he puts me in mind of my father, Erik the Strong.”
“A fair comparison. I remember him only a little, but he left a great mark on the world passing through it, and from that you can see the shape of the man who made it.”
The land wrinkled up before them a little, scored and gashed and littered with rocks ranging from loaf-sized to real boulders; as you went south here you met spots that had been cut by water into gullies long ago. Three sentries rose out of nowhere, with arrows on the half-drawn strings of their longbows, Mackenzies in ghillie cloaks; those were hooded lengths of camouflaged cloth sewn all over with loops. The loops were thrust through with bits of grass and sagebrush or whatever else fit the landscape, and if the wearers knew what they were doing they could be nearly invisible even in open ground. Rudi had spotted them, but Bjarni gave a slight start.
The leader of the trio tossed back his gauze-masked hood as he took the draw off his string. He was painted for war in the Clan’s style, patterns of scarlet and black swirling over his face to give it the look of his sept totem, a fox-mask in this case. The moon-and-antlers of the Mackenzies was blazoned on the green leather surface of his brigantine, and there was a tuft of the reddish fur dangling from a silver ring he wore in one ear.
There was something a little foxlike about his eyes too, despite his dark hair and olive skin, darting and quick and cunning. Doubtless that kinship of spirit was why he’d dreamed of Fox on his vision journey as a youngster; that was part of the Clan’s coming-of-age ceremonies.
“Chomh gilc ie sionnach,” Rudi said gravely; clever as a fox in the old tongue, and the motto of the man’s sept.
“That we are, High King. Pass you may, lord, and those with you,” he said, tapping his bow stave against the brow of his open-faced sallet helm in salute.
Then he turned, waved to someone farther down the slope, and made a slight chittering sound with tongue and teeth. It might have passed unnoticed anywhere insects formed the background of life. The sentries took different positions, sank down… and were once more nearly invisible, even if you’d seen them do it.
Bjarni looked behind him as they walked on. “Your folk take war seriously,” he said approvingly.
“That we do, or we’d be long dead,” Rudi said, hiding a grin. “We have no Fluffy Bunny sept… sorry, an old joke among us, I’ll explain another time if you wish.”
And you Norrheimers find us deplorably flighty and light-minded and longwinded and fanciful about all else, he thought but did not say. While the most of my clansfolk who meet them find your people a staid and stark and solemn-dull lot who find little mirth in anything but hitting folk with axes. It would be a drabber and less interesting world if everyone were the same, would it not?
The Norrheimer gave a slight grunt of surprise when they came over the slope and saw the Mackenzie camp below. The plain around Goldendale was really a plateau at the foot of the hills behind the town, and its southern edge was valleys where water had cut back long ago; the ground became rougher as you went south to the Columbia at Maryhill and less of it was farmed. This was a broad open swale, the bottom perhaps twenty or thirty feet lower than the higher plowed fields. The bulk of it was in grass turning gold in the sunset light, with thick- scattered clumps of oak and pine in the lower parts. In time of peace it was a preserve for the hunting and hawking of the Associate lord who held these lands, and in war a fine campground that didn’t interfere with what remained of workaday life.
Scattered almost as thickly through it were the small tents of the Mackenzie host, grouped in threes and those in circles for each Dun; Sutterdown’s contingent had four circles, they being the Clan’s only approach to a city, grouped around their banner of sea-blue and sky-blue blazoned with a scalloped shell and lyre and bow. Little efficient cook fires cast a trickle of smoke into the air, just enough to let you get a whiff of the wood burning and a bit of the food. The other camp odors weren’t too bad; Mackenzies were as cleanly a people as they could be, and this group hadn’t been here long yet. Rudi walked down the track at an easy swing, taking off his flat Scots bonnet now and then to wave back greetings.
A different set of tents caught his eye as well, about a score and in rigidly regular lines; the flag that flew over them was the ancient Stars and Stripes.
“Ah, Fred Thurston’s here,” Rudi said. “And by the looks of it, his little force has grown. More prisoners going over to him, and we’ve had a few deserters as well.”
Bjarni made a skeptical sound. “Fred Lawrencesson I know and like,” he said. “He’s a good fighter and no fool, and the High One did claim him in my own hall-a great honor, though it’s a dangerous one. He’s one of the true folk. Yet I’m not altogether sure of his followers, men who’d turn on their lord.”
“Martin Thurston isn’t their rightful lord,” Rudi pointed out, then thought a moment to put it into terms his friend would grasp at once and with his gut as well as his head. “He killed their father by stealth and treachery.”
“True, true.”
“And then he lied about it, got his men’s oaths under false pretense. His oath was false, and he made theirs false too.”
“Also true. The Gods hate an oath-breaking man, they send him bad luck and bad luck is catching, like a flu. But… well, it’s all a tangle as bad as Sigurd and the Rhinegold.”
“That it is. We’ll cut that knot, though.”
The Mackenzies were mostly readying their dinners, practicing archery at targets of rolled straw matting or working on gear or just lolling about passing the time at games or songs or storytelling or lively arguments. War was mostly boredom, when it wasn’t terror. The Boise men were drilling, moving with a smooth machine-discipline that was almost eerie to watch as they cast their heavy javelins, formed and re-formed and changed front, then suddenly clumped together into a walking fortress that had shields on all sides and overhead as well.
“Pretty,” Bjarni admitted. “We do something like that, but not as smooth.” He looked around at the clansfolk. “Those thin gold collars mean the handfasted, don’t they?” he said after a moment.
When Rudi nodded, and touched the torc around his own neck, the Norrheimer continued: “You’re putting everything you have into this, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Rudi said. “As you did with your folk at the Seven Hills battle, Bjarni King. You couldn’t hedge your bet and neither can I. We have to win the campaign coming up or be ruined, and to win it we have to load a rock in our fist before we hit them, so to say.”
This wasn’t just a group of wild youngsters. Many of these folk were solid householders with crofts and worksteads and children back at their Duns. And there were stacks of boxes and sacks, wagons parked in long ranks, even longer ones of bicycles, horses grazing under watchful eyes. And great man-high banks of stacked wicker cylinders full of bundled arrows, more than all the other supplies together.
They came to his goal, a series of larger tents where a brace of guards stood, tall men leaning on Lochaber axes-gruesome weapons with hafts five feet long and a yard of chopping blade that tapered to a wicked point, with a hook behind. The Clan Mackenzie’s standard flew above, a silver crescent moon cradled between black antlers on a green field. The sides of the tents were brailed up to let the breeze in, and he could see folding tables and chairs, racks for records and account-books and maps, and men and women busy at the paperwork that any army seemed to accumulate. They were winding it up, though, as the light died. That came earlier down here, with the higher ground to cut off the sunlight.
As the red sun dropped the clansfolk put aside any work or play that could be halted-he saw cards, dice, baseball and a whooping impromptu Iomanaioch game with the ball flying up amid a waving of ax-shaped hurly sticks-and turned to face the fiery glow that turned the western horizon crimson and light the sky above pale green. Voices took up a long wordless note, more and more until you realized that there were many thousands scattered down the valley. Singing well was as much a part of being a Mackenzie as shooting with the bow. Rudi turned westward with the rest and raised his voice, his arms spread above his head, palm-upward in the Old Religion’s gesture of prayer. Then the song began: “We know the Sun was Her lover
As They danced the worlds awake;
And She lay with His brilliance
For all Their children’s sake.
Where Her fingers touched the sky
Silver starfire sprang from nothing!
And She held Her children fast in Her dreams.”
Bjarni and the Norrheimers stood aside, inclining their heads to show a guest’s respect for customs and Gods not their own. The massed voices rolled on, bidding farewell to the day in a hymn that Rudi’s own mother had
