The High King of Montival

CHAPTER TWENTY

DOMINION OF DRUMHELLER

(FORMERLY PROVINCE OF ALBERTA)

JUNE 3, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

Ritva opened her eyes and winced as pain speared into both. A hand was under her head, and held a glass of water to her lips; it was well water, cold and good, and she swallowed it and let her head fall back. A light shone in both her eyes, candle-flame reflected from a mirror in a little box. She was in some sort of big open room, a long whitewashed rectangle with a high ceiling of beams and planks, a school or a church or something of that order. There was a slight smell of blood, and a stronger one of medicines and antiseptic.

“Hi, sis! It’s the day after the battle, if you need to know. We’re visiting the wounded. You count, sorta.”

Mary was grinning down at her-a few scratches on her face and hands, bruises, the white mark a helmet’s padding made across your forehead. Her eye patch had a new silk ribbon, and her hair was back in a neat fighting braid, and she was in formal Dunedain black with the crowned tree and seven stars on her sleeveless doeskin jerkin. She held up a helmet, a plain sallet which after a moment Ritva recognized as her own; it had a crack in the crown and Mary stuck the tip of her little finger through it.

“You keep getting banged up like this, people will be able to tell us apart!” she said, wiggling the finger again.

They smiled at each other wordlessly. Rudi’s face moved into view. “And how are you feeling?”

Ritva made a mental effort-her head ached and he was a little blurry around the edges-and switched to English.

“I feel,” she said, “as if someone shot me in the leg and the shoulder and then hit me over the head with an ax. But you ought to see the shape he’s in.”

“Worse than yours, though you’ll have to stay here for a bit and heal. They’re good people, and much taken with you.”

A groan came from the bed beside her. She looked over; it was Ian Kovalevsky, and the doctor was changing the dressing on his buttock. Rudi chuckled, and for a moment he was the brother she’d known all her life.

“Now there’s an unfortunate,” he said.

“Why?” Ritva asked. “It’s an honorable wound and no worse than mine.”

Kovalevsky groaned again, and the doctor-she was a short slim middle-aged woman in a green tunic and cap and trousers, brown-skinned and gray-haired, with a bird’s fine-boned grace-said in a pleasant chirping singsong accent: “Shut up, babyish boy. There are many more injured than you, oh yes indeed.”

Two younger women helped her, dressed in outfits of the same color and cut and sporting the same stethoscopes around their necks: they were obviously her daughters, and equally obviously their father had been someone who looked more like the Constable.

“It’s not the pain,” the young redcoat said.

Rudi laughed. “No. It’s the thought of being. . what’s your name, lad?”

“Kovalevsky, sir.”

“Being Half-Ass Kovalevsky or something of the sort for the rest of his mortal days.”

“They wouldn’t. .” Ritva started, then thought; she knew young men, including Dunedain. “They would. Even his friends.”

“Especially his friends,” Artos amplified, and the injured man nodded mournfully into his pillow.

“And how am I supposed to show off the scars?” he asked. “Moon everyone?”

“Men,” Ritva and Mary said simultaneously.

The doctor and her helpers pronounced the same curse in almost the same breath. Ritva’s brother laughed-heartlessly, she thought-as the young man hid his head in the pillow.

“And my sister, Dr. . ”

“Dr. Padmi Nirasha,” the woman said, and then looked surprised and pleased as he pressed his palms together before his face and bowed slightly.

“The leg and shoulder wounds are muscle damage and need only time and perhaps some physiotherapy to heal properly, given her excellent physical condition. The blood loss was not too serious, so we used only saline drip. I have disinfected and debrided. There was a concussion also. That is never to be taken lightly, no, no. But recovery is progressing. Strict bed rest for at least the rest of the week is indicated.”

“That’s good to hear,” another voice said; Avery McGillvery. “Your warning saved us, Ms. Havel.”

“And she should be allowed to rest,” the doctor said tartly. “Even by a tyrant and oppressor such as yourself, Rancher, if I, a mere captive put to hard labor may say so.”

He grinned at her. “Going to burn the place down again, Padmi?”

“I think of it every day! Now remove your large carcass out, and leave my patients in peace!”

Ritva felt her eyelids fluttering; she was very tired. Rudi held his arms up and spread, palms skyward, and Mary joined in the gesture. They both chanted softly as she drifted away:

Father Ignatius and Mathilda waited for him outside the schoolhouse-turned-infirmary. He nodded at them and they relaxed in relief; they and the Rancher strolled out the gate. People were busy with repairs; the bodies were all gone, and the dead horses, but flies still buzzed over the places where blood had soaked the soil, and the faint smell was unmistakable. A group of Cutter prisoners was working over near the wrecked warehouse, helping put back what they’d destroyed. A tent town had sprung up on the banks of the little lake to house the troops; the Norrheimers, the First Richland, and the newly arrived redcoat bands. Cowboys were driving in herds to the complex of corrals, to be slaughtered for the feast to come, and neighbors had arrived as well with help and supplies.

Artos looked at the faces of those they passed. He’d seen the like before; there was sorrow for those who’d lost kin and friends, but the relief and joy outweighed it. They knew what a Cutter victory would have meant. There were always costs to a fight when you won, but fighting and losing was far worse. This wasn’t the first time these people had been on the receiving end of a raid, and they knew how the world worked.

The Rancher seemed to be searching for words: “So, Mr. Mackenzie. . your family is Scottish?”

Artos glanced down at his kilt, recognizing a conversational icebreaker:

“My mother’s mother was Irish; from Oilean Acla, Achill Island. And she married an American named Mackenzie who was Scots mainly, with some German and a wee bit of Cherokee and traces of this and that. My blood father was half Finn, with the rest split between Swedish and Anishinabe. . Ojibwa. My foster father’s English.”

“Scots and English, myself. . a little Ukrainian and Blackfoot.”

Artos offered a harmless question in turn. “What was that about your excellent doctor indulging in arson?”

A short snort of laughter, and the Rancher waved a hand towards the ruins of the old house by the lake.

“She was part of. . with, at least. . the gang that did that. People from Calgary, summer of the first Change Year. Not really bad, most of them, just hungry and desperate, trying to take a place where they could feed themselves. My father broke the gang up, but he let some stay if they could work for their keep, and a lot of ’em turned out pretty good; they and their kids are half the people on the Anchor Bar Seven now. Padmi spent a month or so shoveling and pounding earth before she’d tell anyone she was a doctor. She still claims it’s forced labor and she’ll burn the place over our heads someday. I don’t know if it started as a joke, but. .”

Artos laughed; it was a better ending to the story than most from those times.

“It’s sorry I am that you’ve taken damage and loss from my coming, and yourself so hospitable and helpful,” he said bluntly. “I can’t bring back the dead or heal the injured, but I can compensate for material losses.”

“I haven’t taken damage from you, Mr. Mackenzie; you and your sister saved us. My people and I have taken loss and damage from the Cutters. No need for payments.”

“Ah, well, you should be knowing that it’s Iowa’s money, and none of my own. And Iowa has more money than is good for them, or at least for their neighbors, so you’d be doing a good deed by taking it. A little financial letting of blood to correct the humors.”

“Oh, in that case. .” he said, and they both chuckled. Then grimly: “And this isn’t the first time we’ve fought the Cutters, though it’s the worst so far.”

“Ah, now that’s what we need to speak of.”

“Well. . I’m not the Premier.”

Father Ignatius bowed his tonsured head. “No, Captain McGillvery, but you are a man of great influence here, most prominent of the Ranchers in the southern portion of this Dominion. They will listen carefully to you, and your government will listen in turn to them all. And we have no time to spend in consultations with Premier Mah in Drumheller. We know that she has agreed to declare war on the Cutters, but not how vigorously she will prosecute it.”

“My mother. . the Lady Regent Sandra of the Portland Protective Association. . told me that Premier Mah was very able, but a little too cautious sometimes,” Mathilda added. “Too inclined to hedge her bets.”

Artos could see Oh, that Princess Mathilda run through McGillvery’s mind. Here in Drumheller they had to have dealings with the PPA; not particularly friendly ones, though there hadn’t been war beyond the odd border scuffle since Norman Arminger had died. That meant they knew at least a little of what went on farther south in the rest of Montival as well. Mt. Angel had daughter houses here, and the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict was well thought of.

“Well, for what it’s worth, Mr. Mackenzie, I’m in favor of settling Corwin’s hash once and for all.”

“That’s the immediate task,” Artos said. “Though I’ve a horrible suspicion that it will be but a battle in a longer war.”

“Of course. . what exactly do you intend to do with Montana after you get rid of the Cutters? After we all do, that is. If it’s left alone it’ll be chaos, then bandits and anarchy, or warlords. But Drumheller certainly doesn’t want to annex it. Enough of those people have ended up here anyway.”

“Our plan is to incorporate it in the High Kingdom of Montival, for precisely those reasons.”

“Er, that’ll cause. . concerns.”

“It’s my thought we should speak a little of how the High Kingdom and the Dominion had best arrange their affairs both during the war and after it. For we’ll have a border to your southward, as well, should things go well.”

“You’re not inviting us to join, I hope?” McGillvery said. “The, um, High Kingdom, that is.”

Artos grinned. “No. Though I’d not turn you down did you wish to. Yet I don’t anticipate you will. You’ve a well-governed and not-so-little realm here. All you really want of your neighbors is peace, and perhaps trade, eh?”

The man nodded in relief, and the discussion between the four of them was brisk. It turned into something like a procession, as McGillvery toured the camps of the various contingents, formally inviting them to the victory feast-most of which would be conducted in the open or under tents, but officers and a select few others were bidden within the Anchor Bar Seven’s homeplace walls. That in turn led to a few impromptu speeches by commanders to their men:

“And I know what great fighters you are,” Bjarni went on to his assembled band, standing on a massive barrel that gurgled hopefully with good Canuk ale. “You showed it yesterday, against these Cutter swine who’re supposed to be so fierce.”

A roar of approval greeted him. His men hadn’t packed fancy clothes along, though they were combed and trimmed and had their arm-rings on. The bearded faces looked up into the torchlight, cheerful with the expectation of the feast-particularly at the prospect of unlimited fat, tender young beef. Cow-beasts were mostly working oxen or for dairy back in Norrheim, where they had to be fed in barns on hay and grain and roots five months of the year. They weren’t slaughtered until they were good for nothing else, except on special occasions or when a chief was feeling lavish.

And McGillvery’s looking a little apprehensive. They are a wee bit rough in appearance, I will grant.

“But I also know what a bunch of drunken, brawling, rutting horn-dog arslings you turn into the moment someone waves the bung from a barrel under your noses,” the Norrheimer said flatteringly.

That brought laughter; he cut it off with a motion of his hand.

“Drink your fill and eat your fill, gamble and arm-wrestle and sing, boast and have riddle-games and swap lies with your friends and our allies,” he went on. “But remember that we’re guests here, with a guest’s obligations. If you misbehave it touches the kingdom’s honor and my own. No fights, or at least no steel. And keep your hands off any woman who isn’t willing-and if you’re in doubt, she’s not. Any who disgrace us I’ll send to the High One with a rope and a spear! Now go enjoy yourselves, and have a taste of Valholl, for you earned it!”

Artos smiled and turned to his own smaller war band. His close companions didn’t need any such advice, but the Southsiders and Norrheimers picked up along the way might. Customs and standards differed.

“It’s proud I am of you, my hearts, every man and every woman, for you’ve been all that a lord might wish in his companions,” he said. “But my friend Bjarni’s advice is good. Do remember that looking too often into the bottle is not an excuse for violations of hospitality. Also remember, those of you who haven’t seen Montival yet, that if a man forces a woman, we Mackenzies bury him-alive-at a crossroads with a spear in the dirt above his coffin, to turn aside the wrath of the Mother and appease the Earth Powers.”

“Ah. . you actually do that?” McGillvery said, as they walked on.

“Such a stuffy death,” Ignatius murmured, which Mathilda seemed to find amusing for some reason.

“To be sure, we do,” Artos said. “You hang men, in the same circumstances, I believe.”

“Well. . yes, these days we do. My father says they just put them in a prison in the old days.”

“Odd.” Artos shrugged. “Very odd, to make honest folk pay to support the wicked.”

McGillvery shrugged as well. “Didn’t even make them work, according to the old man,” he said.

The Rancher was about a decade older than the Mackenzie, which meant his first real memories were of the years just after the Change. Those had been times with even less room for waste than nowadays.

All was nearly ready for the feast when a scout rode in and hauled his lathered horse to a halt before the Rancher; the beast’s sweat smelled musky-strong in the cooling evening air, and its eyes rolled white against shadow.

“Sioux, sir, a big bunch of ’em heading this way. They’ve got a peace flag up, though.”

McGillvery looked alarmed, and Artos grinned as he spoke:

“I think I know who those are.”

At the Rancher’s questioning look, he went on: “You may remember that I said few of the enemy would cross the border into the CUT’s territories alive?”

McGillvery whistled softly. “You do like to arrange things neatly, don’t you, Mr. Mackenzie?”

“I find it saves trouble,” Artos said gravely.

“I’ll go tell them to put a few more head on the grills,” the Rancher said. “Not the first time the Lakota have ever eaten Anchor Bar Seven beef, but it’s probably the first time I’ve given them any. And I’d better warn everyone. Wouldn’t want any misunderstandings.”

Ignatius and Mathilda sent him odd looks as well; the more so when the Sioux war-party rode up a little later, just as the sun was finally slipping below the western horizon. The civilians and the various forces made a broad corridor for them; there were around three hundred, with many horses driven behind them, and fresh scalps on their shields or spears or belts. They all wore light shirts of good riveted mail, and two scorpions bounced along at the rear with their packhorses, Iowan-made like the armor. As Red Leaf had said, when it rained soup a sensible man took off his hat and replaced it with a bucket.

Their leader reined in and raised a hand in the peace sign; he had red paint striped with black on his forehead, eagle quills at the back of his steel cap, strings of hollow bone cylinders across his chest, and his long brown braids were bound in quillwork and fur thongs.

“Hau, Rudi,” he said as he slid from his horse like a seal from a rock. “Father,” to Ignatius. And: “Hau, wigopa,” to Mathilda; which meant hiya, pretty girl, more or less. It was brotherly. . also more or less.

“Hau, blotahu? ka,” Artos said, as they touched fists; it meant Greetings, war-chief.

Then he continued in the same tongue: “I see it has been a good day, a day when the Sun shone on the hawk and on the quarry. The knives and arrowheads of your brave ones are red; you have taken many horses, many scalps.”

“No shit, Sherlo-” Rick Mat’o Yamni-Three Bears-began boastfully; then he did a sudden double take that set his braids swinging.

“What the hell? Since when did you speak Lakota, Rudi?”

Artos shrugged. “Rudi didn’t. Artos the First”-he touched the hilt of the Sword-“apparently does. It’s a bit like having a wackin’ great library in your head, I find. Among other things. Though it’s hard to organize it without drowning in knowledge. Things. . appear when I need them. Well, the Lakota are to be part of the High Kingdom, so the High King should speak their language, eh?”

“Shee,” Rick said, and shook his head.

“Let me show you where you can camp,” Artos said. “And let’s see to your wounded. . and there’s a big blowout planned, to which you’re all invited.”

The young Sioux leader cocked a hazel eye at him. It had a tint of green in it in certain lights; his mother was called Sungila Win, Fox Woman, from the color of her hair. His tone was dry as he asked:

“You sure about that invitation? ’Cause I headed up here real quick when my great-uncle-”

“The pejula wacasa?”

“Yeah, the scary old dude who did your adoption ceremony. . anyway, he told me the Spirit People said I’d better make tracks this way quick, and then stick to you like glue for the rest of this war, if I wanted things to turn out right. So I picked up a lot of these guys near the border and they, ah, know their way around here.”

Mathilda snorted laughter. “Now why, why, why would that be, Rick?”

Three Bears looked at her with a crooked smile. “Oh, some of ’em might have come up here to ride around in the dark a little one time or another, maybe stumble across a few horses and cattle. .”

“. . and steal them,” Mathilda finished.

“Did I say steal?” He cocked an eye at Father Ignatius, who was quietly telling his rosary. “Wouldn’t want to shock the good Father here.”

The warrior-monk smiled. “My son, I do not shock as easily as you apparently think. Also I am a soldier and a ruler’s advisor, as well as a priest and a monk. And I doubt you need fear that memories of old misdeeds will make you unwelcome tonight. Your riding in with. . ah, concrete evidence of finishing off most of the raiders who attacked this place put. . how shall I express this. . the cherry on the cake for most of the people here.”

Artos chuckled. “Rick, my friend, as High King I officially know nothing of such things. I will not promise these good people that I will stop the Lakota from lifting horses-”

“Even with that Sword, Rudi, you wouldn’t have a prayer. You might as well promise to make rain fall up.”

“That’s one reason. Another. . have you ever heard of the Tain Bo Cuailnge?”

“No. . wait a minute, wasn’t that some sort of ancient Irish thing about a big cattle raid?”

“That it is, and a fine rollicking story to boot. It’s also an illustration of why it would ill behoove a Gael to be too sanctimonious about a passion for other people’s livestock. However, I will do nothing whatsoever to stop the Drumhellers from punishing any light-fingered souls they find on their own land absconding with their sheep. Just as I would ignore any protests they made about you dealing with any of their folk you found prowling about your herds.”

“Oh, not sheep. Never sheep. Have you ever tried to make sheep run fast?”

“A point. And there is this; if such persons were to kill anyone in the course of. . riding around in the dark, shall we say. . the Drumhellers may hang them, and I will most certainly hang them myself if they make it back to Montival, for the sake of peace between the realms. Exactly as I would insist, on pain of war, that they hang any of their own who did the same to you.”

“Oh. Oh, well, I can see that, sorta.”

“I’m going back to the ranch,” Mathilda said. “Father, would you come with me? I want to confess and be communicated before the feast starts, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all, my daughter,” Ignatius said. His face lit with an impish smile. “Your confessions are rarely very traumatic, you know, my child.”

“Alas,” Artos said and winked at her; she blushed.

“I’ll stay with Rick for a bit,” he said. “See you in a little while, acushla.”

Pitching camp for the Sioux was simply a matter of finding a suitable stretch of prairie, picketing their horses, bringing in a water-cart from the ranch wells, and unrolling their sleeping bags. That done, they trooped down to the lake to wash and began primping for the celebrations, with horseplay and joking about the cooking smells beginning to waft from the barbecue pits. It was well into the long summer twilight by then, when two men walked up to Artos.

Three Bears looked at them casually, then cursed and reached for his shete. Dalan flinched, and Graber put an arm around his shoulders.

Artos laid a hand on Three Bears’ where it rested on the hilt of his blade.

“Quietly, my friend, quietly. You’ll find these men somewhat changed.”

“They threatened my family, on our own land!” the young Sioux leader snarled, pointing at Graber. “He threatened to kill my whole clan, down to the youngest children!”

“And tried his best to kill me and mine, if you’ll recall,” Artos said. “And tried more than once, so he did, and did kill some who were dear to me. Hear them out, for my sake, my friend. And for the world’s.”

Grudgingly, inch by inch, the younger man relaxed. “OK. This better be good, Major Graber. And the High Seeker. .”

Rick Three Bears was extremely angry, but he was also intelligent and perceptive.

“Is that really him? It’s his face but the. . the look ’s all wrong. He doesn’t stand or move like that guy, or any of them.”

“It is him and it isn’t,” Artos said. “It’s the boy he was before the Church Universal and Triumphant took hold of him. Before the. . things. . that they miscall their Ascended Masters got their claws into his mind.”

“What happened to him?”

“This happened to him,” Artos said grimly, touching the Sword. “It. . undid that part of his life. And while the man you met deserved to die, this lad has done none of the man’s deeds. Instead he’s trapped inside that man’s body, with all his best years stolen from him.”

“Oh,” Rick Three Bears said, and shivered slightly. “Oh, man, those CUT guys are just. . they’re just not right.”

Graber nodded to him, then addressed Artos: “My lord, I told you that I had come to believe that the masters of the Church have. . have betrayed we who served them. I now believe. . believe that I must turn against them. Go among my own people and try to tell them the truth. I have come to ask your permission for this.”

The man’s face was still a thing carved from granite slabs, but it had a sheen of sweat now, far more than the mild summer evening could account for. He would know, better than most, what that would mean if he failed; and failure was almost certain.

“You can’t believe him!” Three Bears said.

“Graber,” Artos said carefully. “I know you’re telling the truth. No man can lie to me now and be believed. But you served the lords of Corwin for a very long time. The Prophet himself put you on my track. You are. . marked. And vulnerable to them.”

Bobby Dalan nodded eagerly. “Yes, sir. That’s why I had Major Graber come to you. You can touch him with the Sword like you did me, and then he’ll be safe!”

Safe from anything but inconceivably prolonged torture and death, Artos thought.

Graber met his eyes. “If you would, my lord,” he whispered. “If it can be done without destroying my memories and purpose.”

Artos stood silent for a long moment, looking up into the darkening sky; the first stars were glimmering above the distant eastern horizon, and the moon shone silver.

I did not ask to be a judge of men’s souls.

“I know a little more of the Sword now than I did on Nantucket,” he said at last. “It is the Sword of the Lady, and therefore the Sword of Truth. I can use it to. . to cleanse your mind, Graber, and to establish barriers there. But that means that you must confront yourself. Everything that you have been and done, and how those you served were woven into it. You will not lose your years, as Dalan did; but you will see them.”

“Please, my lord,” Graber asked.

There was no point in delay. With a single swift movement he drew the Sword. Three Bears gasped and blinked as it caught the moonlight in its not-steel, but Dalan smiled with an innocent joy. Artos flipped his grip so that he was holding the hilt with the blade pointing down and the pommel above his thumb, then pressed it against the other man’s forehead.

Shock.

A whirling through his own mind, a moment of piercing grief, of sorrow. Then Graber was on his knees, panting and pressing his clenched fists to his temples.

“No, no, I didn’t know, no-”

The mumbling went on and on, until Artos feared the man was mad; the smell of his sweat was heavy and sour. Dalan whimpered and wrung his hands. Then bit by bit Graber gained mastery of himself, staggered erect, braced his shoulders back. He looked to have aged five or ten years in as many minutes, but it was an age like sun-dried jerky or tough rawhide thongs. Whatever else the lords he served had taught him, he had learned a merciless control that Artos could not help but respect. Dalan came beside him, offering a shoulder as a son might, and the older man rested a hand on it.

“Why-” Graber croaked. “Why did you wait until now? I am free, I am free. That was as bitter as death but it freed me. I see. . I see now. I see it all.”

Tears ran down the hard weathered face, without the man being really aware of them. Artos sheathed the Sword and considered for a moment, his hand on the pommel.

“Because. .” he said, then began again. “Because I could not do it until you had walked a certain distance along that path yourself, of your own will and choosing and through your own wrestling in the silence within your head. To use the Sword before you had done that would only have broken your mind. A very wise man said to me once that none of us could know what a devil was, or what a devil he himself might be, until he had conquered the devil in himself, and that by hard work. I think you know, now.”

“I. . it was as if all my life I was living in a story, and then I awoke. And until I did I lived as in an evil dream.”

“That’s what compulsion does. No man can be free, be really himself, unless he makes himself so. Then the Sword could help you. The Lady heals, but She doesn’t enchain; and not even She can make an evil as if it had never been. Now you must make such atonement as you can.”

“Thank you, lord,” Graber said thickly. His face hardened into the bronze mask Artos was familiar with. “I will. Though my life would be no payment, it is still all I have.”

But he is different, as a spear is different when it’s aimed in a new direction.

“I think I understand. Now I understand. Yes, I must do this. Though I die, I must.”

Dalan nodded. “And he’s safe, now. The bad things can’t get into his head anymore.”

“Indeed they can’t,” Artos said grimly. “But their arrows and swords and red-hot irons can.”

Graber managed to smile. “That never frightened me, lord.”

“Rick,” Artos said, turning a little to the Sioux war-chief. “Could you help me with this?”

The whites showed all around Three Bears’ pupils, but he nodded jerkily.

“OK, Rudi. We got plenty of guys who don’t look all that Lakota, whatever their spirits are. We could make these two up like they were ours, and send them back with some of our walking wounded in the next couple of days, so they’d be in position to slip across the border. I know the guy to handle it, too.”

He called and talked to the man, who responded in a quick mixture of English and Lakota that Artos would have had trouble following a year ago. When his follower had led Graber and Dalan away he shook himself and shivered again. His finger wobbled a bit as if he didn’t dare point directly at the sheathed Sword.

“Man, oh, man, that is one fucking scary Wakha? artifact you got there!”

“My friend, you don’t know the half of it.”

Three Bears fumbled at his belt, rolled a cigarette, and touched it to the flame of a flint-and-steel lighter. He drew and handed it to Artos.

“You sure you can handle it?” he said.

Artos let the smoke out through his nostrils; for once it wasn’t just something to be endured for ceremony’s sake.

“No, I’m not sure,” he said, handing the little burning cylinder back. “Not at all. But I have to do it anyway!”

“Better you than me, dude.”

“And don’t I wish it was anyone but me! There’s one thing I am sure of.”

“Which is?”

“That as soon as I can I’m going to put this”-he slapped the hilt of the Sword-“in an honored place on the wall, and not touch it unless driven by sheer stark necessity. It’s dangerous, that it is; more dangerous to my enemies, which is why I bear it, but. . it’s too real for the world, I think. It threatens to break the fabric of things just by being, and unravel the story of our lives, as if it were an anchor of cast crucible steel dropped into a world made of gossamer. And we the butterflies among the threads, so.”

“Dude, watch me shudder.”

He did, and drew on the cigarette until the ember underlit his high-cheeked, proud-nosed face.

“I’m just glad you’re on our side.”

“Frankly, so am I. And now I suggest we eat, drink and be merry. For tomorrow-”

“We ride like hell with hemorrhoids, yeah. I better tell my boys not to get too deep into the firewater and forget they’re guests.”

“There’s a fair bit of that advice going around tonight, I think.” Artos laughed. “And much-needed.”

His own gaze went westward, towards the high peaks his mind’s eye knew were there. What was happening beyond the Rockies now? Then he shook his head, and turned towards the lanterns that burned bright all along the walls of the Anchor Bar Seven. Mathilda would be waiting.

He smiled at the thought, and stepped out more quickly.