Then a shout from the rear:
“Back oars!”
The prow surged down and then up in a burst of spray as every one of the rowers stood and dug in their oars. The galley’s speed dropped as if a kraken had caught the keel in its tentacles and yanked hard. The archers dropped as the sudden halt yanked their footing out from beneath them. Two people landed on top of Mary, and the horn nock on the end of a bowstave poked painfully into the sensitive flesh behind her left ear, breaking the skin.
Flame roared at her. She shouted in involuntary alarm as it broke around the bows of the galley, heat that made her face crinkle and a choking chemical stink not like anything else she’d ever smelled. Then someone not far away started screaming, and she smelled something quite different. Cloth burning, and hair.
One of the people who’d landed on her was Ritva. They were used to that-they’d been sparring partners since they were little girls pulling each other’s hair over who got the last scoop of blueberries and cream-and they’d developed a routine for it. This time it involved heaving Ian up off their backs with a united buck and twist, but that was all right too. The prisoner, Dave Woburn, had blood running down one side of his head where he’d bashed it against a thwart.
His arm was also on fire where a stray gobbet of clinging liquid flame had come over the gunwale. They reacted with smooth precision; Ritva grabbed the man by the front of his tunic and jerked him up so the limb thrashed free, and Mary pulled it against her and wrapped herself around it, careful to keep her hands and any bare part of her body away from it. You couldn’t put napalm out by splashing water on it; you had to smother it completely. The flames died down, enough that she could grab the cloth above it with her left hand and slash at the seam with the dagger she flipped into her right. Linen thread parted, and she pulled the thick linsey-woolsey cloth of the sleeve free and tossed it into the river. An instant later they had the man maneuvered over the bulwark too, and plunged the limb into the cold Columbia. There hadn’t been an obvious burn, but the skin looked a little red.
That gave her a good view as the glider banked. It can’t have more fire-bombs, can it? she thought. Gliders can’t lift much weight!
Whether it did or not, this time it didn’t catch an updraft on the edge of the river. Instead it headed straight in towards the bluffs, then slowly heeled to one side. More and more, until the wingtip touched the surface, and then there was a sudden whirling, splashing chaos. When it ended the glider was broken and resting on the rocky shore. She felt a moment’s pang; it had been so graceful, and so old and alien.
After an instant, the canopy opened. A man emerged, doll-tiny with distance, slithered out and stood propped against the side of the broken craft, slipped down prone, laboriously stood again and shook a fist at them.
Mary laughed as they manhandled Woburn back into the bow and the oars took up their rhythm; Ian assisted, since it was surprisingly difficult to move a man with his feet bound.
“I’m glad he lived,” she said, offering him more of the willow-bark powder. “Hope he keeps on doing it, too.”
“Why?” the prisoner asked bluntly, taking it and applying some of the burn ointment Ritva handed him to the red patch on his arm. “Thank you, by the way.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied. “Why? He’s a brave man doing what he sees as his duty.”
“We’d kill him if we had to, but why shouldn’t I be glad we didn’t? Have to kill him, that is.”
“And he’s out of this fight,” Ritva put in, handing Mary back her bow.
“Which applies to you too,” Mary said.
“You’re…strange,” Woburn said.
Ian grinned at him. “Tell me. But wait until you meet their big brother. The one with the magic sword.”
Woburn snorted. “Oh, a real magic sword? You expect me to believe that?”
“No, we expect you to see it, soon,” Mary said.
All three of them looked at him and smiled.
“You’re not…kidding, are you?” Woburn said, his eyes going a little wider. “You really believe that.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” Ian said helpfully.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE HIGH KING’S HOST
HORSE HEAVEN HILLS
(FORMERLY SOUTH-CENTRAL WASHINGTON)
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
NOVEMBER 1ST, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
Rudi Mackenzie looked up from the folding map table.
“Ah, most excellent!” he said, as the Lord of the Dúnedain dismounted and approached. “Hîr Alleyne, mae govannen. I chyth ’wîn dregathar o gwen sui fuin drega od Anor.”
“Well-met, Your Majesty; and indeed our foes shall flee.” A pause. “Your command of the Noble Tongue has improved.”
Rudi smiled; he hadn’t spoken more than a few words or rote phrases until he reached Nantucket and stepped outside the world of common day to return with the Sword of the Lady. He tapped the hilt:
“A benefit of this, I fear, and not my own merit.”
It gives me command of tongues…including ones that don’t exist, or didn’t until fairly recently when an Englishman invented them. Including, and here oddness becomes very odd indeed, both words and grammar that weren’t in what poor Astrid called her Histories, or indeed in any of the man’s writings, but which fit the rest perfectly. Which is a puzzlement I don’t intend to think about; it makes my head hurt.
There was a Dúnedain bard about, scribbling down the added vocabulary whenever she had a chance. She had a list, and she’d give him paragraphs and ask him to translate them and take notes in shorthand. Given what had happened to Astrid and how it had aided the kingdom’s cause, he hadn’t had the heart to tell her to take herself off. Among other projects, the Lady of the Rangers had been working on a translation of the Histories…into Elvish.
The handsome man with the haunted eyes and the first silver in his blond hair bowed with hand on heart in the Ranger manner, bending the knee as well. So did the others-though his twin half sisters gave him antiphonal winks as they did.
They had a prisoner with them, a Boisean officer in the rough olive-green uniform that host wore under their armor, and he remained proudly standing. One sleeve had been ripped off, and ointment glistened on the skin there; doubtless there was a story behind it. He wasn’t bound, but two of the Rangers stood near with their long knives bare in their hands.
Something clicked in his mind, as if working some mathematical magic on the shape of face and eyes and hands. That’s close kin to the prisoner who went over to Fred last month.
He didn’t know if it was his own wit working there or the Sword of the Lady working through him.
Sure, and I should stop wondering that. There’s no way to tell, and often enough it just seems to exaggerate the way I’ve always thought, like attaching a water-mill to a saw to give it added power. It’s obsessive I could become about it, to my own detriment.
The prisoner’s stiff refusal to bend showed courage, particularly if he believed any of the propaganda Martin Thurston was putting about concerning what a feudal tyrant Artos the First was. In what the Lady Regent Sandra considered one of life’s little ironies, much of the black tale was lifted from the actual deeds of Norman Arminger…who would be Rudi’s father-in-law, except that he was long dead.