The Sword of the Lady (59 page)

″Even though his is the Way of the Buddha?″ Rudi said, his voice slightly teasing.

The priest spoke with a chuckle in his voice, his narrow dark eyes ironic and a finger tapping the air in mild reproof:

″You know the answer to that, my son; you rolled in enough logic at Mt. Angel for
some
to rub off. When men differ from the
magisterium
of Holy Mother Church, they are in error. But when they agree with it . . . why, that simply shows that all truth proceeds from God. We of the Church have it in fullness by revelation in Scripture and from the holy Saints and the Fathers, as well as by reason and moral intuition. But all men can discover some of it, if they truly seek virtue and wisdom, wherever they start the journey. How not? These things come from only one source and it speaks to every heart that listens. So yes, the
Rimpoche
is a holy man, and so, in my view, was the Buddha—or Plato, for that matter. But how much better would they have been, if only they had the fullness of the Divine Logos to guide them!″

″Well, now,
there′s
a circular argument, if I ever heard one!″

The priest laughed aloud. ″You can′t win this one, you know . . . your Majesty. Though I′ll have it with you as often as you please.″

″It′s you Christians who think you can
argue
your way to truth,″ Rudi said, with a grin. ″Right now, to be sure, I′d rather
eat
. Let′s go sluice off!″

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Next afternoon Rudi grinned again as he watched Edain collecting his bets after a round of shooting with the bow—and then handing the winnings out as gifts, each to a different man than the one who′d wagered it.

Sure, and there′s a wisdom of hand and eye, too,
he thought.

There was plenty of room for play in the big enclosure that Eriksgarth made—the hall and house of the
godhi
, smaller dwellings for his carles and their families and the youngsters fostered here to learn, barns and sheds and workshops, all around a court paved with river-smoothed cobbles mostly hidden beneath hard-packed snow. The sky was bright, with traces of high cloud like a white mare′s tail. The air was no more than
cold
, without the frigid cutting blast that made your face ache; the fresh drifts sparkled like soft-curved masses of diamond dust in the light.

And Epona is looking better
, he thought happily.
Still a bit of that dry wheeze, but her eyes aren′t as dull. Some quiet and rest and she′ll be fine.

For shooting with the bow they used the bank of a distant potato barn as a target, a curious structure like a long rectangle three-quarters sunken in the ground and with earth berms heaped up against its walls. There were clear fields beyond that, for a quarter-mile of open fenced pastureland until a holy shaw′s trees stood bare-branched around the steep roof-on-roof height of a
stave-hof
, a temple. A bright glitter caught his eye there, paint on one of the riot of carvings.

The locals were good enough archers in their way, but not up to Mackenzie standards, and certainly not to be set against a champion of the Lughnasadh Games like Edain. The young men he′d defeated laughed and slapped him on the back; then three of them looked at each other, nodded, and each picked up one of the plate-sized wooden targets.

With a shout they threw them high, in a spread that opened like the spines of a fan. Edain′s movements seemed steady, almost leisurely, but the flat
snap
of the bow sounded three times so quickly that the sound was lost in the hard
crack-crack-crack
of the points striking home in wood. The last of the targets was still man-height above the ground when the arrow punched it away.

″Fetch, Garbh!″ the younger Mackenzie said.

The big shaggy half mastiff had been sitting in aristocratic indifference, ignoring the stiff-legged wariness of the local beasts as they stalked closer. Now she trotted off, to return and lay the disks at her master′s feet.

″Did you
miss
?″ one of the Bjornings said; no arrows stood in the wooden circles. ″I thought I heard the strike!″

Edain tossed him one of the disks, skimming it through the air; they were like flat miniature shields a foot across, made from two layers of birch strips glued crossways and rimmed in iron. The Norrheim man held his up and whistled between his teeth, showing the neat round hole punched through near the center of it.

″This is not a little boy who′s come among us!″ he said.

″Ah, it′s the cold steel that wins a battle,″ one of the others grumbled.

Garbh returned with the arrows held gently between her long yellow teeth, lips curled daintily back. The fletching of each had been stripped off as they made passage through the wood, but they were otherwise intact.

″Not with one of those through your eye,″ his friend said thoughtfully. ″And through your shield first. I′d guess you could punch through a byrnie, too, eh?″

″A mail shirt? Yes, with anything like a straight hit, and a nice bodkin. But a solid steel breastplate or lames, now . . . no, not always through that. The surface may glance the point; you need a closer range and a little luck. Enough shafts in the air at once—an arrow storm, we call it—will do the job right enough.″

Edain finshed checking the arrows and slid them over his shoulder into the quiver. He spoke with a little slyness in it:

″You were speakin′ of the cold steel? Well, my Chief there, himself, is a very fair shot, enough to keep me exercised, as it were, but a man of the sword first and foremost. Better at that than I am with a bow, if truth be told, and I′ve fought by his side more than once, in ambuscades, onsets, raids and pitched battles.″

He reached out and took an apple that one of the local men had halfway raised to his mouth, twitching it out of his fingers, tossing it up and catching it. Then he threw it with a sudden hard snap, the plump red fruit a blurred streak through the air.

″Chief!″ he called as it left his hand.

Rudi had been waiting for something of the sort; the contests had all been friendly, but he didn′t think the men of Eriksgarth would have spent this much time with their weapons on the day of a feast if the strangers hadn′t arrived. Though they seemed to love games and tests of skill of all sorts, from chess to wrestling and swordplay, and this gathering was a chance for trials between many from isolated steadings.

The apple was aimed more than arm′s length to Rudi′s left, past what was now his sword hand. That hand flashed across his body and he turned in the packed snow of the yard, granules flying up in arcs from his boots with the speed of the movement. Steel glittered in the cold winter light as he extended in a long lunge, the point an extension of his arm in a play of motion and angle.

The point went through the firm flesh of the apple with a surgeon′s delicacy, the edge parallel to the ground so that it stopped the motion without splitting the fruit. He held the lunge for an instant, with a background of amazed oaths, then flicked the longsword′s point upward and twitched his wrist to send the steel in a shimmering arc.

This time the apple tumbled towards the ground in two neat halves. Rudi caught them with his other hand, moving like a frog′s tongue after a fly, then wiped the tip of his sword on his sleeve and slid it home. He tossed one half to a grinning Edain as the broad-shouldered bowman sauntered up.

″You almost wasted a good apple, there, boyo,″ he said mildly. ″The which the Goddess of the Blossom-time would not like.″

His half was tart and sweet at the same time as he crunched it; a little harder and more grainy than the breeds they grew back home in the Mackenzie duns or the Yakima lands, but palatable. Edain ate his in three bites, his cheeks bulging for a moment, and his gray eyes taking in the awestruck expressions scattered across the open expanse. Some were frankly goggling; everyone here trained to the blade, which meant they had a fair idea of just what combination of speed and control the little demonstration had required.

Now that was more than a bit flashy
, Rudi half chided himself.
But then, Edain′s only a bit past twenty. And I′m no graybeard yet either! And we wouldn′t have done it before those who weren′t warriors themselves, sure.

″I think it′s the custom here to push a man a bit. To see what′s in him, as it were,″ Edain said.

″The which Mackenzies would
never
do,″ Rudi said, and they both laughed.

Edain went on: ″They′re a bit doomful here, but for the rest it′s homelike enough; and they get something more lively with some beer in them.″

″That they do!″

″Has it struck you, Chief, that men are not at all unlike dogs . . . especially in the way they greet a stranger?″

As if on cue there was a sudden chorus of snarls; Garbh had one of the Eriksgarth hounds on its back, with her teeth holding its neck ruff. She shook it a little and then stepped back, tense and wary.

″Well, at least we′re not expected to engage in arse-sniffing contests,″ Rudi pointed out, which the dogs were doing at that moment, their tails wagging.

Not far away, Mary Havel—Mary Vogeler, now, Rudi reminded himself—was talking to a big young Bjorning with a battle-ax in his hands. The weapon was a bit unusual; the rear of it was drawn out into the rectangular serrated head of a war hammer. The ax-man looked over at Ingolf, who with Fred Thurston was helping some newcomers unload a roughly butchered moose carcass from their sled, a contribution to the feast and a gift to their chieftain.

The tall Richlander hefted a hindquarter over his back, with no more than a grunt at a weight greater than his whole body.

″Friend, you′ll find that Mary can take care of herself well enough, you betcha,″ he said mildly, and then strode over to where Harberga waited at the door of her kitchen′s cold store. Fred sniggered wordlessly as he scooped up two burlap sacks of rye flour and followed Ingolf with one over each shoulder.

The Bjorning flushed, leaned his dreadful polearm against a wall and picked up the practice equivalent—a four-foot helve with a mock blade of light pine, wrapped in felt and rags; no matter how shielded, the seven-pound head of the original would smash bone like kindling if driven hard. Then he took stance, the ax slanted across his body with his hands wide-spaced near butt and helve—an expert′s grip. The man was about halfway between Rudi and John Hordle in size, and from the look of him he had the shoulders to move the massive weapon quickly. When he struck the air hummed, but Rudi thought he was pulling the blow.

Mary leapt straight upward over the swing, her own chest-height from a standing start. The Bjorning had expected to strike, or at least to have the blow blocked by the longsword she wore across her back with the hilt over the right shoulder. Instead as it met only air the momentum of the strike pulled his body around irresistibly. The Ranger′s hand darted out and tweaked his nose painfully; then she went into a series of backflips that left her half a dozen yards away.

Tsk, tsk,
Rudi thought.

He was a fine gymnast himself, but that sort of thing had little place in actual fighting to his way of thinking. In a fight you should move precisely as much as needed to attack or defend, neither more nor less. The Dúnedain tended to be a bit showy, though.

Some of the onlookers cheered her. Others hooted in wholehearted mirth, bending over and clutching themselves or slapping hands on their thighs—as Edain had said, the two clansmen found the dwellers here a bit
doomful
by Mackenzie standards, but this was a joke after their own hearts. A few of the women watching called comments to the ax-bearer that would have had Rudi′s ears flushing, and made the man bellow with anger in his mouse-colored braided beard. He brought the weapon up to guard and began a rush, then halted in wariness.

Now Mary had the chain unwound from her waist, both ends crisscross ing in glittering arcs as she whirled them clockwise and counterclockwise; one held a sickle-shaped blade, the other a steel ball. That was a weapon she′d taken up during their stay in Chenrezi Monastery, in the Valley of the Sun. The monks taught it, and Master Hao said she was a natural for it—it was a
yin
weapon anyway, suitable to her changeful nature.

The Bjorning decided to treat it as if it was a quarterstaff, and struck at the middle spot where her hands turned wrist-over-wrist to keep the chain moving. Mary dropped promptly to one knee, and let the steel links slide through her gloved palms. There was a rattling
chunk
as one end of the chain whipped around the ax helve, and a muffled curse as it bound hand to ashwood. The sickle struck his forearm in a way that would have laid it open to the bone if the sharp blade hadn′t been encased in its leather sheath.

He pulled back, trying to free the haft and throwing his far greater weight and raw strength against hers through the metal link. Mary came with the pull and at the same instant the other end of the chain wrapped around the man′s knees, whirling itself into a tangle with the steel ball thudding into his thigh muscle with paralyzing force. He began to buckle forward; Mary′s booted feet struck him neatly in the stomach, her back hit the ground, and she used his own momentum to throw him roaring over her head with an arching twist and pivot.

There was a heavy, meaty
thud
as he landed in a patch of last night′s snow not yet trampled or stained. It puffed up around him in a cloud of glittering crystal, and through it Mary pounced with a cat-screech of Sindarin that Rudi translated without effort:

She landed astraddle the man, her long narrow dagger out and hovering above his eye. He glared at her for a moment and then his lips quirked up in a smile. That turned into a roar of laughter, and he threw his arms wide in a theatrical gesture of surrender.