arts you do.” With a wry smile. “Of which I have heard the praises sung near every evening for full three thousand miles of campfire meals, let me tell you!”
Melissa laughed again, carefree this time. “Girl, with that in your ears day and night, it’s surprised and astonished I am you didn’t hate me already by the time you arrived!”
They stood and made for the door, arm in arm.
CHAPTER FOUR
DOMINION OF DRUMHELLER (FORMERLY PROVINCE OF ALBERTA) WESTERN NORTH AMERICA JUNE 21, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
R itva Havel blinked. “I thought I was fully recovered from the concussion,” she said, stepping back and lowering the point of her wooden blade.
“Aren’t you?” Ian Kovalevsky said anxiously, doing likewise and letting his shield down.
Neither of them went entirely out of stance until they were three paces backward. He was barely limping anymore, and neither was she, though they were still being careful. Not as careful as Dr. Nirasha would have liked; but they were both in their early twenties, in robust good health and in a profession where a fairly casual attitude towards risk was part of the package and wounds just a cost of doing business. Ritva doubted the doctor would have approved of the padded practice gear, or the cloth-wrapped wooden swords in their hands. The hot, bronze, hay-smelling distances of the shortgrass prairie stretched around them, with the white walled mass of the Anchor Bar Seven homeplace tiny in the distance, and the blue eye of the little lake and the green-and-yellow streak of the irrigated land. An eagle cruised not far away, looking over a flock of ewes and lambs, but respectful of the mounted shepherdess’ bow.
“I thought so, but I could swear that’s-”
She went over to her saddle by the picnic basket; their mounts were grazing free, both being too well trained to need hobbles. The binoculars were securely cased; she freed them and trained them to the northwest.
“Ah, the palantir en-crum,” Ian said; he’d been picking up a little of the Noble Tongue. Then he blinked. “That isn’t a bunch of cowboys or militiamen, is it?”
“No,” she said, without taking the glasses from her eyes; her voice bubbled with delight and curiosity. “I’m afraid not.”
Kovalevsky looked down at the picnic basket with its earthenware jug of beer, roast-beef sandwiches and pickles and salad and Babushka pirozhki, sweet pastries stuffed with sour cherries and nuts. His vanishing hopes were in his sigh. Ritva began stripping off the practice gear. The redcoat did the same.
“Who is it?” he asked in a resigned tone, absently rubbing at the still-sore point on his right buttock where the arrow had struck.
A series of liquid trills answered, and then she shook her head and dropped back into English: “Sorry, forgot.”
Poor boy. You actually had a pretty good chance of getting lucky, she thought. You’re sweet, which is a welcome change from Hrolf.
“I think it’s my aunt,” she went on. “My mother’s younger sister. The Hiril Dunedain. A party of my people.”
By the time the party reached her it was obvious. A dozen Rangers, all of them known to her-the Dunedain weren’t so many yet that she couldn’t remember them, especially the ones based out of Mithrilwood. She waved and called greetings to the green-clad riders. They had a couple of Anchor Bar Seven riders with them, probably from the patrols; one peeled off and galloped for the homeplace.
Lots of remounts and they’ve been pushing hard, she thought.
You could go nearly as fast as a rail-borne pedal car if you had three or four horses and switched off several times a day. For a while, at least, and if you didn’t mind your backside getting thoroughly tenderized. There was a very old joke about a book titled Thirty Years in the Saddle, by Major Assburns.
And in front of them all were Aunt Astrid with her disturbing eyes of silver-rimed, silver-threaded blue, Uncle Alleyne blondly handsome, Uncle John bulking huge under a red-brown thatch just showing some gray with his greatsword slung over his back, and raven-headed Aunt Eilir beside him grinning. The whole ruling quadrumvirate of the Folk of the West; it must be something important to bring them all out here in the middle of a war when they’d be badly needed closer to home. Everyone dismounted, and Ritva went to one knee, put hand to heart and bowed: “Well-met, my liege-lady and kinswoman; and all of you, my kin, my brethren.”
Astrid smiled and advanced, holding out her hands. Ritva placed hers between them. Close-to you could see that she’d spent many days in the saddle moving fast, but she showed the strain little as yet, though there were small lines beside those odd compelling eyes.
“Ritva Havelion, you have brought honor to the People of the West. You have helped to bring our King, your kinsman, back once more to his people. You have helped to lay the very foundations of the Kingdom of the West, of Montival. Mae coren! Very well done!”
Ritva felt herself blushing, and astonished at it. Off by yourself, you could think of Astrid Loring-Larsson as something of a figure of fun, however formidable. In her presence, the sheer burning power of belief caught you up again. Looking into the moon-rimmed eyes, you saw yourself as something else again from the light of common day.
I don’t think I have it in me to believe in anything quite that strongly. Does that mean I’m more sane, or something less than she is?
Then, rebelliously: But I probably have more fun!
“Did you see Rudi… Artos, Aunt Astrid?”
A brilliant smile answered her. “We did, at Castle Corbec, for the handfasting with Princess Mathilda.”
Neithan! she cursed silently. Bad luck to be laid up healing.
She didn’t resent it… much. There simply had been no time to waste waiting for her, and she hadn’t been in any condition to be moved. War was like that; she might have been crippled or killed, with only a little less blind luck.
“And we saw the Sword of the Lady. Marvelous, a wonder, like Glamdring or Orcrist or even Anduril Flame of the West!”
I hope you didn’t tell him that, she thought. Mary and I tried to convince him to name it Anduril and he didn’t react well at all.
“Through it the light of the Elder Days is brought to Middle Earth once more. And we are on a mission of our own at the High King’s command,” she went on. “One which will bring the Rangers glory and undying fame!”
Uh-oh.
“The code name is Operation Luthien.”
We are so fucked! she thought.
“We’ll need fresh horses, Ritva,” Alleyne said; he dropped into English for that, looking at the redcoat. “I understand they’re available here?”
“Yes, sir,” Ian Kovalevsky said. “This ranch raises them and sells saddlebroke four-year-olds, and the Force and the Militia regiments have brought in more.”
Ritva introduced him, adding: “A very brave man, and he fought extremely well against the Easterlings… the Cutters. The Force are the local equivalents of the Rangers.”
A party was riding out from the tented camp beside the homeplace. They cantered up the rise and drew rein, a dozen men in light-cavalry gear over plain gray-green uniforms of linsey-woolsey. Their leader was a toughlooking bandy-legged little man of about forty with a face like an intelligent rat and sergeant’s chevrons riveted to the short sleeve of his mail shirt. He took off his helmet as he dismounted, scratching vigorously at his cropped graying brown hair, and then his eyes went wide in astonishment.
“Little John? John ’ordle? Fuck me sideways! You’re alive?” he blurted in a thick clotted accent.
“Was last toime Oi looked!” Then the big Ranger did a double take himself. “Geoff? Geoff Bainbridge? What the ’ell are you doin’ ’ere, Geoff? You were on Salisbury Plain, last toime Oi saw you, drivin’ a Challenger. Oi got over ’ere from Blighty about fifteen year ago. Thought you were a gonner these twenty-five years.”
