The Given Sacrifice

CHAPTER TWELVE

City of Boise

(formerly southern Idaho)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

June 26th, Change Year 26/2024 AD

Fifteen minutes later, Ingolf was remembering a story he had run across while he was dickering over a salvage contract for the Bossman of Iowa back about five. .

No, six. Damn, goes faster all the time. I thought I knew how things worked even if I didn’t like it, I got the contract for the run to the east coast, and that was when this really strange stuff all started, six years ago.

. . six years ago. Just about the only good thing he’d ever heard about the CUT was that it disapproved of burning coal; mining it was among the very limited set of jobs that made soldiering look good. Iowans dug up a lot of the filthy stuff around Des Moines, not having near enough wood for such a huge city, and the air there always smelled of it.

When the dicker was over and while they sat and twiddled their thumbs and waited for the young Bossman to come in and OK the deal-he hadn’t been the most reliable of men, having been raised without hearing the word “no” very much-one of the ministers had told him that cages of small birds were taken down into coal mines in Iowa. To test for poison gasses that sometimes accumulated underground and either choked the miners or swept through the tunnels in walls of flame that burned them alive.

Yeah, there are worse ways of making a living than fighting cannibals to salvage artwork for rich assholes.

The little critters keeled over and went toes-up behind the bars before the gasses reached dangerous levels for humans, which sometimes gave the workers time to throw down their picks and run. It was a neat trick when it worked, and Ingolf had been raised among matter-of-fact farming folk who were prosperous enough but couldn’t afford much sentimentality. He would have been sorry to use a dog that way, but he’d have done it if he had to and birds came in only three categories: edible ones, nonedible ones, and ones which were pretty before you decided whether they were edible or not. And at a pinch, they were all edible.

The thing was that the birds probably thought the miners kept them around and fed them and cleaned out their cages because they loved them.

Likewise, the Cutters on the rooftop probably didn’t think of their role as making plenty of noise while getting killed so their main force would know what was coming, but that was about what it amounted to. That was why officers who knew their business tried to get someone else’s men assigned this sort of duty, and rotated it when they couldn’t. Or saw that the ones they could spare most got it.

I pulled a lot of outpost duty when I was young and stupid, he thought as they padded forward through darkness as black as the ink of the bureaucrats who laired here in the daytime. So the whole point here is to kill this bunch without making a lot of noise. Don’t think it’s necessarily going to be easy just because you’ve done it before, Ingolf old son. Nobody ever managed it with you, though that was partly dumb luck at first.

The inside of the office part of the building was very nearly as inky-black as the tunnel had been; there just wasn’t much ambient light to come through the windows with the moon down and the sun not up yet, and the Cutters outside were sensible enough not to eliminate their night vision by keeping a fire going. The downside was that they were concentrating on the streets and relying on the access door alerting them if anyone tried to break through that way because it was thickly fastened with chains and padlocked. Or on hearing the sound of windows breaking. It was a double-type door, windowless pre-Change metal and still strong.

“Saw,” Hordle said softly.

He gripped a section of the chain, pulling and twisting to hold it rigid. Ian pulled the flexible wire saw out of a pouch; the Force used them too, and the Dúnedain had good gear. Unlike their models in The Histories in peacetime they charged heavily for their services when the clients could afford it, with a bank in Corvallis as their business agents, and nobody tried to stiff them. Not twice. A bunch of pissed-off Rangers and a Corvallan debt-collector. . that was like a grizzly bear with a catapult mounted on its head.

Ian looped the flexible blade around the chain and began to work the handles, going slowly to keep it quiet and prevent heat buildup that might ruin the tool’s temper. The miniature chips of diamond set into the wire carved at the soft steel, a quiet ruhh. . ruhh sound.

“Stop.”

Ingolf had been around the man Mary and her sister called Uncle John a fair bit since they got back from the Quest. Sprawled by a fire with a mug at his elbow, cracking walnuts between thumb and forefinger, bellowing some off-key and usually off-color song, you’d think him a genially boisterous bruiser and not too bright. Unless you looked closely at the little piggy russet eyes in the massive face. Right now his actions were as precise as a surgeon’s.

Hordle’s fingers explored the cut in the darkness. “Enough.”

Ian withdrew the saw, coiled the loop and put it back in the pouch. Hordle’s monstrous hands clamped and twisted, straining for a moment. There was a soft ping as the weakened steel yielded. Then an occasional slight clack as he threaded the chain cautiously through until the doors were ready to open. The hinges were on this side, and the doors swung inward too.

Hordle worked the catch with infinite care, and applied his eye to the crack. Then he tapped two fingers towards his eyes and made the signs that meant: One man close. Ready.

Hordle set himself like a sprinter. Ian nodded, got out his bow, put an arrow on the string and held the weapon in his left hand. Ingolf drew his tomahawk again; he needed only one hand to pull his side of the double doors open. Cole Salander waited behind them, crouched slightly with his crossbow already at the shoulder.

It was a pleasure to work with people who really knew what they were doing. .

The third finger came up. Ingolf gripped the old metal handle and pulled, fast and not trying particularly to be quiet, but without any unnecessary jerk. Ian did the same, like the motions of a country-dance. Hordle lunged through in the same instant, his shoulders clearing the opening doors with not a hair to spare. There was a Cutter trooper about six feet from the door, looking at it curiously; probably he’d been wondering at the small sounds.

He started to leap back, started to draw his shete, started to open his mouth and yell. Hordle took one long scissoring stride, and his hands closed on the man-one over his face, one behind his head. His size did not mean he was slow. A single wrench, and the Cutter’s face was pointing out between his shoulder blades; there was a crackle like a green branch breaking when you twisted it, a stink of human waste.

One down, eight to go.

Hordle threw the body aside like a broken doll as he charged and drew his two-handed blade. A human grizzly with a sword, silent in the night.

Ingolf went through on his heels, Ian beside him already drawing his bow and loosing. The arrow struck a man at the edge of the roof high in the chest. He staggered back three steps, hit the balustrade with his buttocks and pitched overside. Three stories down and he hit concrete with a clattering, very final crunch. Imagination filled in the figures who darted out and grabbed his ankles to drag him out of sight.

Seven left.

After the ink-pot inside, the rooftop looked almost bright. Two more Cutters were at either corner of the rooftop, squatting on their heels with the ease of men who’d grown up without chairs, looking out over South Capitol. They turned and rose snake-swift at the flurry of motion, one reaching for an arrow and the other drawing his blade, a quick glimmer of metal.

Cloaked shadows rose behind them, flipping up like gymnasts from where they’d clung to the brick, hidden by the overhang and their war-cloaks. Mary hit the coping with her soft soundless elf-boots, crouched with the motion and sprang. Suddenly the two Cutter sentinels seemed to be dancing, dropping their weapons and putting hands to their throats. Mary’s fell, with her riding him down with her hands straining back, like a bad horseman sawing at the reins, and Ritva’s was down too.

Mary bounced up to her feet, leaving the rumal around the dead man’s throat where she’d flicked it with a backhand cast-a long silk handkerchief with a gold coin knotted into one end. Ritva used a piano-wire garrote, but Mary was a traditionalist, in her way. .

Five. .

Cole’s crossbow spoke as soon as he was clear of the door, and a man threw up his arms, took two more steps, and fell.

Four.

Ingolf had his own target. One Cutter had very sensibly ignored everything else, and even more sensibly ignored the long trumpet hanging from a tripod of poles-standing and blowing in the middle of a fight wasn’t likely to be conducive to long life or prolonged music either, more like a single strangled blat followed by a dull thud. Instead he snatched up a covered lantern and ran towards the fire signal, a big steel trash bucket heaped with straw and splintery pinewood. There would be no hiding that if he pitched in the flame and the alcohol in the glass reservoir too.

Ingolf halted, took stance, flipped the two-foot hickory handle of the tomahawk to get the balance perfect as it smacked back into his callused palm and threw in the same motion. Less than twelve seconds had passed from the moment the door opened to that when the wood left his hand.

Thousands of hours of old Pete’s patient coaching when he was a child and a teenager went into it, more in camps since when there was nothing else to do but practice or drink. God help him, times when he’d taken turns throwing and standing in front of a tree as a mark, and done the whole thing while a whiskey jug was going the rounds after dark and the deceptive flickering of firelight shone in his eyes. A dozen times for real. You didn’t need a tomahawk as often as you did a bow or a shete, but when you needed it nothing else would really do.

The throw had the sweet surprise of something perfect. The blackened steel of the head flickered through the night and went into the back of the Cutter’s thigh, splitting the tendon just above the knee; he hadn’t dared try for the torso, armored with a leather coat covered in steel washers. The man went down with a thud and the lantern clattered ahead of him away from his outstretched fingers, rolling to the foot of the trash bucket.

An arrow-Ian’s-went through the space he’d just vacated a fraction of a second after he fell, a flicker of half-seen motion in the night.

Ingolf was already charging the instant his follow-through finished. He didn’t pause when he came to where the man lay, just starting to push at the pebbled asphalt with his hands and reach for the lantern again and making a breathless squealing sound. Instead he leapt up when he was two paces away, as high as he could, and came down boot heels-first with all the momentum of his more than two hundred pounds of bone, muscle, weapons and armor.

The impact jarred him all the way up to his teeth and he stumbled to his knees and one hand. He could hear bones crack as he landed and an agonized wheeze as the man’s breath was driven out of his collapsing lungs. Then he wrenched the tomahawk free from where it had sliced through tendon and muscle and into bone and struck twice at the base of the man’s skull-with the blunt poll, not the blade,which might stick in bone.

Damn, but this gets a little more disgusting every time, he thought as the crunching feeling vibrated up the handle, like hitting a teapot full of jelly.

Three. .

When he got back to his feet everything was over, as he’d expected; surprise was the greatest force multiplier, and when you got total surprise and threw in guys like John Hordle, there was only one possible outcome. Ambushing beat the hell out of a stand-up fight. He’d been aware of the greatsword’s blackened blade moving in a pivoting figure-eight, and a couple of meaty thudding, cracking sounds.

And then there were none. Forty-five seconds, max.

It wasn’t even very startling that they’d all come through with nothing but bruises, though he still had a slight unacknowledged sweat of relief break out when Mary came up grinning. It wasn’t that she actually enjoyed killing men, even Cutters, but she did like the rush of a successful action, that crazed sensation of godlike immortality. He knew the feeling. It was like telling yourself that you could always put the corncob back in the mouth of the jug after one more swallow. .

Or possibly hitting yourself on the head with a hammer because if feels so good when you stop.

“Ready for that meadow full of sheep?” she said cheerfully.

“Ready and eager.”

“Too bad. How can a girl compete with ewes? Maybe if I started wearing a fleece to bed. . that might be fun. . ”

Hordle was wiping down the blade of his greatsword with a swatch of linsey-woolsey, as they all cocked an ear to check if the noise had carried. There hadn’t been much, but it hadn’t been absolutely quiet either. Ingolf looked at the bodies Hordle had left and blinked, altering course to avoid getting his boots wet. The first one was beheaded, which was more common than you’d think, and he’d taken the leg off another just below the hip with the backstroke. The other. . it must have been a straight overarm cut landing on the base of the man’s shoulder.

Ingolf had seen at lot of battlefields, but nothing much like the results of that appalling blow.

No, I lie, he thought. When that Refugee, what was his name, Jesse something. . Hanks. . tripped and fell into the circular saw at the timber mill back home, when I was around ten. Just after Dad got that waterwheel running right.

Hanks had been stumbling-drunk that afternoon and every other time he could cadge or steal enough booze, but possibly he’d just let himself fall. The man had been like many who’d made it out of the cities after Change Day; he’d never really recovered from what he’d seen and done and suffered, so that only raw kill-devil corn liquor could make his brain stop squirming like a toad in a bone cage. Ingolf’s ten-year-old self had been hustled out of the building, but he hadn’t forgotten.

You can always add something to your memories, he thought as they dragged the bodies over to lie at the base of the higher section of the building.

It wouldn’t hide them, exactly, but neither would it have the distinctive sprawl of dead men left where they fell to catch eyes at a distance. Hordle’s victims required two trips each. Ritva’s was a bit messier than her sister’s, since piano-wire cut deep when used for what her folk called SSR. . or Silent Sentry Removal.

Cole pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully, eyeing the twins out of the corner of his eye.

“You ever think we’re insane?” Ingolf murmured to Ian Kovalevsky as they followed the Dúnedain back down the stairwell to the top of the ramp. “Or maybe too dedicated to finding women who really understand our work?”

“Eh?” the ex-Mountie said. “We just like really active blondes with forceful personalities, I guess. You never met my mother, but let me tell you. .”

“Oh, you betcha. But most husbands, when the wife says I could just strangle him! they don’t have to wonder whether to take it literally.”

Ian chuckled. “Hey, if they were absolutely perfect, would they still have been single when we met ’em?”

“I heard that!” came from below.

“Oh, shit.”

• • •

Rudi Mackenzie followed Fred Thurston up the ladder and into the room. He was just in time to see John Hordle and a group of followers trotting back down the ramp from the next level; it was too dark for the blood to show on dark clothing, but the smell was rank.

“All taken care of,” the big man said, jerking a thumb upward. “Until someone notices.”

“No trouble?”

“Routine, just routine.”

Fred walked over to a man in a mottled camouflage uniform with Captain’s insignia.

“Wellman, I know you’re thinking have I done the right thing?” he said quietly. “That’s something I can only demonstrate by actions, not promises.”

“Sir,” the man said, saluting in Boise’s fashion.

Fred returned the gesture and stepped aside. Captain Wellman’s eyes went wider than the darkness would account for. Rudi was in plain gear, a brigandine with the rivet-heads dulled to the same green color as the outer leather, a visored sallet and vambraces of browned steel, boots and leather pants; just enough battle armor to let him fight in a melee while leaving him maximum agility. Evidently Wellman recognized him anyway. . or the Sword.

“I understand that I owe you my thanks, Captain Wellman,” Rudi said soberly.

“For what?”

“For deciding I’m the least bad choice of a short and unpleasant list, wouldn’t it be?”

The older man met his eyes steadily. “I didn’t do it for you,” he said, his voice flat. “I did it for my country and my people, and to save the city my family lives in.”

“Good reasons, and all the better to hear them from an honest man,” Rudi said, equally matter-of-fact.

The Boisean’s words had rung with truth like a bronze bell. He went on:

“Having, as you might expect, to deal with a good many of the other sort. You have my thanks anyway, if you’ll take them. And as a reward, Fred here will be giving you more work.”

They shook hands. “You’re. . ah. . not quite what I expected,” Wellman said.

Rudi inclined his head to the poster; it wasn’t the first he’d seen since they crossed into former Boisean territory.

“Ah, well, the serfs absconded with my glass carriage, and took the gilded armor and second-best crown of ruby and massy gold with them as they danced away clicking their heels and snapping their fingers. And stole the very last bag of honeyed filberts in the pantry to boot, the spalpeens,” he said lightly, startling a smile out of the other man.

“Ah. . Your Majesty?”

Rudi raised an eyebrow, and the Boisean continued: “Why are you here? Personally, I mean.”

“Ah. Well, fair enough. Two reasons. First, I don’t like to send men into danger I haven’t shared. Mind, I’ll do it, needs must, for I’ve found my likings have little to do with this job. And second. .”

He drew the Sword. Here was a slight hiss from the assembled troops, and for an instant everything about them seemed washed-out, as if there was a light so bright, so real, that the world faded next to it. . yet the room was still shadowed-dark. Wellman blinked openmouthed for an instant, and Rudi judged him a man who wasn’t used to being disconcerted. The hard-faced noncom next to him swore softly.

“And there is this, which I alone among men can bear,” Rudi said gently.

Matti can, among women, but she doesn’t like to and I don’t blame her, he thought to himself. As I told the man, likings have little to do with necessity.

Wellman swallowed, visibly forced his mind to work, and then began to smile in a considering fashion, which said volumes about the man.

“The High Seeker?”

Rudi nodded. “Locked within this is a power against which their demon lords cannot stand, and which blinds their seekings and the harm they can do the minds of humankind.”

Wellman winced slightly. “I’d rather there wasn’t any of this sort of stuff around. But if there has to be, it’s nice to have some that doesn’t actively creep me out even when it scares me shitless.”

“I can see your point,” Rudi said. “The Sword can even free such men as the Seekers from their dominion, though sometimes there’s little enough left. Mind, it won’t stop an arrow. But just as a sword-”

Rudi flicked the Sword against a concrete pillar, a hard swift cut from the wrist. Wellman cried out involuntarily in alarm-that would wreck the edge of any common weapon. The Sword of the Lady was different even simply taken as a blade with a handle; it had an edge better than the finest razor could take, fit to part a drifting hair and therefore far sharper than any battle sword was ever honed. Normally the thinner the edge the more fragile, but as far as he could tell it was utterly impervious to any harm. It never needed to be oiled, or wiped down. . or taken to a sharpening stone.

He suspected that it could be dropped into the hottest furnace, or the heart of the Sun for that matter, and not even grow warm to the touch. He wasn’t altogether sure it was physical matter at all as humankind understood the term, perhaps instead an embodied concept, a thought that could be touched. Most of the time he treated it with the same care as he would any fine weapon, from reverence and lifelong habit, but the demonstration was a legitimate use.

The edge struck the pillar with a crack, and a fist-sized divot of the stone-hard material came free with a puff of dust.

For the Triple One has given it into my hands not least to hearten my folk.

Wellman leaned forward, peering. Within the shattered concrete a piece of rebar gleamed, severed clean and smooth. A full swing of a heavy axe in the hands of a very strong man-John Hordle, say-might have done nearly as much. . once. . nearly, but not so neatly. His eyes went back to the supernal blade. Even the shower of dust left the Sword unmarked, sliding off the surface in a little stream.

“This is not just a war of men,” Rudi said. “So the Powers who gifted me with this, and Who are well-wishers to humankind, have told me.”

“Jesus,” Wellman said softly.

“Jesus too, though Him I’ve never met. For They wear many faces, all true and none complete. It’s an hour to dawn, the hour when dreams grow brighter and winds blow colder. We’d best be about it.”