him.

“I’m Cole Salander—”

What the fuck is the equivalent of what he said?

“—and, uh, I’m from Cottonwood Ranch, about half a day’s walk from a town called Bruneau.
Which is a little pimple of a place with thirty, forty people a hundred-odd miles
west of Boise City. My folks run a few cattle and sheep and crop a little bit, they
and my brothers . . . before the war . . . and sisters and a hand or two.”

They were probably having a hell of a time just getting by, with his elder brothers
missing in action and him away in the Army, but he tried not to think about that too
much. There wasn’t anything he could do about it, anyway, except try to keep foreign
armies away from them.

“You might say the same of us, in reverse,” Talyn said cheerfully. “Adding in a bit
of smithing and weaving and the like. Save that her ladyship here is by way of being
a princess and above such low and mean pursuits.”

Alyssa snorted. “What he means is that my dad is Eric Larsson. And we’re Bearkillers,
not Associates, Talyn; I’ve done chores all my life and I made the A-list on merit,
not birth.”

After a moment Cole missed half a step. Eric Larsson was the military commander of
one of the western outfits in the enemy alliance. They were from the Willamette valley
near the Mackenzies and called themselves the Bearkillers. His sister Signe Havel—née
Larsson—was their civilian leader. Though from the briefings, they didn’t make much
of a distinction that way, they’d been founded by a former Marine right after the
Change. And Eric Larsson was related by blood or marriage to a whole clutch of other
VIPs including the enemy’s big bossman, the one calling himself High King Artos these
days.

I am a toad,
Cole thought mournfully.
I am one dead toad. I didn’t just miss handing over an intelligence asset, this is
high-up political stuff. I am a dead toad that got run under a road-roller and left
in the hot sun. Oh, I am
such
a dead, flat toad.

“And my mom is Luanne Larsson,” the glider pilot went on gloomily. “Who is going to
have an absolute
cow
when she hears I crashed and got banged up. She didn’t want me to be a pilot.”

“Instead of a lancer so shiny in armor and all?” Talyn asked innocently. “Your mother
being Horsemistress of the Bearkillers.”

That got him a scowl from Alyssa and a laugh from Caillech; the Bearkiller woman was
obviously much too slight for fighting in plate armor on horseback, though quick and
very strong for her size. The briefings said the Bearkiller elite force were most
of them cavalry, as good as the knights of the Portland Protective Association and
more versatile and better disciplined. They called them the A-List.

“Mom thought I’d be more useful to the war effort helping with the remount program.
But I took the Gunpowder Day barrel-riding cup,” Alyssa snapped. “
And
the mounted archery prize for the under-eighteens, one year. I could have made cavalry
scout, easy. I just . . . like flying.”

Being a shrimp wasn’t a handicap for a glider pilot, of course; the opposite, if anything.
Cole was a bit above medium-sized. He’d asked about pilot training himself when he
turned eighteen back just before the war started, in the old General’s day, and had
been told that the only way to make the weight limit would be to amputate both his
legs above the knee. Or his head.

“And if I was stuck-up, would I hang out with lowlifes like you two?” Alyssa said.

“Ah, it’s the bonny long curling golden locks, the lassies can’t resist ’em,” Talyn
said.

He took off his Scots bonnet for a moment to run a hand over his shaven head and waggle
the ordinary brown pigtail at the back.

“Beating them off with sticks I am three days in four, a trial and a troublement and
a weariness.”

The women looked at each other and mock-kicked in unison towards the bowman’s backside.
Cole stepped unobtrusively forward to let Alyssa steady herself against his shoulder.
Having an arm in a sling interfered with your balance; he remembered that from his
own experience with cracked bones.

“Wait ’til we get back,” Caillech said. “I’ll punish you good and proper then.”

“Something to look forward to! Or I might be the one making you beg for mercy, eh?”

Caillech laughed and winked. Cole reflected gloomily that all
he
had to look forward to now was a POW camp. He supposed it was easier to be cheerful
when your side was winning. Talyn might be a friendly sort, but he didn’t relax his
vigilance one iota; neither did his companion, or their dogs, and Alyssa was keeping
an eye peeled too. Cole hadn’t given any parole, so he kept his eyes open without
being too conspicuous about it, and—

I am a skilled wilderness scout. It says so right there in my paybook that they took
away from me after I fell asleep.

That meant he could expertly evaluate his chances of making a break, and the probability
of getting anything but an arrow in the back and/or two sets of really large fangs
ripping bleeding chunks out of his ass were somewhere between absolutely nothing and
fucking
zip
right now.

And the fact that I’m feeling a little relieved at that analysis is neither here nor
there. Or that I don’t want to be the last man to die in a lost war.

Surrendering on your own was risky—everyone knew that even if both sides were playing
by the official rules you were as likely as not to be finished off if you just put
up your hands one-on-one at the point of the spear. When the other guy’s blood was
up or he’d just lost a buddy rules were a thin way to avoid becoming another anonymous
body.

But Cole had made it past that stage, and the grapevine, as opposed to official propaganda,
said the enemy treated POWs pretty well. Better than his own side did, these days.
He was prepared to risk his life for the mission. But there was a distinct difference
between a hero’s honored grave and a hole in the dirt for a damned fool.

Mrs. Salander hadn’t raised any fools.

“Ah . . . OK if I ask a question?” he said.

The three looked at each other. “Ask away,” Talyn said. “I won’t promise to answer,
mind.”

“That lady with the staff . . . she’s a witch, right?”

Unexpectedly they all laughed. “They’re
all
witches, Cole,” Alyssa said.

“That we are,” Caillech said, striking a mock-spooky pose and making passes through
the air for a moment with her free hand. “My other horse is a broomstick!”

He absently noted that Alyssa had used his first name instead of
private
or
soldier
or
Salander
or combinations thereof; evidently shaking hands made it all right. He shook his
head.

“You know what I mean. That lady with the braids and the staff
did
something to me, didn’t she?”

“Meadhbh Beauregard Mackenzie is a priestess of the triple cords and the first degree,
right enough,” Talyn said, more solemnly than his usual bantering tone. “But for the
most part she’s our healer back in Dun Tàirneanach. That’s her trade.”

“Doctor at home, field medic with the levy,” Alyssa amplified.

“She said she felt the need to come along on this patrol,” Talyn said. “She’s a
fiosaiche
as well—”

“Seer,” Alyssa said, or translated. “Prophet, sorta. Irritating, all those odd words,
aren’t they?”

“Says the
sisu
lady. And the kettle cried out
awa’ with yer grimy arse
to the pot,” Talyn said pointedly, then continued: “Meadhbh is a
fiosache
of note, and it’s bad luck to disregard the feelings that come to such. And she found
you, right enough!”

“She didn’t just
find
me.”

Caillech nodded. “She cast a slumber on you,” she said. “I’ve heard of such things—Lady
Juniper, the Mackenzie, the Chief herself herself, did it to a whole warband of your
folk two years ago. There was a High Seeker of the CUT with them.”

Cole had heard rumors about that; he’d figured it was a cover story for a defection.
There had been a lot of those, especially recently.

But maybe not . . .

“But I’ve never seen such with my own eyes,” the Clanswoman said. “It was . . . just
a wee bit alarming.”

“Yah
think
?” Cole said with feeling.

“And not in the usual run of things at all, at all,” Talyn said.

Caillech nodded again, her face absolutely serious for a moment.

“It would recoil on the doer, so, unless there was a . . . a provocation of the same
sort,” she said. “So that it was in self-defense, you see? Even then it’s not something
to be done lightly. When a
fiosaiche
 . . . a seeress or a priestess . . . calls upon the Powers, then They’re all too
likely to answer . . . but you’re never quite sure
how
, for They are greater and other than we and Their minds are not as ours. Whether
the glass bottle hits the iron cauldron, or the cauldron hits the bottle, it’s often
bad news for the bottle. Hence not something to be done lightly.”

“Best not speak too much of it now,” Talyn said warningly, and made a sign in the
air.

Yeah. It’s creepy.

The walk took most of the day and by the end of it they were treating him like an
old friend—albeit one they were ready to shoot on the instant if he tried to run or
make trouble, and one they never let into a position where he might seize a hostage.
Which was flattering, if you looked at it right.

The sun was sinking behind the white peaks to the west before the first challenge
came from behind a rock. Well-camouflaged sentries passed them through to a camp not
far from a mountain lake. The heart of it was a long sloping flower-starred meadow
of twenty or thirty acres that dropped off even more steeply southward.

A curved launching ramp of lodgepole trunks had been built down the center of the
open space, with a counterweighted catapult system for throwing gliders into the air
along it; it was a neat, solid piece of field engineering and differed only in detail
from the ones the USAF used. As he watched a lever was tripped, the boxcar full of
rocks slid down the short section of wooden rails below the ramp, gears and winches
whined, and a glider swooped down and then soared into the air with a throw
just
short of the speed that would have ripped its wings off. It banked back in, came
into the breeze and landed, probably testing the launcher after some repairs.

Alyssa followed the brief flight with her eyes and sighed. “No chance for me to break
my neck again for a while,” she muttered.

Four of the slender-winged tadpole shapes of sailplanes were staked out with technicians
working around them, and flags and a wind sock marked the landing area. He even recognized
the type; pre-Change Glaser-Dirk 100s, one of the Air Force favorites, or modern copies
so close to the original that a nonexpert like him couldn’t tell the difference. A
set of big tents flew a banner that showed a snarling bear’s-head, face-on in black
and red and white on a brown background, and they contained a portable forge and workshops
with treadle-powered lathes and presses.