just wondering, Why me? really. For this contact mission.
Really?
When you were used to it, Sign could convey dry pawky irony as well as any tone of voice.
Eilir went on briskly: Well, we picked you because you’re the most experienced Ranger we have here who’s not well known yet. We four are. I’m deaf, my beloved little John’s freaking fee-fi-fo-fum huge, Alleyne looks like, well, Alleyne, and Astrid is… Astrid, she Signed. And because you’re younger and people pay less attention to the young. Because you’re a woman and people feel less threatened by women-Manwe and Varda alone know why. Plus tall fair people fit in even more here than most places. Take a look, familiarize yourself with the layout.
She handed over the precious Zeiss glasses and Ritva leveled them across a low-cut stump; the woods on the hill above the settlement were obviously carefully managed and healthy. St. Hilda’s Monastery lay below them, the shadows just beginning to lengthen. From the look, most of it had been there before the Change, but there had been a great many alterations and more than a few additions. The core building was built of bluish-gray stone, twin-towered, as much like a castle as a church, and surprisingly modern in appearance; the lower windows had been sealed. There was a brick wing that had the alien boxy look of late pre-Change work, and a stretch of buildings off to the north.
Farther out were truck gardens, fairly substantial orchards, and a big neatly laid-out farm with fields of varied crops separated by board fences and rows of poplars; a few hundred acres of wheat and barley rippled, yellow streaks showing amid the light green. More recent construction surrounded by fenced paddocks was probably barns, storehouses and workshops; the tall arms of a timber-framed windmill were unmistakable, though the sails were feathered and bare right now. Several well-kept dirt roads led away, east and north and south; they were fairly busy, wheeled traffic and bicyclists and folk on foot.
All in all it looked like a prosperous town, or perhaps a great noble’s estate, except that there were no obvious defenses. Though the twin-towered church could easily be turned into a fort: the chronicle Astrid had written of the Bearkiller journey westward, The Red Book of Larsdalen, said that the bandit lord Iron Rod had done exactly that.
They all gathered at the back of the hillock to see her off, except for the lookouts, of course. Most of that was to take turns examining her from head to toe; you always did that when you could, before a clandestine insertion. Nobody caught everything, and a different pair of eyes was always welcome.
I’ll look less conspicuous without this sword, Ritva Signed, though she’d feel naked without it, too. Straight long swords aren’t much used here, from what we’ve heard.
Ian hadn’t learned the finger-tongue yet, but he understood when she undid her weapons belt, and silently held out his own with the stirrup-hilted curved saber and bowie. Sabers were the second-most-common long weapon in Idaho, after the wider-bladed cutting sword known as a shete. She slipped it out of the sheath and tried the balance; somewhat heavy for her wrist, but the weight wasn’t thrown as far forward as she expected. You could thrust with this, though not as well as with the double-edged blade the Dunedain usually carried.
She buckled the belt, drawing it in to the last notch and working the leather there to make it look used before tucking the tongue in and out, and checked herself over.
Ian was helpful again: “That braid is sort of distinctive too.”
Eilir clucked her tongue in agreement, and Ritva sighed and turned, kneeling and letting her quick fingers undo their own work.
The Ranger fighting braid did what it was supposed to do-keep your hair out of your eyes when you were moving quickly-and it was ornamental, running from brow to nape in a series of intricate tucks and plaits. Unfortunately, nobody else but the Folk of the West used it, as far as she knew. Also it was impossible to keep up all by yourself.
And Mary and I aren’t always together anymore. Good luck with Ingolf, sis, and I still wish I’d won the toss for him. Though Ian is refreshingly nice, I think. I have got to stop being attracted to Bad Boys like Hrolf. They don’t change.
Eilir tapped her on the crown of her head to show it was done; now her wheat-colored hair fell halfway down her back in a single simple braid, tied off with a plain rawhide thong at the end.
None of them were in the special Dunedain field kit right now; they’d packed that away and picked up bits and pieces of local gear to give the right mixed look and plausible little details of craftsmanship and style. Only the wealthy or their close retainers dressed in new or nearly new matched outfits, now that the last reserves of pre- Change salvage had worn out or rotted. Standing out from the patchwork masses was one of the main reasons the upper classes spent lavishly on that look.
Ritva wore stout nondescript boots and doeskin pants and a long pullover linsey-woolsey shirt, a broad- brimmed low-crowned hat and a kerchief around the neck drawn through a leather ring, all none too clean after their long journey. A sheepskin coat worn bald in places was rolled and strapped to the blanket behind her saddle; her recurve in its scabbard by her knee would pass as the type anyone might use, and a quiver and round shield were as much part of outdoor wear as shoes. She had laced leather arm-guards and steerhide gauntlets, though armor would have been going too far.
All in all, she looked like many another thousand cowgirls here in the mountain and range country.
Except where the Cutters run things, she thought with a scowl. They think women in pants are an abomination. But then, they think pretty well everything is an abomination. From the way most of them smell, soap included.
Here in notoriously well-policed Idaho it wasn’t even so very odd that a comely young woman would come into a town by herself. She’d still be noticed; strangers were always noticed. The only places she’d ever been where that wasn’t so were a handful of large cities. And there weren’t more than a handful of large cities in the world a generation after the Change, a world where the overwhelming majority lived in places the size of St. Hilda’s or smaller.
“I’m off to Bree,” she said, and Aunt Astrid chuckled.
“Let’s hope there aren’t any alarming and unexpected delays with your contact.”
St. Hilda’s wasn’t entirely without defenses. A quartet watching some blackcoated Angus in a meadow noticed as she cantered along with a pack-horse on a leading string, and three set arrows to their bows as they legged their horses closer while another drew a shete.
Closer, and she could see that the archers were women, and the man with the shete was a hard-worn thirty and with only two fingers on his mutilated left hand. That could have been an accident in half a dozen trades, but she would bet on a sword-cut. He rode close and checked her over, noting the rolled pup tent, duffel bag and camping gear on her spare horse.
“Your name?” he said, sheathing the blade.
“Jane Cross,” she said, falling into a ranch-country rasp.
It was actually the accent of the Bend country just across the Cascades from the Willamette and Mithrilwood, but it would pass anywhere in the interior in a casual conversation with people expecting a stranger. Local ways of speech had diverged widely in the last generation now that twenty miles was a good day’s journey again and everyone from farther than that a de facto foreigner.
“What’re you doing in these parts?”
“Lookin’ for respectable work and a bunk, before summer’s past, sir. Maybe some place to settle.”
“You don’t look hungry.”
A shrug. “Rabbits ain’t hard to come by, but…”
He nodded understanding. Anyone with the right tools and skills could feed themselves for a while in the wilds in the warm season, though even then it was risky to travel alone. A simple sprain or fall could kill you with nobody there to help. Winter would be deadly. Plus even if there was much empty game-rich land between settlements all of it anywhere near civilization was claimed by somebody, who’d eventually run off a vagrant hanging around the fringes. You had to; neglecting that was how bandit gangs got started.
“How come you’re wanderin’ loose?”
“My Rancher up in the Panhandle country had to let some hands go, what with the war and the taxes. Got no kin there now, my folks is dead and they were from Spokane way back. Don’t know how they’ll manage without us, but-”
She shrugged. The man nodded, a little sympathy softening his hard scarred face.
“You’re not the only one on the road. The good Sisters do what they can, but times is hard hereabouts too.
