The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) (48 page)

Thy merchants chase the morning down the sea!”

Feldman turned to them again. “Your Highness, Your Majesty . . . we’re under way.”

Dùthchas of the Clan McClintock

(Formerly northern California and southern Oregon)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

June 24th, Change Year 46/2044 AD

T
he McClintocks were singing as they trotted along:

“I met a man in tartan trews

I spiered him wha’ was the news—”

It was their turn, so Karl didn’t try to start up a Mackenzie tune. He was feeling a little tired, too, but . . .

But I will bear the teeth of Anwyn’s Hounds before I admit it,
he thought.
And forbye, this Diarmuid is probably walking in the same schoon just now. Also it would be the whipped cream on the pie if me da were to catch us and beat me about the head and shoulders with my own bonnet before them all, and I’ve an uneasy feeling that’s who’ll come after us. Old as he is, set him on a trail and he
does . . . not . . . stop
.

So he would
not
be the first one to suggest they stop for the night, though there was a good stretch of not-too-steep meadow just ahead and the sun was touching the peaks to the westward. There were a dozen men in the
feartaic
’s party . . . eight men and four women, rather, the same balance as in his, typical for a faring like this in either Clan.

They’d left the bicycles at Diarmuid’s steading, heading south on foot with six pack-mules to carry the essentials. That didn’t include tents; it
was high summer, after all. Pressing hard, ten hours a day or so at wolf-pace, alternately jogging slow and walking fast with a break every hour, you could cover a lot of ground even in the mountains. It might kill the mules eventually, tough though the beasts were. No other creature could rival humankind for work of this sort, not when you kept it up for many days.

Gwri of Dun Tàirneanach dropped back beside him. Her dark eyes scanned the woods around.

“I’ve an ill feeling,” she said quietly. “But these are not our home ranges. It’s . . . uncertain. Perhaps it’s just the strangeness, feeling out of my proper place, but . . .”

“But it’d be a foolish thing to ask you along for your counsel and then scorn it,” Karl said.

Also, second sight aside you’re one who sees well and thinks hard, and no mistake.

As they’d come south the land had changed, gradually and day-by-day, until they were in country utterly unlike the mosaic of river, swamp, groves of fir and oak amid prairie meadows, overgrown ruins and patches of farmland that made up the Willamette, and more subtly different from the wet rugged forests of the Cascades where they’d all hunted and trapped. And more varied than their own mountains as well, according to aspect and history; these woods burned more often than the rainforests farther north, and you went from dense shade to open land to dappled savannas of grass and oak within a few miles. Just here on a north-facing slope the land was in tall widely-spaced sugar pines, old-growth trees mostly a hundred fifty feet or better with cones as long as a man’s forearm. Sharp-leafed tan oak and silvery-barked madrone were thick in the understory and the edges of places too rocky to support the great conifers.

The scent sap was heavy in the warm dusty-dry afternoon air, and tough-looking plants with a few white-and-yellow flowers still marked the yellow grass. This far south, even in the mountains summer rain was rare.

That strangeness made it harder for Karl to judge risks. The distinctive pit-tit-tit of a white-headed woodpecker sounded, and the angry churring of a redbelly, but neither was a type that paid much attention to
humankind. There weren’t any bigger animals within sight, but most of them
did
pay attention to his breed, as they would any other predator, and would move off at sight or scent of the warband. Game was still thick enough that with Cernunnos’ favor they’d never gone short of fresh meat, and with a score and six of them along they could finish off a big beast before it spoiled. Even in warm weather.

I think the Princess thought of it when she said how many to take, we’re
just
as big a band as could live off the land without scattering and slowing down, provided we know what we’re about,
Karl thought admiringly.
Which means we don’t have to carry a weight of supplies that
would
slow us down.
She’s
a clever lass, and no mistake, our golden princess!

Then he concentrated on the matter at hand. They were also just few enough that a really desperate or deeply stupid band of outlaws might tackle them, at least for a quick nip-and-tuck raid or ambush where the ground favored them, or if they split up for any purpose. No matter how badly the bandits were beaten in the fight that followed, the delay might be fatal.

If only because caring for the wounded would slow us so.

Besides deer and elk, mountain sheep and boar and feral cattle, they’d glimpsed bears of both types, and seen scat of cougar, tiger—or possibly lion, in these warm lands with much open space—lynx, and gray wolf. Bears weren’t any more dangerous than the big cats, but they often had an attitude of surly indifference to humans rather than the sensible caution other predators displayed.

And we’ve seen sign of men, sometimes, though this is days beyond the edge of the McClintock settlements or even their regular hunting-grounds. Tracks, blazing, old campfires, cut-marks. Not many, but some.

“Better to take care when there’s no need, than need to take care and have none,” he said quietly.

“Should we string bows?” Gwri asked. “Casual-like?”

That was risky if they were being watched; you just didn’t leave a yew stave strung unless you thought you were going to use it, because eventually that weakened it. When more than a score of Mackenzies strung their longbows and just walked along ready, no stealthy watcher with ill
intent was going to think it was anything but readiness for an attack. If he was being dogged, he wanted the trackers to think their targets were entirely ignorant.

He snapped his fingers and called: “Mathun!”

“Aye, bow-captain?” his brother said.

Possibly with a little irony in the title of respect, but you couldn’t complain about the words or even the tone.

“We’re all going to play a game of rovers,” he said.

Mathun nodded, then checked and looked at him . . . and winked. No, he wasn’t stupid
all
the time. He might be clever too one day, if he lived.

“You and Gwri make up the teams,” Karl said. “I’ll call the marks.”

Nobody observing them was going to be surprised if a group of his clansfolk did
that
. After shooting at the mark—a man- or beast-shaped target—rovers was the commonest way to practice archery. You walked forward, shooting fast at targets the overseer of the contest called at the last moment—an ant-heap, a bush, the stump of a tree, a stump
behind
a tree so you had to loft the shaft over its top and drop it onto the mark; it had the advantage of requiring instant judgments of range and elevation and windage, which shooting at a known target did not. Strangers had been known to claim that a Mackenzie lass might well take a bow to bed along with her lover, to practice shooting into the ceiling in the midst of baby-making, and it was a pardonable exaggeration. Any group of clansfolk on a journey would be as likely as not to while away the time by a rovers’ match.

Bards like Lady Fiorbhinn called it a cliché or a trope to say that Mackenzies were a people of the bow. Like most such, there was a solid kernel of fact.

“And it’s something we can do while we’re moving forward,” he said. “No shots under a hundred fifty paces, mind.”

He dropped behind as Gwri and Mathun spread the news; there were a few happy whoops. Boudicca gave him a slow nod as she stepped through between bowstave and string, then strung the weapon with a twist of hip and shoulder and thrust of thigh.

When he came to the middle of the column he found Diarmuid
Tennart McClintock standing on a little rise by the side of the trail, looking southward as the song came to an end:

“—Upon the haughs of Cromdale!”

The ground over the ridge sloped away more gently, down towards a little creek that was a series of slow-moving pools in this season. He had a short sleeveless mail shirt on, and a crossbow cradled in his arms; several of his party carried them, though he was the only one with steel armor. Normally Karl had a fine Mackenzie scorn for the mechanical shooting contraptions, but he did admit that you could carry one spanned and loaded for a long time without being conspicuous about it. And they were handy in any sort of close quarters, which a longbow taller than a tall man was
not
.

“You were in a great hurry,” the McClintock said. “Now you’re taking time to play at shooting games?”

“Gwri has a bit of a tickle,” Karl said quietly.

“The dark lass with her hair in tight braids?”

“Aye. Not easy in her mind. Neither’s Boudicca. It’s a way to string bows without giving aught away, so. If I’m to be attacked, I’d rather it were at a time of my choosing.”

“They have the foresecht?”

“Gwri, yes, a wee bit. Boudicca, no, but she can feel the wind with her skin, so to say. Might just be nerves. But then again, maybe not, eh?”

The smaller man hissed slightly between his teeth, keeping his eyes moving. “Forbye they might be right. This is bandit country, for a’ that it’s paarrt o’ oor dùthchas by strict law. I dinna like the look o’ that last claig-tail heidbanger we passed. Fear-
cùirn
he might be, outlaw or in league with sich.”

Karl snorted agreement. They’d passed that last steading some time ago. It was a lone cabin built by a settler whose surly grunts indicated he’d come that way to live precisely because nobody else did but his harassed-looking wife and swarm of naked towheaded children. There had been nothing around it but a bad smell from the hides tacked to the wall, an empty corral and a small scruffy garden. He’d worn the
McClintock kilt, but his voice had held an odd twanging accent rather than their burr.

“I admit there are full plenty of deer hereabouts, but little else to steal,” Karl said musingly; bandits went where the prey was, like any predator.

Diarmuid shrugged. They’d gotten on reasonably well, but he knew that the McClintock considered himself older—well, he was, by about six years—and more experienced.

The last is a matter subject to dispute.

Neither of them had marched to a real war, for the realm had been long at peace. Since before Karl was born, and while Diarmuid was still running about the place bare-breeched. Granted McClintocks had a wilder life, but Karl
was
the son of two of the Questers, and his father had been captain of the High King’s Archers since their founding. He’d absorbed a good deal of the trade through ears, eyes and skin as his parents raised him, and then traveling often with his father.

“So what would bandits here steal?” Karl went on.

He took a swig from his canteen, which was salvaged galvanized metal encased in molded boiled leather to preserve it from bangs and knocks. The water had the slight metallic taste of the powder that purified it; even a spring bubbling out of rock was a risk in strange country. In your own you knew which water was safe, and were hardened to the local little beasties anyway, but you lost that protection the minute you moved into a new watershed.

If you weren’t careful, travel could turn into one long session of looking for a place to squat with a twist of grass in one hand. The bards tended to leave that out of the tales of adventure, except the comic ones.

He handed the canteen to the McClintock, who swigged in turn and replied:

“More to reave hereaboots than ye maun think. We’ve been pushing south as oor numbers grow. McClintocks go this way in small parties o’ late to salvage on their own from the dead cities in the great valley to the south, or to sell livestock and sich to the settlers there. And broken men
flee hereaboots—those outlawed for killin’s or just hated out if they’ve bad-angered all their neighbors.”

Karl nodded to show that he knew of the custom. Mackenzies had a way set down in law for getting rid of people just impossible to live with, involving a meeting of the dun’s
óenach
and a show of hands, though it was a very grave matter and rarely evoked. McClintocks were less formal about that, as with most things.

“Not just McClintocks, but other folk as weel. They can hide out and strike north and flee back with their plunder, an’ it’s gae hard to track ’em if they’ve learned the lay o’ the hills.”

Karl nodded slowly. This was a huge land, and it had been thinly peopled even before the Change. Most survivors of the first years had long since drifted off to better-favored areas, ones where enough folk could dwell close enough together for something besides hand-to-mouth savagery. Hiding would be a lot easier than finding, hereabouts.

“Would any be bold enough to attack a band like ours?” he said.

Diarmuid shrugged again, capped the canteen and handed it back to him. “Hard tae say. Oor goods, beasts an’ weapons and gear would be wealth to such.”

The Mackenzie nodded again; if you were on your own and couldn’t trade honestly, something as simple as a good splitting axe to cut the time you needed to spend on firewood rather than gathering in food, or a mule to carry burdens a man couldn’t, would mean the difference between surviving a winter or starving and freezing. Armor like the brigantine he was wearing would be beyond price . . . Though to be sure you wanted armor for the same reason it was hard to steal, the advantage it gave in a fight.

“Also . . .” Diarmuid’s voice dropped. “Few women go for outlaws. That sort of man can be driven blood-mad by the lack.”

Karl spat. “Aye.”

He thought for a moment, remembering a conversation when he’d sat on the lip of the stone flags before the family hearth, mulling cider. He’d been ten at the time, and very proud of being trusted with the task. There was a knack to it, heating pokers red-white in the embers, then tapping
them off and plunging them into the wooden mascars without getting ash in the liquid or damaging the mugs, in a hissing and smell like a mixture of juniper berries and meadowsweet and honey and roasted apples. It had been a winter afternoon, weeks after Yule, and sleet had been falling outside—the next morning everything had been shining silver for an hour after dawn, until the world turned back to the ordinary mud and gloom of the Black Months as it melted.