The High King of Montival

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE WILD LANDS

(FORMERLY SOUTHERN ONTARIO)

APRIL 14, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

Two more days took them well out of the last of the Toronto suburbs; those were now mostly forest anyway, with the roadways showing as patches of asphalt. Then they were in what had once been rolling farmland towards the center of the peninsula between Lake Erie and Lake Huron, with here and there a long ridge of glacial moraine covered in scattered oaks and beeches.

Twenty-five years after the end of the old world the farmland was forest too, of an odd transitional type that had never existed before in all life’s history, for there had never been a time when tens of millions of prime acres were abandoned overnight. You could see where patches of woodlot had been, often on a bit of high ground. There the trees stood tall, massive hardwoods and scattered evergreens towering up a hundred feet or better, hinting at the majesty that would rear here one day if men left it be. Here and there was a smaller clump where a farmhouse had stood, or a line of them along what had been a road or a field boundary. From there waves of saplings had spread outward, fair-sized trees near to where their seeds had first fallen, rippling downward as the distance increased.

There were still open stretches, sometimes grassland where fire or grazing beasts had kept growth down; tangles of vine and ivy and bramble elsewhere; now and then the livid green and dried-reed brown of burgeoning marsh dotted with mallard ducks sticking their rumps in the air as they fed on the tender shoots pushing up from the mud, and grubs and bugs.

“Here,” Artos said, signaling the halt.

That branch was broken; it’s Ranger-sign. It points past the dead hedge.

It was about an hour past noon, the sky bright blue with some high thin clouds, and warm enough to make just a shirt comfortable when you were working. He swung the plaid back on and pinned it as they used the brakes and then he settled the flat Scots bonnet on his head; the two Mackenzies had switched back to their kilts, and so had the Southsiders, who took immense pride in the imitations of the Clan tartan they’d had made up in Iowa last year. Artos took a horn that hung from the handlebars of his bicycle and blew four long blasts, a blatting huuuuuuu-huuuuuuuu-huuuuuuuuuu-huuuuuuuuuu.

Then they all jumped off to run a few last paces beside the pedal-cart before they grabbed the carrying handles and lifted it with a grunt and moved in lockstep through dead crackling canes of last year’s scrub, hauling it a hundred paces, through a gap in the dead spiny growth of the onetime hedge and towards a section of brick wall that stood up from thick thorny scrub. That would make it the spot from which the practiced routine of pitching camp would start. Dense silence fell, broken mostly by the ticking of insects and birdcall-quarrelsome robins and fox sparrows, black watchful crows, fleeting wood ducks going wak-wak-wak. Small white flowers were blooming beneath their boots, trillium and snowdrops, and the new shoots of grass through the brown mat were dotted with yellow dutchman’s breeches.

There was a small scrap of blue cloth snagged to the ruin at arm’s length above head height, Ranger-sign for here. Roses had overgrown the brick, hiding almost all of it from sight in a thick tangle of bushy cane just showing their buds; the rest of the building had fallen into the cellar. The house had burned first, judging from the scorch marks he could see here and there, and from trees beside it that were dead stumps or dead on one side. In the years since, mud had flowed down into it until it was an overgrown depression in the dirt more than a hole, albeit one he wouldn’t have chanced walking on if he could avoid it.

Bjarni hopped down from his cart as it pulled in next and walked over to him. “So soon?” he said.

“There’s no break on the line for another day’s travel beyond this, the twins say,” Artos said. “We’ll strain the horses if we go any farther today.”

“A man can walk farther than he can run, I know, but-”

The Norrheimer lifted his floppy-brimmed leather hat and scratched his hair, which was just the color that showed where one of the bricks had cracked across. He’d taken a bit of the sun in the last few days of warm cloudless weather, and his face was tending that way too.

“It’s odd, traveling like this. We’re moving so fast, but often we halt so early. I feel guilty somehow!”

“Guilt I leave to Christians,” he said, and Mathilda stuck out her tongue at him. “We can always use more time for weapons training and drill! For now let’s get our bows and look around. Take the lay of the land, and maybe get some fresh meat.”

Rank had some privileges; that was necessary work, and who was to say they shouldn’t be the ones to do it this time? There was an old well near the ruin, a circle of mortared stone with an iron top, and a piston-pump rising out of it. The rotted handle had been replaced with a new one roughly shaped from an ash branch; that would be Mary and Ritva’s work as they came through scouting, and from the muddy section under the spout it had been successful. He took the handle and threw his strength against it. The first few up-and-down strokes were reluctant and ancient metal squealed amid falling flakes of rust, but soon water was gushing from the spout. He cupped his left hand under it and sipped. The water was icy-cold on his fingers and very clean, with only a slight iron tang added to the mineral tastes of the glacial sand and gravel far beneath their feet. He dumped another few handfuls over his face and neck, enjoying the feeling of the trickles cutting through sweat and dust.

“That’s a stroke of luck,” Edain said. “They stopped using these before the Change for some reason in most places, the eejits. Forebye they’re the best way of getting good water I know. Or the surest. Even with a mountain brook, you can never tell if there’s not a dead sheep rotting in it a few bends upstream waiting to give you the runs.”

“My mother has one of these pumps in the kitchen of our house,” Asgerd said, slightly boastful. “They had it there before the Change, she said, from her mother’s mother’s time. Water for the pumping, even in winter, and cold and good on the hottest day.”

“Mine has one too,” Edain said equably. “We make ’em, in Montival.”

Strictly speaking they make them in foundries and machine shops in Corvallis and we Mackenzies buy them, Artos thought. Though of course we could make them; it’s just cheaper that way.

They dumped their canteens and refilled them; the water they’d had was flat-tasting stuff, taken from a slow stream and boiled into harmlessness the day before. It was healthy and wet, and that was all you could say for it, but the well water made drinking a pleasure. From the flow, there would be plenty for their whole party. The next pedal-cart had pulled up; he turned and thrust one arm up with the fingers bunched into a spear, rotated it at the wrist, then made a fist and pulled it down.

Ingolf waved back to show his comprehension of the signals: It’s yours, take over and we stop here. Bjarni beckoned to a Norrheimer and had him take the same message to his second in command, Syfrid of the Hrossings.

Then Artos stepped through his unstrung bow, braced the lower tip against his left boot, and flexed down with his thigh as he slid the string into the upper nock with his right hand. The rest did likewise. Edain reached into the plain brown leather sporran he wore-the fancy models with silverwork and fur trim were for special occasions-and rooted around for a lump of beeswax.

“In Norrheim, we teach men not to scratch there in public,” Asgerd said. “Or are you bragging?”

“Mackenzie men have more to brag about, by the Dagda’s favor which we enjoy,” Edain said, and handed the wax to Mathilda.

They all gave their bowstrings a quick rub with it. As he did, Artos quoted, thickening his accent and adding a Scots roll to the “r’s”:

“Och, laddie, I dinna ken where y’ve been. . but waur ’ere it was, ye won first prize!”

The two Mackenzies laughed, and Mathilda groaned. When the Norrheimers looked puzzled, she gave them the ancient joke. Bjarni bellowed laughter, checking himself with an effort; they were hunting, after all. Asgerd groaned in turn and threw the lump at Edain’s head; he caught it with a quick snap and dropped it back in the pouch.

They set out, Artos and Mathilda, Edain and Asgerd and Bjarni, with Garbh quartering ahead of them. All were hard to see in their roughly practical clothing; the green-brown of the Clan’s tartan made good camouflage in this lush country too, and the little slivers of dull orange actually helped with that. Their swords hung at their waists, and their fighting-knives and belt-knives, but nobody bothered with armor or helm, or shields beyond the little soup-plate-sized steel bucklers clipped to the scabbards the three from Montival wore.

A space of bluegrass meadow only a little scraggly with brush sloped southward, past the remains of a swing and teeter-totter overgrown by a sprawling clump of lilac and a rotted rope hanging from the branch of an oak with the remains of a big tire lying on the ground beneath it. Then came an overgrown laneway, and after it a long-neglected orchard, grown into a tangle of dead trees, spindly saplings where fruit had fallen, and others run wild. A few of the apple buds were showing the first blossoms, and black-and-white-striped butterflies burst upward from around their feet as they walked. A jay with the long tail of the eastern tribe scolded and then flew away, sounding satisfied with work well done.

“I know the apples, but what are those?” Bjarni asked, pointing to another overgrown field that had been short trees in regular rows.

Edain glanced up from looking at the ground ahead for game-sign.

“Peaches over there. Cherries beyond that I think, and. . by Brigid of the Sheaf, apricots! I haven’t seen any of those for a while. Ah, my mother’s apricot tarts! With good thick whipped cream.”

“I’m beginning to think no woman could rival her, with you,” Asgerd said dryly.

“None could, for cooking. But mind you, for dalliance-”

She snorted and made as if to clout him with her bow, then asked wistfully:

“What are apricots like?”

“Like peaches. . no, you don’t know those either, eh? Well, they’re about so big, and yellow, and the flesh is sweet as honey when they’re ripe, and the taste. . well, how can I describe that?”

“I had some apricot brandy once, that vikings-salvagers-brought back from the dead cities,” Bjarni said. He smacked his lips. “Not bad! But the fruit, no, I’ve never tasted it and can’t imagine. That’s like color to a blind man, I suppose.”

They fell silent and walked quietly amid an intense fresh greenness for a half hour, enjoying stretching a different set of muscles and seeing the countryside without the constant onrush of wind in their faces. Each took in the lie of the land, and they instinctively avoided a marsh-fringed pond where a beaver dam had blocked a stream; they could hear a distant smack as one of the builders whacked his flat scaly tail into the water in alarm. Upstream of that to the west and north the creek flowed quietly between low banks over gravel, with yellow marsh marigold and dandelion-like coltsfoot and white-and-yellow bloodroot thick along it in the cool damp shade; a bit higher were shy little purple violets.

Long ago someone had set stepping-stones in the knee-deep water there, and they still ruffled the water aside in little standing waves. Willows dangled their long green tendrils in the flow, and a red-spotted brown trout darted away downstream into deeper water with a flick of fins as Artos looked.

Hmmmm. Would it be worth the time to tickle a few? No, the sorrow of it, however well panfried trout would taste. Not with a battalion to feed.

Edain hissed and pointed with the tip of his longbow as Garbh sniffed and bristled.

“Cat!” he said.

“Cougar?” Asgerd said doubtfully.

Mathilda crouched where the animal had come to the edge of the water to drink and held her open hands over the marks. She wasn’t a small woman and her shapely hands were as big as many men’s, but the pawprints were obviously wider than the span of her fingers.

“Tiger,” she said succinctly. “Male. The pugmarks are square and the toes are thick, see? A big one, too; four hundred pounds or better, I’d say.”

“They’re more common here than in Norrheim,” Bjarni said. “That’s the third set of tiger tracks we’ve spotted and we’ve not been looking hard.”

“And no wonder,” Artos said. “Remember that sign we passed-African Lion Safari Park?”

“It said lions.”

“Yes, but it’d have many another sort as well. I’d say it was likely the keepers there turned their beasts loose before they died themselves. That happened in many another such place, I know; and Father Ignatius has told me of others his order learned of. Some of the animals were eaten, no doubt, and some couldn’t live with the weather here. Some survived to breed, which is why that one was drinking from this stream.”

“But the tracks are old,” Edain said. “I can’t smell him even if Garbh can. Also I can’t eat him, or won’t unless I get very hungry indeed. I’m not livin’ here, nor yet trying to raise stock in his bailiwick, nor yet in need of a tiger-skin coat. So if he’ll leave me alone, I’ll return the favor, and we can both bless the Lady each in his own way.”

“Well said,” Bjarni said with a grin.

He’s missing home and wife and children, but this is a holiday for him as well, I think, Artos mused. For a while he needn’t be King.

They scanned farther up the creek; there were signs of everything from raccoon to elk. Edain hopped across from rock to rock to the other bank and trotted up it for a minute before he gave a low call. Artos followed; the brush had been carelessly trampled down over a wide area, twenty or thirty yards, and the banks crumbled into the water.

“Cattle!” Asgerd said; the signs were unmistakable to the country-bred. “Are there herdsmen here? We’ve seen none.”

“Man-sign?” Artos asked Edain.

“No. It’s not a tame herd, Chief. The mix is wrong.”

A domestic beef herd had far more young animals than one left to itself, and there were other differences.

“Feral cattle,” Artos said to the others. “Messy eaters and messier drinkers. They’re common in parts of Montival, common enough to be a nuisance.”

The girl looked blank. Bjarni nodded. “We don’t have them in Norrheim; the winters are too cold, I think. But I’ve heard that there are many farther south, from those who go there in viking. Swarms of wild cattle and wild pig, almost as many as the deer.”

He frowned. “It’s strange; the old-world folk died of hunger after the Change, mostly. Hunger and plague. I’d have thought they’d eat every beast before they started on each other.”

Artos shrugged. “Every beast they could catch. For all the millions scouring for them, there were always some animals of each kind who survived until most of the humans were gone, if only by being out of the way. Cattle will double in numbers every two years, left to themselves.”

“Pigs even faster,” Bjarni acknowledged. “And the flesh-eaters were slower to build their numbers back, as well. Still it’s hard to imagine people so ignorant they’d starve with game still in the woods.”

“People before the Change didn’t know anything, the most of them!” Edain said. “Me da still talks about how they had to be taught like babes when the Clan was starting, and how he and Lady Juniper and the others went scouring for people who knew things, real things, to teach.”

“My parents too,” Mathilda agreed.

“And mine,” Bjarni said. “Erik collected them like treasures on his way north.”

Edain went on: “If half what Da says is true, then it’s a wonder any of those old folk lived long enough to be there when the Change came and killed them.”

The Norrheimers laughed, but Mathilda spoke:

“That’s not quite fair. Each of them knew one little thing about their scientific arts, and they traded the results among themselves, and there were so many that that was workable.”

Artos nodded agreement: “But true it is that the most of them didn’t know the things we think are important. . how to farm, or fight with a sword, or hunt by bow and spear, or butcher a cow, or how to milk one, or how to make butter or tan leather or shoe a horse or. . any of that. The which is why so many people alive today are those of the few who did know those things, or the children and friends and followers of such.”

Bjarni had been kneeling by a cowpat to touch and sniff. “Fresh,” he said. “Not more than three hours. Forty or fifty, I’d say. Quite a big herd, ayuh!”

“Wild cattle like to stay near water,” Artos said. “And they prefer brush and thicket and the edges of things to either deep woods or open prairie, if they have a choice.”

“Like deer or wild pig, then,” the Norrheimer said, storing the knowledge away.

“Very much.”

He looked around; there were some big trees ahead of them, mostly sugar maples, and smooth-barked beeches with the odd oak and hickory, ash and yellow birch. Beyond that was thicket, and he thought meadowland beyond that; he could see farther through it than would be possible in summer, when everything was in full leaf. Above him a cerulean warbler gave the last sweet notes of its song and fell silent as it took alarm.

Perfect, Artos thought. They’ll run for shelter if they’re spooked.

“Pick a tree-stand,” he said aloud. “You’ll want to be twelve feet up at least. They’re dangerous.”

“Cattle?” Bjarni snorted. “Swine, yes, but cows?”

“Wild cattle. The which I have hunted before, my friend, as you have not. I’d hate to know Harberga was a widow because you underestimated a bull.”

“Hmm, right enough. It’s surprising there are so many, too.”

“You should see how the buffalo herds have grown, out west on the high plains, from the few hundred thousand kept on ranches. Millions is just a word, until you see it.”

A light grew in the Norrheimer’s china-blue eyes that was almost feral in itself. “Ah, buffalo! I’ve never seen one, of course, but I’ve seen pictures. That would be a hunt worth making.”

“The Lakota take ’em on horseback, and it’s just a wee bit exciting.”

Mathilda snorted. “As in, they nearly pounded you into a thin red paste,” she said. “It’s a wonder my hair’s not white already! You jumped on the back of one!”

“That wasn’t the hunt-that was when the Cutters were after me,” Artos said lightly.

In truth, he preferred not to remember it too vividly. There were things that made a good story over beer but could still have you wake up in the small hours shaking and sweating a year later.

Instead he went on: “Wind’s towards us, that marsh is off to the left, and the woods get thicker off northwest there. This is a good spot.”

Edain whistled sharply, then used the tip of his bow to mark a spot where the hooves had trampled leaves and grass into muck.

“Garbh! Take the scent!”

The big dog stuck her muzzle down, black nose quivering, body tense with happy excitement.

“Circle and drive, girl! Circle and drive! Fetch ’em, fetch ’em!”

She shot off through the brush like a bolt from a catapult, leaving only a few limbs and leaves quivering in her wake. Artos looked up; the big beech had a massive fork in its trunk the right distance above his head, and still quite a few of the brown serrated leaves from last year. He threaded through a thicket of root-saplings it was sending out, bent slightly and made a stirrup of his hands; Mathilda took four bouncing steps and leapt. Her right boot landed in his hands, her leg already bent; he straightened and thrust upward, throwing her hundred and fifty-five pounds of woman and gear upward with calculated force. She soared, gripped the sides of the V, and laughed softly.

“That was fun.”

“Throwing you about is enjoyable, acushla,” he said.

He grinned to see her blush, handed up his bow, and waited an instant until she had herself braced and a hand extended. Then he backed, ran at the tree, leapt, pushed off a knob on the trunk with one foot and landed with their hands clasped between.

“Well, fancy meeting a pretty girl in a beech tree,” he murmured into her ear, suddenly acutely conscious of the scent of woman, clean but fairly strong. “Is it a dryad you are, sweet one?”

Mathilda flushed, gave him a quick kiss and sidled away. “We’d better get ready.”

“I am ready. . ouch!”

“Ready for hunting! That can wait for the wedding!”

“For the wedding? Even Mackenzies think it uncouth to set to during the handfasting-all right, all right!”

They each passed a loop of rope around the trunk behind them and then around their torsos, and hung their quivers on convenient stubs nearby. Artos patted the tree and gave it a silent word of thanks, then set an arrow to his string, a broadhead with four razor-sharp edges slanting back from the point, using his fingers to sort the others in his quiver so that the bodkins were at the rear. The Mackenzie mountain-yew stave he bore was an armor-smashing, man-killing brute that drew well over a hundred pounds, so he was grossly over-bowed for the hunt, but that would simply slow him down a little-and he was a fast shooter even by the Clan’s standards. Plus wild cattle were big beasts and had a hard grip on life; they could take a good deal of killing.

From here he could see out into the lower growth ahead; the afternoon sunlight was slanting through the trees, and the spring ephemerals were a pleasant scattering of blue and yellow and white and pink through last year’s grass. Suddenly he heard a racking howl, mixed with snarls and barks. Garbh was at work, imitating a whole pack of wolves to the best of her ability. Then lowing and bellowing, including a bovine cry of pain that showed she’d gotten her teeth home; and an angry bull roared, a lower sound that carried well and seemed to shake in the bone. After a moment the tall grass and brush in the open space started to toss, and he saw the backs of the first of the herd; he could smell them too, a familiar barnyard scent carried on the wind.

White, he thought, or mostly; some had dark spots. Big. Charolais by breed, I think, but they’ve gotten longer in the leg and leaner and they’re all horned, many unreasonably lengthy and pointed in that respect. It’s ten generations or more for them. Not winter-gaunt, but not fat either. Cows and young beasts mostly.

No calves to speak of; the cows would drop them later in spring, and no grown bulls he could see, but plenty of younglings one to three years old, which were the ones he wanted. Like most Mackenzies he disliked killing any animal while it was pregnant if he could avoid it, as being possibly blasphemous and almost certainly bad luck, but you could cull males from a herd’s numbers without damaging the stock. The first few were moving along at a lumbering trot-walk, looking over their shoulders now and then or facing back for a moment, but as more came into sight they picked up speed, feeding off each other’s moods as cattle did. A herd could flee with its most timid member, or charge with the most aggressive.

Last the bull came into sight, all-white, rangy-massive, better than a thousand pounds of irritation with rage and steam pouring off his flanks and head, and a set of horns like forward-pointing scimitars. In front of him Garbh looked like a puppy, but she bounced around making a din with little threatening rushes, her tongue over her long fangs like a taunting scarlet banner. Then he lowered his head and his tail went up and he pawed divots of dark soil out of the ground; Artos grinned as Garbh replied with the play-gesture of her tribe, rump up and forequarters down.

The charge was like thunder and would have smashed any fence to flinders or any man, dog or wolf to bloody rags, but Garbh made a last-second leap, twisting in midair to avoid the rake of horns that spanned five feet from tip to tip. She landed nimbly and streaked after the rest of the herd. The bull twisted in his turn with an agility astonishing in an animal so large, and chased her. . which meant he was running in the direction his charges had been going. They thought the bull was running away from the wolves too, and decided that discretion was the better part of valor for heifers and youngsters. In an instant heads were down, tails were up, and fifty-eight sets of hooves were churning. Which in turn meant the bull was disinclined to stop, lest his cows get out of sight. Garbh promptly dropped back around him.

I’ve met war-chiefs with less sense of tactics than that dog, Artos thought with a wide grin; he felt a familiar bubbling excitement. This is one of the things the Gods made men for, as they did wolf and lion.

The pounding of hooves grew into a rumble that shivered up the trunk of the beech and into his legs and backside, and bits of vegetation shot ten feet high as the herd smashed its way through all obstacles. It was a very good thing to be well above them. Closer, closer. .

He threw the weight of arm and shoulder and gut against the stave, drew past the angle of his jaw and shot. The string twanged, and an instant later he could distinctly hear the wet meaty thwack as the point struck his target, slanting down from the base of the neck to sink feathers-deep in the body cavity. The big two-year male took three steps and crashed bodily into the trunk of the beech, making Artos lurch and also making him grateful for the safety rope. The animal recoiled backward and collapsed with blood pouring out of nose and mouth. Another shot, and a smaller yearling went down bawling with an arrow lodged in its shoulder-joint and the leg paralyzed. Then they were directly beneath him and he drove one more shaft into a spine at point-blank range, aiming between the shoulder blades to get the heart and lungs even if he didn’t cut the nerve-cord.

Matti and the others were shooting as well, and whooping. After that, the survivors were past and spooked even more by the cries of pain and the smell of blood, showing no sign of stopping for miles as they thundered through the water of the creek in a wave of spray and splashing. He slung his quiver over his back again, dropped down lightly and bent his bow three more times, considered close-range mercy shots; you didn’t leave an animal in hurt and fear longer than needful, but there was no need to risk taking the point of a horn in your belly or crotch in a last thrashing. The others were attending to the same task; when the beasts were still and throats had been cut, he and Edain each touched a finger to the blood, tapped it between their brows and passed a palm over the dead eyes and their own before they faced west with their hands raised.

Edain recited: “Thank you for your gift of life, brothers, sisters, and know it will not be wasted. Speak well of us to the Guardians of the Western Gate, and go in peace to the bright clover-meads of the Summerlands where no ill comes and all hurts are healed, to be reborn through the Cauldron of Her who is Mother-of-All.”

Artos finished the rite:

“Lord Cernunnos, Horned Master of the Beasts, witness that we take of Your bounty from need, not wantonness, knowing that to us also the Hour of the Hunter comes at last. For Earth must be fed, and we but borrow our bodies from Her for a little while.”

Mathilda crossed herself and murmured a prayer to St. Hubert, patron of hunters; the Norrheimers invoked Ullr, the veithi-As, the God of the hunt and the bow.

Then they set to work, retrieving their arrows and hauling up the twelve carcasses by cords threaded through the hocks between bone and tendon and thrown over convenient branches. It was brute-force work to get the heavy bodies in place, and nearly as much to hoist them up the necessary eight or ten feet, but they were all strong and five pairs of hands on one rope did the job quickly enough. There was no need to break and butcher; there would be help enough from camp for that with tools that included bone saws, but the meat would keep much better if it was thoroughly drained at once. They did do a rough gralloching of one young heifer, for the liver and kidneys and heart-incomparably best when grilled fresh right from the beast, with only a sprinkle of salt.

“That’s the hunter’s right,” Artos said, laughing, stripped to his kilt and with blood to his elbows, tossing the organs onto a bed of broadleaf plantain.

“By olden custom,” Bjarni agreed.

Asgerd kindled a small hot fire while they finished the work and washed in the creek, and whittled green sticks. That also gave them plenty of offal for Garbh. She waited anxiously with her nose following the business, but she was far too well-mannered a dog to feed on the kills until given leave.

Crouching with a string of smoking chunks of liver and kidney and heart on his stick, Artos bit into a flavorsome morsel and chewed blissfully, and started in on a second skewer. Then he caught Edain’s eye and used his own gaze as a pointer. The younger Mackenzie nodded slightly, gulped, wiped his hands and rose, strolling away with Garbh at heel as if to obey a call of nature.

Artos swallowed a mouthful and called mildly: “Come and join the feast, friend, and introduce yourself. We’re all the Mother’s children and should share Her bounty.”

A clump of blackberry canes not far away shook violently, and there was a choked-off cry and a low growling. Garbh came out, with her huge jaws clamped on the wrist of a stranger, pulling him along by walking backward-and perfectly capable of taking off the joint in one bite, as the captive seemed to realize. Edain followed with an arrow on his string.

“Nobbut the one, Chief,” he said casually. “He hid well, but not as well as Garbh and I looked.”

“Thought so,” Bjarni said, taking another pinch of gray sea salt from his pouch and sprinkling it on his meat. “Not much of a catch, hey? Not as much meat on his bones as these cattle!”

Asgerd gave a violent start of surprise when the intruder was revealed, and made a nearly successful attempt to disguise it by coughing as if she’d swallowed some meat juice wrongly. Mathilda waved her skewer through the air to cool it and looked the man up and down.

Artos considered their captive as well. He was young, his beard just a patchy orange-yellow fuzz, straggled dirt-and-sweat-crusted yellow hair falling to his shoulders, blue eyes wide with fear. He was about five-eight and lean but not too hungry-scrawny, his skin marked with a number of thick scars but no open sores or scrofula or scabies. His pants were patches of hide on a foundation of pre-Change denim, and his feet were bare and tough and calloused, but he had a pair of the crudest moccasins Artos had ever seen tucked into his belt, mere bags of skin fastened with hide laces. His upper body bore a sleeveless vest of small animal skins, rabbit and squirrel predominating, badly cured with piss and brains, from the smell.

The belt around his waist was braided from thongs of raw cowhide, fitted to a salvaged buckle, and bore a knife and a hatchet; a necklace of teeth adorned his chest, human and wolf or dog and punctuated by two boar’s-tusks. Edain returned his arrow to his quiver, slung his strung bow and drew his dirk. Touching the point of the ten-inch blade to the skin behind the man’s ear, he used his other hand to toss the weapons at his belt to the ground before Artos; they were pre-Change salvage too, but well cared for, sharp and shining with grease. The bowman ignored the crude buckler made from some sort of metal pot lid with a handle, which looked as if it had been hammered into a convex shape with a rock. Then he stepped back and picked up a bundle of spears, handing them to his chief.

Three were four-foot javelins balanced for throwing, with heads made from table knives ground down to points. The other was man-high and heavier, made for thrusting; the head looked like it had been fashioned from a strip of steel salvaged from a railing or something of that order, hammered and ground down by simple rubbing on rocks into a double-edged blade the length of Artos’ hand from wrist to fingertips. All the heads were secured by butting the tangs into a slot at the top of the ashwood shafts, then binding tightly with a layer of wet rawhide thongs that shrank as it dried to an unbreakable grip. Hoof glue had been poured over the join to set in a resinlike mass and keep the leather bindings tight. The wood was straight, carefully shaped by a knife to give good balance, and rubbed with a little oil of some sort.

Not too bad, Artos thought. Still, not what I’d use to hunt wild cattle by preference, much less a tiger. I’d say this lad’s folk have fewer arts than the Bekwa, but more than my Southside Freedom Fighters did when I encountered them in the Wild Lands of Illinois last year. Whether they were Eaters or no in the dying time, I doubt they are now. Not as a matter of course; he looks too healthy, and you can catch every disease there is by eating human meat.

“That’s all his arms,” Edain said. “Though if we could train up his stink, it’d be a weapon of power to match your Sword, right enough.”

Artos nodded; the man had a hard dry smell about him as if he’d never washed except by accident, and it had been awakened by the fear-sweat pouring off his face and flanks. He pointed to the other side of the little fire.

“Sit,” he said.

The captive obeyed, or at least squatted on his hams. Garbh released his wrist, backed three paces, and stood staring at him, slightly crouched, her yellow-gold wolf eyes fixed on his throat. Her lips were drawn back over her long yellow teeth; she was at least the man’s weight, and the mouth in her massive head was broad as his palm. He glanced at her out of the corners of his eyes and visibly decided to stay very still.

“Here,” Artos said. “I’m Artos of the Mackenzies.”

He pulled one of the sticks of organ meat from where it rested over the fire on Y-shaped twigs, sprinkled it with salt and handed it to the man. Their prisoner relaxed very slightly as he took it. Then he gobbled with a roynish lack of concern for manners, juices running down his chin and dripping onto his chest. When he finished he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, licked his fingers to get the last of the salty liquid, and then smeared his hands across his vest and belched.

“Dik Tomskid,” he said, and jerked a thumb towards his breast. “Lunnunbunh.”

Repetition made the syllables clear: Dick Tom’s kid, of the London Bunch.

“This dialect’s even thicker than the Southsiders’,” Artos said aside to his companions. “Fortunately we don’t have to learn it.”

“It’s amazing how fast the tongue can change its ways in these little wild-man tribes,” Mathilda observed. “The smaller, the worse, it seems. It’s only been one generation and I can hardly understand him at all-perhaps they were feral children, too.”

“Easier for changes to spread when there are few speakers,” Artos guessed.

The captive had been examining them more closely, now that he wasn’t in a blind funk and expecting to be put over the fire himself.

“Yuh nuh Bekwa,” he said. “Buh godda cuns widt.”

“Yes, we have women with us, and indeed we’re not Bekwa,” Artos said. “We just killed a many of the Bekwa tribes and left them dead on the field.”

That took more repetition to get across; Dik’s smile showed an intact if discolored set of teeth.

“Yuh fukr dedum!” he said enthusiastically. Then, scowling slightly: “Nuh bunh ettin a-un Lunnunbuhn lan.”

No other tribe eats. . or does he mean hunt?. . on London Bunch land, Artos translated; the Sword seemed to make that easier, though he’d always had a good ear. Or it might just be keep off my tribe’s territory. He’s a brave man, to tell us so when he’s in our power.

“We go tomorrow,” he said. “Go. Keep going. Go far away.”

He pointed to himself and his companions, then traversed his arm from the east until it was aimed southwestward, which brought a nod of approval. Then he went on:

“You can have that one,” he said, pointing to one of the yearlings hanging a good distance away. “We’ll leave the hides of the others, and the horns and bones. Tell your folk that we come in peace, but it would be a very foolish thing to get in our way.”

He stood and hefted one of the wild-man’s javelins. Then he moved with a sudden skipping half-step, and his long arm whipped forward. The captive fell backward to follow the flashing streak that ended with a thunk and a quivering hum as the point stood in a tree trunk fifty paces away.

Then Artos nodded to Edain. The Mackenzie wheeled, drew and shot three times in the space as many breaths would take, aiming for the most distant of the beef carcasses. There was a meaty thwack-thwack-thwack sound, and the big animal’s body twisted and swung under the impact. All the shafts transfixed the beast’s chest, all within a space the size of a man’s palm. Dik’s eyes went wider still, though presumably he’d seen at least part of their hunt. This close you could see how the arrows made nothing of thick flesh and cracked through the heavy bone of the beef ribs.

“Stay!” Edain said to Garbh, and dropped the wild-man’s weapons near his feet. “And you’d best be going.”

The savage snatched up his possessions, but he was careful to keep his movements unthreatening. He sidled over to retrieve his throwing-spear, grunted in surprise as he had to work it back and forth to free it, turned and raised it towards Artos. Then he ducked his head and trotted away to the northward. Edain retrieved his arrows before he and Garbh followed at a leisurely springy trot.

Bjarni finished his second skewer of meat. Then he took out the long single-edge seax-knife he wore horizontally across the small of his back and used it to cut a circle of turf. Artos drowned the coals in a hiss and sputter with the contents of his canteen, then pushed dirt over them with one boot and tamped it down and wet the results. Bjarni dropped the circle of turf in place and walked on it.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully as he wiped the patterned steel of his seax on a twist of grass, polished it on his sleeve and sheathed it. “This is good land.”

He dug up a handful from the space where he’d taken the grass, squeezed it to show the open, resilient crumb structure, tasted, spat and dusted off his hands.

“Very good land,” he said, washing his mouth out with a swig from his water bottle and spitting again. “It tastes sweet. Not too heavy with clay, not too sandy, not sour either; there’s plenty of wild clover-that means there’s lime in the soil.”

Artos signed agreement. “I’ve not seen much better. Iowa, yes, but this is more varied. I’d still prefer the Willamette country, but this is fine and no dispute. And there’s a very great deal of it since we left your homeland.”

Bjarni had a hungry look on his face as he considered the disheveled richness around:

“Good wheat and barley land, good for spuds and pasture and hay, and the weather’s better than ours. You can see how much further along the spring is, and there are all those fruits we can’t grow at all. Good hunting, enough timber, fishing in the big lakes, and we could ship cargo on those too. Plenty of fast-moving rivers for mills and forges. Good land all the way from Royal Mountain to here. . and beyond, you say?”

“It’s hundreds of miles from here to the Midwestern realms,” Artos agreed. “The most of them are on the far side of the Mississippi. Nor are they crowded within themselves, and they have empty lands nearer them south of the lakes at need, or downriver. It will likely be a goodish long time before they come here in strength.”

The Norrheimer went on: “The English claim the coast south from the Aetheling’s Isle-”

That took a moment to translate; it turned out he meant what the old maps called Prince Edward Island. Artos remembered hearing from his stepfather, Sir Nigel, that it had come through the Change very well, better than most of Montival, without famine or plague. And it had reforged its links with its ancient homeland. England was thinly peopled itself these days, with fewer inhabitants than Iowa; most of the survivors had ridden out the first Change Year on Wight and the other offshore isles. But Greater Britain was growing fast under William the Great, made broad claims, and had the ships to enforce many of them.

“-and the Empire men are rich and have much might. Let them have those lands along the coast I say, and fight the Moors for them; there are many old cities there, but not so much farmland like this, and there’s enough salvage here too. That city with the great Bifrost tower alone would yield enough for a dozen generations.”

Bjarni’s smile grew worthy of Garbh. “And the wild-men here are so few, and so backward. Even more than the Bekwa tribes we beat! No armor, and none who know how to fight in a well-ordered array! Yes, it could be that in my son’s great-grandson’s time this will be the heart of Norrheim.”

“The savages are thinly spread, but they’re fairly numerous in total,” Mathilda said shrewdly. “You’re speaking of a big stretch of land, Bjarni King. Many times what your people hold now. There are what, seventy or eighty thousand of you? The Bekwa were as many, judging from the host they could raise.”

“Not anymore,” he said grimly. “And still less when their remnants have finished fighting among themselves; we saw that south of Royal Mountain.”

Mathilda spread her hands: “But this land west of Montreal and north of the lake probably has as many again.”

“You met some of the Bekwa north and west of here,” Bjarni pointed out. “These wild-men are even more backward.”

Artos shrugged. “They’ll fight for their homes. The Bekwa we met in the North Woods on the Superior shores went around them, not through them, and they didn’t try to settle here-though this is much better land for hunters as well as farmers.”

The Norrheimer nodded. “A few families on their own wouldn’t be safe. It would have to be carefully planned, with a chief and his followers as a core, as well as yeomen, all settled close enough to help each other and overmaster any little bands within reach of them. Starting near Royal Mountain directly west of Norrheim, and then west along the lines of rail and water as our numbers grew, and maybe east down the Great River too. The Bekwa and these other savages would have to flee, north into the pine forests, maybe.”

“Lord,” Asgerd said.

He looked up at her, startled out of his dream, and she went on, flushing a little but dogged and earnest:

“Don’t the old tales say that sometimes the Gods walk among us in disguise, as homeless wanderers, beggars with nothing to bargain with, like that poor gangrel just now? Nerthus does, and Odin too. And they judge us by how we treat them. Also, didn’t your father, Erik the Strong, make us one folk out of many, in the land-taking? Not only when he overfell foemen with his might, but by his wise words at the folkmoots as well, and by holding out a helping hand. That’s how my father won bride and land, as Erik’s follower; and my brothers and sisters are part of Norrheim’s might now, ready to pay you scot and fight in your levy.”

“In numbers is power,” Mathilda observed. “Hands and backs to work and fight. Faster to school the ones that are already there rather than just wait for natural increase alone.”

“A lot of these are unclean,” Bjarni grumbled. “Eaters. Or their parents were …”

Then he nodded at Asgerd and quirked a smile.

“But you’re no fool, girl; no shrinking flower, either. Yes, that’s something to think on too. It would be a seemly deed if some of these could be lifted from being like beasts to a life as true folk, tilling the soil and following the Gods. Their children at least. I’ll think on it.”

A whistle brought Artos’ head up. Edain eeled out of the brush, with Garbh following at heel.

“Our friend Dickie went straight home on his own back trail,” the younger clansman said. “Didn’t stop and didn’t cast to either side. I saw some other man-tracks, but nothing very fresh.”

“We’ll warn the watch we set, but I don’t think they’ll be paying us a visit,” Artos said.

They started back towards camp; walking directly it was only a half hour, and nothing would interfere too badly with the strung-up carcasses in the time it took for a working party to reach them. Eleven slaughter-cattle would yield enough to give everyone several good meals of fresh meat and they could finish it before it went bad. Beef would be a welcome change, and it would help conserve their supplies. He noticed that some of the wild plant foods were coming on now; nettles, Jerusalem artichokes, wild leeks and some of the other spring greens he recognized. Those would be welcome, and healthful-and would help with constipation, which was always a problem when you were living mostly off trail foods.

“The Histories of the Dunedain talk a good deal about food,” he said aside to Mathilda. “Which is more than many of the old tales do; the Tain, for example, save for royal feasts. There are fights over the hero’s portion, but never any binding of the bowels.”

She laughed, but briefly. He watched her brown brows knot in thought.

“Yes?” he prompted gently.

“I was thinking of all the things we’ve done on this trip,” she said. “And. . and the consequences, even the ones we haven’t thought of. The way our friend Bjarni was talking, for example. Would he have had any of these ideas if we hadn’t met him and brought him on this trip with us? And that may affect the lives of whole kingdoms, for generations into the future.”

“He might not have had the same thoughts; but then again, he might. And-”

He set his hand on the Sword. “-I can see what comes of them.”

Vision flickered. For a moment he saw the wilderness, but overlaid. This pathway was a rutted dirt road, flanked by poplars and oaks. A girl in Norrheimer garb was walking along holding up the ends of her apron to make a pouch full of berries, laughing with a youth who had a bow across his shoulder, a brace of ducks dangling from his free hand and a dog grinning-panting at his heel. A brown plowed field stood behind them, and beyond it a building whose rafter ends were carved into the heads of dragons and gilded, and beyond that, tall forest. Another, and men in nose-guarded helms and mail byrnies tramped down the road; another-

She looked a little alarmed, and he shook his head to clear it.

“Nothing overpowering. I was granted the Sword for a purpose, and Bjarni’s dreams bear on that only indirectly. A. . blurred vision, as if I was seeing many might-be futures. In the most of them, steadings built of logs and broad tilled fields here, folk at work, and mead-halls and hof-temples such as we saw in Norrheim. Bjarni thinks to some purpose, it seems.”

“He thinks like a King,” Mathilda said. “Looking ahead, to find his people land and homes and food, and to make them strong against any enemy.”

“True. But I don’t think it’s anything we need account to the Guardians for. It’s like throwing a stone into a pond; the ripples spread as they may, and no one can tell beforehand just how they will. That there will be ripples, yes, but the only way to avoid that is not to act at all.”

She tilted her head to one side. “I’m glad the locals haven’t attacked us. The way it was going east, it seemed we couldn’t step behind a tree for a call of nature without an ambush or an affray or a fight or something.”

Artos nodded, and his hand closed on the pommel of the Sword. Crystal light seemed to seep through his flesh; was he imagining that, or the warmth?

“I think it’s this, acushla. The Sword of the Lady. The enemy can’t see us anymore, it comes to me. Not with eyes beyond the ones in their head, for Her hand is over us.”

“They could see us? Before?”

That was almost a squeak.

“I suspected it, and now I’m certain. How else could they have dogged our steps so closely, again and again, through so many miles of wilderness? Even when we broke contact for weeks, there they’d turn up, like a debt collector from a Corvallis bank. But now. . now we’re on more equal ground.”

“Good!”

They came back to the camp to the sound of raised voices. A crowd of onlookers was grinning and hooting; then the circle burst apart in two directions. In one a massively built Norrheimer stiff-armed his way through; that might have led to dangerous offense, except that the victims were laughing even after two of them fell on their backsides.

“Hrolf Homersson,” Artos mused to himself. “Ritva’s lover of the moment-”

On the other side there was a more flamboyant exit as someone vaulted onto a man’s shoulders in a handstand and back-flipped back to the ground, twisting in the air as she did so. The indignant bob of the blond fighting braid was unmistakable as she stalked away. Edain and Asgerd chuckled with the innocent cruelty of happy youth.

“Hrolf on one side, Ritva on the other,” Mathilda added. “Of the previous moment, I’d say!”

Bjarni strode forward, his broad-brimmed leather hat thrust back on his head; most of the crowd were men of his tribe, the Bjornings, but with a scatter from all the Norrheimer contingents.

“All right!” he shouted. “Is this a collection of picked fighting men, or a clutch of gossips at a quilting bee? Syfrid, can’t you keep them working? In the days of the sagas, men so idle would be thought useless as anything but a sacrifice to the High One! I need a working party to collect our dinners, which will be roast beef and ribs and better than you wastrels deserve-you, you, you-each pick four more, and take as many horses. The rest of you, get your weapons and muster by your standards!”

Ingolf walked over to Artos and Mathilda and shrugged. “They had a fight. I thought it was better to let them have it out, since it was personal, but it sort of escalated. Short of throwing a bucket of water over them. . well, she’s my sister-in-law but your sister. .”

“Ah, you’ve the right of it. Sooner shove your hand into a hornet’s nest. What started it?”

“I’m not sure, but I think it was a rabbit.”

“A rabbit?”

“Mary and Ritva got back from their scout, and they were pretty tired. Hrolf had just shot a rabbit, and he walked up and suggested that Ritva cook it for their dinner.”

“Ouch,” Mathilda said.

“Yeah. Then Ritva suggested he cook it himself since he’d been sitting on his ass all day pedaling while she did the real work. Apparently he’d heard that bit in those books where what’s-his-name does up the rabbit with herbs.”

“Sam,” Edain said. “I always did like him best, of all the folk in those stories. Sensible lad. Me da thought so too.”

Ingolf nodded, more as a placeholder than anything else, and went on:

“And Hrolf thought it was a big joke to quote that and say she ought to be able to do it just as well.”

Artos winced. “And her response?”

“She suggested he cook it himself using his dick for a roasting-spit and then shove it up his ass with chili peppers on it-she said it in Sindarin first and then translated for him-and I’m afraid I laughed. Because in that language-”

“To say, roast it on your man-spear with chilies and ram it up your back-hole sounds. . indescribable, so it does.”

“Yah hey. Then Hrolf laughed, and things went downhill from there. They didn’t actually draw on each other, but I don’t think it was just a tiff.”

Mathilda laughed herself. “And you can smooth down the ruffled feathers in your war band, my love. But I think you’d better be solemn, for she’s not going to be seeing the humor of it all. That’s how I’d guess, at least.”

Artos sighed. “Ah, a joyful and heady thing it is, to be leader.”