The Given Sacrifice (15 page)

The man called Rudi Mackenzie sang on in a slow rhythm, voice carrying effortlessly
through the music and the crackle of the fires:

“I danced at a Beltane with the pole standing tall,

And ribbons flowing ’round the dancers all.

I danced in the morning of the Midsummer Feast

As the day dawned pink with the Sun Lord’s heat!”

“OK, maybe I
don’t
know this one,” Cole muttered to himself. “But, what the hell, it’s the same tune.”

He joined in the clapping and the chorus:

“Dance, dance—”

The tall man went on, quickening just a little:

“As Lughnasadh came and the corn shone gold,

Moonlight brought the kiss of Samhain cold.

I danced about the balefire, late at night,

And turned the Wheel against all fright!”

The Mackenzies all joined in the chorus; evidently this was an old favorite with them.
Then:

“As the world turned black, I lighted the log,

With Yule burning bright and piercing the fog.

I lay with my Lady in the dark of the year,

And I’ll be reborn when Beltane draws near!”

Rudi Mackenzie leapt down from the rock as the song ended, and the dancers crowded
around him. There was a whoop and they tossed him high and set him on his feet again.

Kill.

Panic seized Cole. Something was
talking
to him. Something was
talking him
, and he was watching it like a play.

Kill.

Emotion came with it, a cold malevolent hate, a rancid disgust at . . . everything.
Himself included; himself especially. He was alone in a prison of rotting meat, he
had to get out, get
out
into the dark warm
rightness
.

His hand stripped the knife out of a belt and he lunged up. The tall man’s laughing
face loomed before him, a brightness that made an intolerable twisting at the heart
of things. He moved, fluid and sure even as part of him struggled to open his fingers
and halt his arm—

Crack.

There was an instant when they were looking at each other eye to eye. His arm quivered,
the muscle knotting, and sweat ran down his face. The grip around his right wrist
was intolerable, but the pain as the bones ground together had no bearing on what
he was doing, what whatever
it
was was doing.

Cole Salander was a passenger in his own head, like a rich man riding the mail-coach
except that he was beating at the windows and trying to smash his way out and getting
absolutely nowhere, but that distant part of him had time to feel professional admiration.
He’d never seen a control-counter done that fast, and despite the awkward cross-body
position the strength that held him was unbelievable. Cole knew he was exerting ten-tenths
of his body’s capacities, almost enough that the hard muscles tore loose from their
anchors on his sturdy bones, but he might as well have been pushing at something carved
out of seasoned maple-wood.

“No! Don’t kill him!”

Rudi Mackenzie’s voice rang out, the tone flat and even though the point of the dirk
was a half inch from his belly. He snapped:

“Hale and alive, Edain!”

Something hit Cole across the backs of his lower thighs with savage force. The pain
alone wouldn’t have made any difference, but simple mechanical leverage made the joints
of his knees buckle and pitched him backward. Hands seized him in half a dozen places
and began to bend his arms behind him. A guttural sound escaped his throat, as if
he was trying to pronounce something that
hurt
because it wasn’t meant to be said.

Vision began to strobe, the firelit night interspersed with somewhere else, somewhere
that was black in a way that negated the possibility of anything else.

He twisted against the strength that pulled him away from what he
must
do. Flashes, a man’s square face, a blond woman’s locked in a rictus of effort.

“Fáfnir’s
bones
he’s strong!” a soprano voice gasped.

Hands and arms gripped him, half a dozen strong warriors just enough to contain the
quivering violence that locked them all into a dynamic stasis. It took two to get
the knife out of his hand.

“I . . . see . . . you,”
rasped through his throat.

“And I you,” the High King said grimly.

To the others: “Hold him fast, now.”

His right hand stripped the Sword out of the sheath at that hip, leaving it pommel-upright
in his grasp. The world froze in a blaze that was light and darkness, a smile that
was and wasn’t his mother, a feeling of
completion
. Nothing more was necessary, but something that was/wasn’t him shrieked. In the same
movement Rudi pressed the antler-cradled crystal to Cole’s forehead.

Click.

There was something like steel wire around his brain, straining and then
snapping
.

He didn’t black out, but everything became irrelevant. The sudden rag-doll limpness
of his body almost tore it out of the hands gripping it, where the previous instant’s
unnatural strength had been checkmated. They carried him back and plunked him down
sitting on top of a barrel full of something heavy and solid, a posture that kept
his feet off the ground and made it impossible for him to move even if he felt like
it, which he didn’t.

When his eyes fluttered open again he felt almost normal, except that he had no desire
to do anything whatsoever except sit and there was a film of something like flexible
glass between him and the world. Hands rested heavy on his shoulders and a Mackenzie
short sword was close enough to his throat to make the little hairs crinkle a bit,
but that was nothing he could care about.

“No.”

The High King’s voice, facing off against Bow-Captain Luag’s anger and meeting it
with a slight smile.

“He’s foresworn!”

“That he is not, Luag. He had no more choice in the matter than a man hit on the head
with a sledgehammer can choose not to fall.”

A hand fell almost caressingly on the hilt of the Sword. “I’ve met the like before.
They must have foreseen that the line of his fate would be tangled with mine, so.
And I can tell you with a great and certain certainty that it won’t happen again.
Not with this one. He’s guarded against such now, for all his life to come.”

“It would be just as certain if he were dead, but you’re the High King,” Luag said,
but it was a grumble now and not hot rage.

“Indeed I am.”

The bow-captain sheathed his own weapon and stepped back.

Cole felt enough life return to smile slightly at the shocked, uncertain faces of
Alyssa and Talyn and Caillech. Rudi held out his hand.

“A bit of a pick-me-up, Edain.”

The square-faced young man Cole remembered stepped forward, a flat silver flask in
one hand. The other held an unstrung bowstave of impressive thickness.

That part of Cole’s brain that handled logic was starting to work again, as were his
nerves, and he suspected that was the thing that had whacked him across the backs
of his knees in a way that was going to make him limp for days. All things considered,
he didn’t mind much.

“Waste of good brandy, sure and it’s a crime, Chief,” the archer said, but handed
it over.

“Drink.”

Cole did as the flask was held to his lips. The sweet fire coursed down his throat;
he gasped, and things stuttered to life within him. For a moment he had a crazy sensation
of
being
a grape, and feeling utter completion as he was picked and fermented and distilled,
then it spun away and the world began to break through the film around his being.

“What—” his voice began to rise.

The High King stooped a little, one hand braced on his knee, which put their eyes
on a level.

“Look at me, man.” Cole did. “Now, you’ve met a High Seeker of the Church Universal
and Triumphant at some time, have you not, the misfortune of the world?”

“I . . . yeah, of course, I—”

A gust of panic suddenly squeezed his throat shut. He knew he had, a red-robe priest
of the weird cult that ruled beyond the Rockies. One had shown up to be chaplain,
and . . . but he couldn’t
remember
it.

“I . . . I can remember remembering that I did, but—”

“Easy, easy. Drink again. My guard-captain can refill his flask later.”

Cole did, gulping and coughing. The light changeable eyes were steady on his in the
firelight, but their presence was like a burning limelight, like looking into the
sun for a moment.

“How can I remember remembering but not remember?”

“The Sword of the Lady healed your mind,” Rudi—Artos—said. “A compulsion was laid
upon you, like a seed . . . or a spring trap set for game. The Sword removed it, but
that means a scar upon your memory. Count yourself lucky; the compulsion was subtle,
and meant to be hidden. If it hadn’t been, more of you would have been lost when the
tainted part was burned away.”

The flask was empty. Cole looked down at it—there was a wolf’s face on it, thin black
lines set into the silver—and wondered whether he should ask for more or just upchuck.
A gust of wild laughter threatened to break free. Probably puking all over the High
King would be blasphemy or
lèse-majesté
or something like that.

“Cole Salander, is it?”

“Yes,” he said. Familiar ritual straightened him a little, as he rattled off his rank
and serial number.

“And you’ve two brothers, Jack and Tanner?”

That startled him enough that his stomach subsided. “Yeah. They went missing—”

“At the Horse Heaven Hills last year, yes,” the High King said. “There was more than
a little chaos, just then.”

His hand was on the Sword again, eyes slitted in thought for a moment before he went
on:

“They’re alive. Tanner I grieve to say lost his left foot at the ankle, a matter of
a six-pounder round shot, but he’s recovering and will be able to get about well enough
to do a man’s work yet. Jack has taken service with Frederick Thurston, the one of
your first President’s sons who yet lives, and the one who didn’t betray and kill
him and sell his country to the enemy of humankind. With which enemies you have just
now had, I’d be thinking, a closer acquaintance than is comfortable. Not so?”

“I, uh. Yeah.”

Rudi straightened and clapped a hand on his shoulder. When he spoke he raised his
voice to carry among the onlookers; faces stretched back into darkness.

“This man did no wrong of his own will. He’s now free of all taint, and I swear by
the Sword of the Lady and She who chose me to bear it that he means to abide by his
oath. He strove his utmost to resist the bane laid in his soul, and that may well
have slowed the stroke just enough to spare me. And he’s now under my protection and
that of the Goddess through me, so heed the word of the Mother-of-All.”

A babble broke out, as the late-comers were filled in. The square-faced man took his
flask back and tucked it into his sporran.

“You’d think they’d have learned by now it wouldn’t work, and they so full of eldritch
knowledge,” he said cheerfully.

Cole thought he was a little white around the gills, though.

“It didn’t work
this time
,” Rudi said grimly. “If we do well, we’ll keep dodging and weaving long enough for
me to accomplish what I must. There’s a reason I was given the Sword. The Lady’s protection
does not sleep, but neither does the hatred of the Malevolent.”

He turned his attention back to Cole. “You can see your brother Jack soon,” he said.
“And perhaps he can acquaint you better with the rights and wrongs of this miserable
war.”

The beautifully modulated voice rose again. “Are there those who’ll care for this
man?”

Three stepped forward. “Ah, cousin Alyssa. And Talyn and Caillech of Dun Tàirneanach.
See that he sleeps, and that he’s bundled warmly; shock’s a possibility.”

They helped him back, and got out his bedroll to wrap around him while they built
up the fire a little and set rocks to heating; he did feel core-chilled.

After he stopped shaking Cole looked into the darkness where Rudi Mackenzie had vanished.

“He’s . . . quite something, isn’t he?” he said slowly. “He’s got . . . impact. Whatever
it is about a man that . . . the old General had a lot, and my CO has some . . . but
that guy, he’s got all there is to get.”

“Baraka,”
Talyn said soberly. “The Mother marked him for Her own when he was yet a boy, in
the
nemed
, the sacred wood above Dun Juniper. My own father saw it, the great Raven flying
out of the setting sun . . . the mark of Her beak is between his brows, you saw it?
That was put there by no human hand. Some say he’s Lugh come again, the Sun Lord’s
self returned in His joy and wrath and splendor.”

Cole nodded. It was weird, but somehow it made sense. Then he yawned enormously, and
the world faded away. He scarcely felt hands moving him into the tent and laying him
on the pine boughs, hot stones at his feet and back.

Cas
tle Todenangst, Crown demesne

Portland Protective Association

Willamette Valley near Newburg

High Kingdom of Montival

(formerly western Oregon)

June 15th, Change Year 26/2024 AD

“Ó
rlaith!”

Mathilda ran. Vision came in jerky flickers, fast and at the same time unbearably
slow. Sandra scooped her granddaughter up and rolled into the swept outdoor hearth,
curling her body around the infant’s, and the wet-nurse stood in front of them with
a poker in her hands like a baseball bat. Signe spun out of her chair, the Bearkiller
backsword snapping into her hand, a bright glint of steel in the flickering green
gloom. The two Countesses swept up the skirts of their cotte-hardies in their left
hands and each drew the dagger that marked them as Associates with their right; the
weapons were ceremonial, but quite functional as well.

Delia de Stafford and Virginia Thurston started throwing things—teapots, for starters.
One smashed right into the face of the Cutter assassin, boiling-hot water flying with
shards of Sevres porcelain that had come down two centuries to meet its end here.
The de Stafford nanny took Heuradys in one arm and Yolande in the other, retreating
behind her mistress.

Buy time,
Mathilda knew.
The guards will be here in seconds.

Then a clash of steel came from the inner rooms as she raised her sword. One of the
magus-assassins turned to meet her.

•   •   •

Lioncel struggled to keep his breathing even; it wasn’t the effort of the brief run,
but the tension, and that ratcheted upward when they came out into the central space
of the Queen Mother’s level. There was a dead man lying on the stairs that led up
to the Guard barracks, blood leaking out of his armor, and the clash of steel on steel
and the dull beat of blades on shields from farther up. Two dozen men-at-arms in the
black harness of the Protector’s Guard waited in the great groin-vaulted chamber that
lay outside the Queen Mother’s private rooms, their visors down except for the man
in front. The leader of the living was a young knight.

Lioncel recognized him, but vaguely, Sir Evroyn-something, from somewhere north of
the Columbia, one of the valleys on the eastern slopes of the Cascades. His face was
white and sweating—though to be fair, if Lioncel’s liege was standing in front of
him looking like that Lioncel would have sweated too. Some of the men-at-arms behind
him were stirring slightly, not much, but not the statue-still immobility you expected
from the Protector’s Guard. Not all of them were in on this; the rest must have been
fed some story.

“There’s a conspiracy against the Crown. Stand aside,” she said, not halting her forward
stride and pitching her voice to carry to all the guardsmen.

And a conspiracy against my mother and sisters!
Lioncel thought.

“My lady, I have orders that absolutely nobody should pass—” the knight began, clearing
his throat.

“I am Baroness Tiphaine d’Ath, and I am Grand Constable of the Association,” Lady
Death said. “By my office I have right of immediate access to Her Majesty.
Get out of my way.
Last warning.”

It was also the first, but this
was
Lady Death speaking. Not for the first time, he knew a deep comfort in the fact that
Delia de Stafford was also Tiphaine d’Ath’s Châtelaine. Then his ears twitched. Was
that a scream from within? His mouth went dry.

“I have orders—” the knight began again.

Lioncel had been around his liege all his life, and seen her in battle. He had never
seen her move so quickly; one instant she was walking, then next extended in a perfect
long-lunge with the flat of her blade horizontal to the ground, right foot forward
and arm and sword extending the line, shield reserved and tucked against her torso
for balance.

Sir Evroyn reeled backward, and she recovered with the smooth precision of water running
downhill, like an exercise in the
salle
rather than the desperate scramble that real fighting usually was. Red blossomed
where his right eye had been, and on the last few inches of her longsword. He fell
with a clatter of armor as if all the strings that held his body together had been
severed at once . . . which was more or less what happened. The point had punched
through the thin layer of bone at the back of the eye socket and into his brain, just
far enough and no more lest the steel be trapped by the edges cutting into his skull.

What part of
last warning
didn’t he understand?
Lioncel thought, a little dazed.
Did he think
Tiphaine d’Ath
was just
bluffing
?

“Throw down!” she barked, as the
menie
of Ath locked shields behind her and knocked down their visors.
“Now!”

A few did, dropping their swords with a clatter and dropping to their knees with their
hands on their heads. The rest started to close ranks, their big kite-shaped shields
coming up to make a wall, but the kneeling men hindered the precision of the movement.

“Shoot!” the Grand Constable snapped.

Six crossbows fired, a dull multiple
tung
of vibrating steel and cord and right on top of it the hard ringing
tank
sound of the pile-shaped heads hitting steel, like a ripple of blows from a hydraulic
punch in a mill. At point-blank range even the best armor didn’t always stop a bolt
from a military crossbow. Lioncel felt as if something in front of him was pulling
his hands up, snuggling the butt into his shoulder, squeezing the trigger—

A man stumbled backward with the bolt sunk deep in his bevoir, the jointed piece that
shielded throat and chin. Blood leaked around the short thick arrow, and sprayed from
under the visor and even through the vision-slit. Steel gauntlets scrabbled at it
for an instant and then the armored figure fell and lay twitching and gurgling. Tiphaine
d’Ath went through the gap like a falcon stooping, with Rodard and his brother Armand
behind to either side. A man in the black harness of the Guard tried to overrun the
Grand Constable—tucking his shield into his left shoulder and charging, to ram her
off her feet by sheer weight and impetus. The shields banged together with a lightning
crack
, but she was already pivoting as if they were dancing a volta. She ignored him as
he staggered where she’d put him, into the stroke of Sir Armand’s serrated mace. It
smashed his visor with a sound like a boot heel stamping on a metal cup.

The sword flicked out again, its narrow point punching through the mail grommet covering
an armpit and the edges breaking the links. . . .

Using the sword against opponents in armor requires absolute precision because of
the limited number of targets. The armpit is a weak spot. Don’t throw your arm back
so it’s exposed.

The voice in his mind was Tiphaine’s in some
salle d’armes
sometime in his life, running like an inhumanly detached commentary.

I will now demonstrate why . . .

A minuscule sway, and a sword went past her. She reversed her own and thrust backward
into the spot behind another man’s knee without looking behind her, blocking a thrust
with her shield while she did, moving with the leisurely certainty of someone who
had all the time in the world to line things up. . . .

The knee is another vulnerable area, but rarely easy to reach. . . .

He’d been reloading the crossbow as he followed, dodging through the shouting clanging
mass of armored forms, with the two household knights to either side. The initial
lines of combatants had broken up into knots of steel-clad forms who shoved and hit
and shouted and screamed. And increasingly threw themselves flat and called for quarter.

“Follow me who can!”
his liege called, in a voice like a contralto war-trumpet.

Four of the Guard men-at-arms who
weren’t
giving up retreated through the door into the Queen Mother’s chambers, a boom and
clatter and crash of metal utterly incongruous in the pale splendors. For a moment
they stood in the door, and then one of the Ath spearmen—he was actually carrying
a glaive—thrust his polearm past the edge of a shield and used the hook just below
the blade to drag the shield forward with a double-handed heave. The man attached
to the shield by the arm he had through its loop staggered, then screamed as the war
hammer came down on his shoulder, denting the metal in and breaking the collarbone
beneath. The Grand Constable and her two knights burst through into the great chamber,
and there was a blurring flurry of motion and the surviving man in black armor was
running away . . .

. . . not running
away.
That’s out towards the balcony. He’s running
towards
Mom and the girls and Her Majesty.

His liege and Rodard and Armand were after the man, but he dodged behind an old tattered-looking
statue on a plinth. Lioncel brought the crossbow up with a steady concentration, as
if he were watching someone else aim—someone perfectly calm, as if this were a shooting
range.

Tung.

The bolt punched through the ancient bronze without slowing and hammered into the
man’s shoulder, twisting him around. Tiphaine d’Ath passed him with a sway of her
torso, running with the liquid fluency of a leopard and ignoring the scrap-metal succession
of blows from mace and war hammer that rang out behind as Armand and Rodard followed
and finished the man in passing. Lioncel fumbled at the cocking lever of his crossbow
as he dashed behind her; there was something dreamlike about it, his frantic speed
not keeping up with her strides.

The dappled light of the balcony flashed into his vision like a tableau. A figure
with a face dripping blood and boiling water and broken bones jutting through a servant’s
livery stood before the hearth, leaning forward as if straining at an invisible barrier
with a curved knife in his hand. Juniper Mackenzie and his own mother were between
the man and the Queen Mother and the child, their hands upraised in an odd hieratic
gesture; they and their opponent were in total silence, utter immobility, but he could
feel immense forces straining against each other, as if the air between them
rippled
somehow without anything really visible at all.

The Grand Constable threw her shield aside and took the sword in the two-handed grip
and spun like a wheel, the blade a silver blur. There was a heavy
chunk-crack
sound, and the assassin’s head leapt free. Juniper and his mother staggered and collapsed
together clutching at each other, as if they had been pushing on a door that suddenly
opened. The headless man fell . . . which was a relief, because some corner of Lioncel’s
mind hadn’t been sure he
would
.

Signe Havel was fighting another broken man, one who slapped the strokes of her backsword
aside with the flats of his hands. She screamed—as much frustration in the sound as
rage—and lunged.

And the blade went through the man’s ribs and grated home in bone, a killing stroke
in any sane fight. He lunged for
her
, grinning, his left hand reaching for her neck even as he laughed and coughed out
bits of lung. She dove backward in a tuck-and-roll, just barely avoiding the slash
of the curved knife in his right by sensibly not wasting time trying to pull the sword
free. Huon Liu darted in, his own blade in the two-hand grip and flashing down.

“Huon!”
Lioncel shouted at his friend.

The older boy’s face was set. His light sword thudded down at the junction of neck
and shoulder; then he spun away, clutching at his stomach with an
oooff
as the dead man’s knife cut. Light mesh-mail showed through the rent cloth of his
jacket, and then blood welled over his hands. Lioncel breathed out and forced calm
on himself, and fired. The bolt transfixed the assassin at the pelvis, and he could
hear
the point crunch into bone, but the man—if he was one—just pivoted for a moment under
the horse-kick impact, then lurched forward again.

The moment was enough. Tiphaine and Rodard and Armand were all on him at once, and
blood spattered into the air behind a wall of armored shoulders and weapons rising
and falling and harsh meaty sounds.

Lioncel shuddered, as if he’d been dropped into cold water when he was fevered. Or
had suddenly woken from a
very
bad dream. A glance showed him his mother and sisters were all right, though Heuradys
was frozen in shock and Yolande was sobbing; Lady Juniper had to help Delia de Stafford
up before she clutched them to her. The Queen Mother was emerging from the hearth
with her granddaughter, who was waving pink fists and making a wuh-wuh-wuh sound,
less frightened than offended at not being in the center of the universe, which was
where babies thought they belonged.

Sandra Arminger looked . . . alarmingly determined.

The High Queen was kneeling beside Huon, laying aside a long sword that looked a bit
big for her, after a similar quick check. The blade and her right arm and side were
heavily spattered.

“Where did you get that?” Tiphaine d’Ath said, as she knelt on the boy’s other side,
ripping the clothing aside. Then: “Rodard, Armand, get this cluster . . . fracas . . .
under control. See that the staircase up is secured. And we need a medic.”

“Two of the Guard knights leapt after the assassins,” Mathilda said. “Neither of them
survived, much less arrived in shape to fight, but one of them lived long enough to
give me this. A good thing, because there were three of the assassins. I got one,
but . . .”

“They operate in threes, yes.” She looked up. “Brave of him.”

Lioncel did too, and shuddered; the men had deserved that accolade, even from so exacting
a source. He wasn’t particularly afraid of heights, but the thought of deliberately
hurling yourself off that drop, in armor, on the off-chance you’d survive long enough
to be useful. . . .