The Given Sacrifice (14 page)

Juniper handed the little princess to Sandra; Mathilda smiled to herself at her mother’s
well-concealed eagerness. The Mackenzie went on:

“I’d suggest that we find some excuse to take folk . . . including some of yours,
Lady Ermentrude . . . on a wee bit of a tour of the CORA lands, to see for themselves
what’s been done there. Forbye that will show them the extent of the damage and that
they weren’t the only ones to suffer. And remind them why we’re fighting, to be sure,
to be sure.”

Sandra nodded. “Excellent idea, my dear Juniper. Now, about the details—”

Halfway through the discussion Mathilda found herself standing at the edge of the
balcony, making a tactful withdrawal of her High Queenly presence and sipping her
fourth cup of tea and nibbling a scone rich with hazelnuts. She smiled a little as
she looked out over the great castle. The Association’s barons affected a plate-armored
machismo; the unkind said they tended to be solid iron from ear to ear whether their
helmets were on or not. But it occurred to her, not for the first time, that this
group here was making a lot of the real decisions among themselves . . . and every
single one of them was female.

From here you could see most of Todenangst, the south side at least. The great circuit
of the outer bailey, a tall granite-faced wall studded with machicolated towers bearing
tall witch-hat roofs of green copper, lined on the inner surface by a linear town
of tiled homes and workshops, barracks and stables and armories and inns and churches.
A ring road and terraced gardens marked the bailey’s boundary; the gates there were
tunnels into the hillside that bore the inner keep, and could be blocked by portcullis-like
slabs of steel falling at the push of a lever. Inside access was via spiral roadways
that were death traps to an invader in themselves.

Then the keep itself, itself far larger than most castles, a hill topped with wall
and tower, courtyard and cathedral and endless little nooks and surprises, all the
way down to the dungeons below and the secret passages that laced the whole. Above
them all the Silver Tower and the Onyx, rearing sheer hundreds of feet into the air
and flaunting their banners beneath the blue cloud-speckled sky. It had been so all
her life that she could remember—the main structure had been completed by ten thousand
men working in round-the-clock shifts and finishing when she was about five, though
furnishing and fitting was still going on in some parts, and probably always would
be.

Mother kept that copy of
Gormenghast
close at hand when she was designing the place. Though it’s much prettier than Steerpike’s
stamping grounds. Gormenghastian but not Gormen-ghastly. And say what you like about
father, he had a will like forged steel, and he dreamed grandly
.

Perhaps it was what Juniper and Sandra had said earlier, but it struck her now that
virtually everything in the landscape she could see save the bones of the earth—things
like the tiny perfect white cone of Mount Hood off to the west, the lower blue line
of the Coast Range westward—was not much older than she. Todenangst
looked
as if it had reared here for centuries amid its surroundings of river and woodland,
manors and the multihued green of field and vineyard, woodlot and orchard, the spires
of churches, railroads thronged with horse-drawn trains, dusty white roads thick with
oxcarts and peasants on foot, monks and men-at-arms, merchants and bicyclists or Tinerant
caravans.

In fact the lower bulk of the castle was steel cargo-containers from trains, and from
barges and freighters stranded in the Columbia by the Change, filled with crushed
automobiles and rubble and cement and all locked together and set in cast mass-concrete.
The heights were girders and lead-coated rebar and more concrete; the very stone sheathing
had been stripped from skyscrapers in Portland and Vancouver and Seattle. Only the
roofing-tile and some of the woodwork and textiles had been made for it. Parts of
the enormous complex were still faintly warm with the heat of curing cement.

I don’t think this way very often
, Mathilda reflected, sipping at the delicate acridity of the tea.

She’d received a good Classical education, including elements of the pre-Change sciences.
Some of them were still useful, but it had all never seemed really real to her until
she’d been whirled through the depths of time at Lost Lake. Still . . .

Will any of this ever occur to Órlaith at all?
she thought.

Something hit the bronze bars of the trellis with an enormous
whung
sound. Mathilda whirled around in a flurry of skirts and dagged sleeves. A man had
flung himself out of a window sixty feet above the balcony, spread-eagled to distribute
the impact. It should still have broken half his bones, but his face was as empty
of expression as an insect’s as he rolled off the metal and onto the tile of the floor.
He wore a servant’s tabard and livery, but a curved knife glittered in his hand, with
the rayed sun of the Church Universal and Triumphant etched into the steel.

The mark of the CUT’s assassin-priest-mages.

Two more figures were hurtling downward even as he shambled erect, lurching away from
her towards the tables with one leg turned at an impossible angle.

Now she could
feel
them. As an emptiness, a lack of presence, a hole in her link with the land.

“Órlaith!”
she shouted.

Mathilda snatched up the silver tea tray, the pot and cups flying over the edge of
the balcony unheeded. She gripped it by the edge, twisting and flinging it with a
snap that sent the disk skimming through the air. It struck the assassin in the back
of the neck with a heavy
chunk
that would have been instantly fatal to any normal man. The cultist staggered, fell . . .
then twitched and began to rise again.

A fourth figure fell, and a fifth. Her heart froze, though these were in armor. One
was just dead; the other managed to draw his sword and push it towards her before
his head fell slack.

“Guard Órlaith!”
she called, snatching up the heavy blade as she ran, taking it in the two-handed
grip.

Seven Devils Mountains

(Formerly western Idaho)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

June 15th, Change Year 26/2024 AD

B
y the time the lingering summer sun was well down behind the peaks, Cole Salander
had had a chance t
o wash and get outside a satisfactory amount of cowboy beans, some sort of griddle
biscuit and a couple of pounds of strong-tasting pork with a very satisfactory BBQ
sauce. Someone opened a sack of nuts and dried fruit that was quite tasty too, and
there was wine though nobody was drinking very much.

“Sip, man, sip! Don’t swill it! That’s a Larsdalen red!” Talyn said as a small straw-covered
jug went around the group by the little fire not far from the tent-flap. “It’s not
beer!”

There were only the two Mackenzies, the Bearkiller pilot and him; the Clan used a
nine-man squad, but the rest of Talyn and Caillech’s outfit were still off on their
scout. Evidently they and Alyssa were old friends.

“Alyssa gets treats from her parents, and it makes up for the sharpness of her personality,
so to say,” Talyn said.

Caillech threw a dried apricot at him, which he caught and ate, and Alyssa made a
rude noise with her lips.

Cole sighed. He missed his friends and buddies, too, although he hadn’t been in the
special-ops unit enough to make really close ones. Still, sitting round the fire eating
BBQ ribs and drinking wine after a ten-mile hike on mountain tracks was a hell of
a lot better than some of the other things that could happen to a prisoner. He hadn’t
ended up full of arrows this morning, for example, which was also a definite plus,
and he wasn’t sitting in a cage in chains.

And it
was
good wine, or at least a lot smoother than Army-ration issue or what you got in the
bars around base camps. Cole had grown up on water and milk, with beer once he was
past his mid-teens and diluted whiskey on special occasions, but there were vineyards
closer to Boise City.

“Good ribs,” he said.

He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and tossed the stripped bone to Talyn’s
dogs. They’d looked towards their master for permission to take the treat the first
time. It made him slightly homesick; he’d had a dog before he reported for duty, one
he’d had since they’d both been pups and hand-trained up himself and let sleep on
the foot of his bed despite his mother’s scolding. They’d been inseparable until poor
creaky smelly half-blind old Bob ran into a catamount that had been sniffing around
the sheep-pen and died doing his valiant best. He’d hunted the cougar down with his
crossbow, blind with rage, and its hide was now gracing the floor in front of the
fireplace back home, but even at a heedless eighteen he’d known a milestone in his
life when it happened.

“Not bad, but the sauce is a bit mild,” Alyssa said, wiping her face with a cloth—eating
them one-handed was messier than the usual way. “Mackenzie cooking is pretty good
but they go lighter on the peppers than most Bearkillers like.”

It had been about as hot as
Cole
liked. When he raised his eyebrows at her she went on:

“My grandmother . . . on my mother’s side, Angelica Hutton . . . was the Bearkiller
quartermaster while Mike Havel led the first of us back to Larsdalen. She’s
Tejano
. We got a war-cry from Finland from the Bear Lord’s family, and Tex-Mex cooking from
her. From what the books say about Finnish food it was a hell of a good bargain.”

A hair-raising squeal brought Cole’s head and attention whipping around. Talyn laughed
and tilted back the flask.

“The pipes!” he said, toasting the harsh droning sound as it modulated into something
resembling music.

“They’re not torturing a pig or biting a cat’s tail, honest,” Alyssa said. “Mackenzies
are a tuneful bunch, always playing something. Including bagpipes, if you can call
that a musical instrument. Especially the
Píob Mhór
, the war-pipes.”

“And a war-camp is the place for war-pipes,” Talyn said. “But it’s true, we’re a musical
lot, having Brigid’s blessing.”

Cole nodded, a little puzzled. Everyone but the very rich made their own music or
did without most of the time; he’d heard a wind-up phonograph once at a county fair,
but hadn’t been impressed and anyway they and the records to play on them cost the
earth. His parents had complained all his life about how you couldn’t just snap your
fingers and have first-class music in the modern world, which was even more annoying
than the rest of the stories about the old times.

He understood more of what Alyssa meant when half a dozen flutes and stringed instruments
and little hand-held drums played with a stick came in faultlessly, weaving around
the hoarse wild song of the drones.

Cole could pick out “All You Need Is Love” or “Old MacDonald” or “Riders on the Storm”
with a six-string guitar and one of his uncles was pretty fair with a lute and he
had an aunt who played a mean fiddle at barn dances, but everyone he could hear was
better than that. As good as the professionals you heard at county fairs or parades,
and better than the neighborhood favorites who played weddings and funerals.

“Sure, and wasn’t the Chief, the Mackenzie herself, herself a bard by trade before
the Change?” Caillech said. “I’ve often heard the oldsters saying how her music kept
their hearts up, in the terrible years. And the songs taught us all the ways of the
Lord and Lady, of course.”

“Gillie Chalium!”
someone shouted. “Let’s dance the blades!”

Which apparently meant something. Talyn whooped, and Caillech grinned as she got up
and hitched at her plaid.

“Sword dance,” Alyssa explained.

More of the clansfolk put out circles of swords in the open spaces between the campfires—eight
blades each, set with one edge down in the dirt and the other up, points-in. Talyn
and Caillech faced each other in one circle, bowing and then standing with hands on
hips. Another pair joined them. . . .

“Pretty,” Cole said, as the dance began. Then: “Gurk!”

It started slow, and seemed to involve keeping the upper body fairly straight; the
hands switched up from hips to over the head from time to time. The
feet
, though, were moving quicker and quicker—and it involved skipping and stepping over
those swordblades, while keeping the eyes locked on the other dancer, and all four
taking a leap to the left at intervals combined with a high kick so that the whole
ensemble moved in a circle counterclockwise.

All done in the dark by flickering firelight.

“Care to give it a try, Private First Class?” Alyssa asked slyly.

“
Christ
no!” Cole blurted.

He was quick and agile and liked a barn dance or a waltz, but the thought of maybe
stamping his foot down on the business edge of a solidly grounded swordblade made
his toes curl in reflex. Those were fully functional swords, too; good steel salvaged
from leaf-springs, and
sharp
.

“My thought exactly,” Alyssa said. “Nice to watch, but I’ve never wanted to try it.
It’s one of those things the Mackenzies do because they enjoy freaking out the
cowan
, too.”

“Cowan?”

“Ignorant, benighted infidels like you and me.”

“You’re not, ah—”

“Of the Old Religion? No. Quite a few of us Bearkillers are, say one in every two
or three, we and the Mackenzies have always been neighbors and allies. My branch of
the family’s Catholic—”

She pulled on a fine chain around her neck, showing her crucifix and kissing it before
she replaced it.

“—but I wouldn’t claim to be a very
good
Catholic. My aunt Signe and her kids are pagan, though. She’s Asatruar, to be technical,
which is sort of different from the Clan’s version. I don’t think Mike Havel . . .
the first Bear Lord . . . was religious at all, from what people say.”

“I know what you mean,” Cole said, and nodded

That sort of thing had been more common in the old days. He didn’t know anyone at
home who didn’t go to church at least occasionally, though. The world had been a strange
place before the Change.

“We Bearkillers let people make up their minds about that sort of stuff pretty much
as they please. What really matters to us is doing your duty to the Outfit. Mackenzies . . .
well, they’re tolerant as all get-out, but if you were cowan it wouldn’t be a really
comfortable place to live in the long run, you’d feel left out. A lot. Left out of
pretty nearly everything.”

“So that’s a religious sword dance?” Cole said, watching with interest.

He’d stopped expecting a scream and blood to interrupt, and he could see that this
would be useful training in situational awareness and swift movement. Probably more
fun than drill, too, but it still put his teeth on edge a bit. Mackenzies seemed nice
enough folk from what he’d seen, nothing like the propaganda apart from being on the
other side, but they certainly weren’t what you could call timid. At all.

“
Everything
is religion, over there in the Mackenzie stamping grounds. Even peeling an apple.
Even sex. In fact,
especially
sex . . . how does it go . . .
All acts of love and pleasure are My rituals
.”

“What’s that?”

“From the Charge of the Goddess. They take it pretty seriously, too. Which can be
dangerous to anyone who doesn’t abide by their rules.”

“How?”

“Well, let’s just say their
dùthchas
is about the safest place in the whole world to be a woman on her own, even at a
Beltane feast when everyone’s drinking hard and running around buck-naked except for
wreaths or masks or antlers on their heads and yelling
Evoe! Io, Io, Bacchios!
and believe me they
totally
know how to let their hair down at a party. Oh, my, yes. But they don’t take any
excuses at all for someone who doesn’t understand the word ‘no.’”

“Head-chopping for offenders?”

“More likely burial at a crossroads with a spear in you. Possibly burial alive with
the spear in the dirt if they’re
really
angry or afraid the Goddess is going to smite the vicinity, or both. You ask me,
they pick the right things to be completely
intolerant
about.”

“Gurk! And I though the
dance
was scary.”

She grinned, then winced a bit as a scab on her lip pulled.

“If you think the
Gillie Chalium
is scary, you should see the
Dannsadh Bhiodaig.
”

“What’s that when it’s got its pants . . . or kilt . . . on?”

“The dirk dance; a dirk is what they call those long daggers they wear. Sort of like
a knife-fight set to music. Actually it’s as much a training
kata
as a dance, but the Clan loves mixing stuff up like that. Real experts do it with
live steel and
fast
.”

The dance ended with a leap and shout; there was a bit of shuffling around, and then
the pipes started up again.

“Hey, I know that tune!” Cole said happily as the pipes sounded through the humming
rattle of the bodhran drums. “That’s
Lord of
—”

The music faltered a little, and heads turned. Cole did too.

A tall man stood on the jut of rock near the fire, in kilt, saffron-dyed loose-sleeved
shirt and a plaid pinned with a broach of silver and turquoise knotwork. His bonnet
had Raven feathers in its clasp. A long sword whose pommel shone and glittered hung
at his right hip; the firelight gleamed on the bright red-gold hair that fell to his
shoulders and the dense short-cropped beard on his sharp-cut regular features. A grin
lit his face, and the blue-green-gray eyes sparkled. A ripple and murmur went through
the crowd, a chant—

“Ard Rí!
Ard Rí!
”

“Holy crap, could that really be—”

“Yeah,” Alyssa said. “My cousin Rudi! Or His Majesty Artos the First, High King of
Montival, to you lowly peasants.”

“Here?” Cole blurted.

Alyssa grinned. “He shows up everywhere. It’s . . . notorious!”

The chant changed: “Artos!
Artos!
”

Cole shivered a little despite himself; Rudi Mackenzie’s name had become a thing of
fear to Boise’s survivors. And here he was, like something out of an old old story,
like one of his great-grandfather’s illustrated books:
Tales of the Round Table
and those. There had been a great big tin box the family had discovered when they
fled back to the old ranch house after the Change, and he’d read them after chores
all his childhood. Good stories, and a lot more realistic than most pre-Change stuff.

Then the newcomer threw back his head and sang, in a strong deep tenor that wasn’t
quite a bass, and the musicians took the tune up again:

“Dance, dance wherever you may be! –”

“Well, whoever he is, like I said, I know the song. Something familiar at last!”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Alyssa said, and uncorked another jug. “Here.”

He took a swig and hugged his knees as she sat beside him, using his shoulder to lower
herself with her good hand. He sighed inwardly at that. Cole Salander wasn’t quite
twenty-three yet, but he was old enough to tell when a woman was interested in him.
Maybe fighting off that bear that’d been about to eat her had something to do with
it. It had been a large and very determined bear, or very hungry, or both.

Unfortunately, it’s an interested woman on the other side of the war, and a banged-up
woman with a cracked arm who I’m probably not going to see again after a couple of
days from now. Dang, I really have the luck, don’t I? Maybe I should hunt up a dice
game, I’ve got to start beating the odds on something soon or lightning will hit me
out of a clear blue sky.

The dancers began to move, left hand on hip, the right above their heads; the beat
started slow, but every time their feet brought them to the edge of a blade there
was a lightning-quick step.