Rudi cantered up, the visor of his helm up, and the baron with him.
"They must have come in before dawn," Juhel Strange ways de Netarts said, and then swore lividly: "Satan's arsehole, with piles like fat acorns! They'll be all over the country between the bay and the hills by now, stealing and kidnapping-"
"So we'll cut them off from their boats, before they can get back with loot and prisoners," Rudi snapped. "Where will they have come ashore?"
"Over there," Juhel replied, pointing a little south of west with his red running broadsword. "It's the best spot near here-where we pull up the boats-no water deep enough anywhere else short of Bay City. They'll have one of their schooners off the coast. They tow the landing boats down from the islands for longshore raids, damn them. It's a good idea to take their boats, but I have to rally my retainers and the militia! Otherwise we can't hit them hard enough to overrun them."
"Juhel, we Mackenzies will keep them busy. You get your people together and relieve us-get them ready, but for the sweet Lady's sake, don't take too long!"
He swung down from Epona's back and looped up the reins to the saddlebow; the horse followed him like a dog, but this wasn't the weather for playing at knights, nor were there many Mackenzies besides Rudi who could. Edain and the clansfolk fell in behind him, his friends and a round dozen from the wagons, led by a lanky man named Raen with the twisted gold torc of a married man around his neck; he was old Tom Brannigan's son in-law.
"Who are we fighting, Chief?" Edain asked as their feet splashed through a slough.
Wish I'd painted up, now, he thought to himself. It'd be… comforting, like.
His father disapproved of the custom of painting your face for war, but few Mackenzies under thirty agreed.
"They're Haida," Rudi said absently.
Cold water sloshed into his shoes, and then they were on dry land again; he could sense a river to their left, and the loom of the low Coast Range beyond that, but their path was wet pasture. Fairly soon his knee socks were as sodden as his feet. They moved at a steady jog-trot, as fast as was practical in unknown country with dense fog about them, spread out in a loose triangle.
"Haida, that's Indians, right, Chief? From somewhere up north?" Edain went on; he liked to get things tidy in his mind.
The Indians he'd met had all been folk much like any one else, just with different customs; the Clan got along well with the Warm Springs tribes, who were allies of the CORA and had always been friendly to the Mackenzies. That wasn't always the case everywhere.. ..
"A lot of them are Indians and that's where they got the name," Rudi agreed. "From the Queen Charlotte Islands. Their ancestors used to raid like this in the old days, too, for plunder and slaves-long, long ago, before white men came here. Great seafarers and boatbuilders they were, back then. And things were… very bad… where they live, I hear, after the Change. So they probably remembered the old tales. Now, quiet."
Traveling through a fog like this when there might be enemies at hand in any direction made your balls try to crawl up into your belly; sometimes he could see a hun dred yards, sometimes barely well enough to place his feet, and it muffled sound and smell. He wished Garbh were still with them.
At first they found nothing; then a two-wheeled ox cart tumbled empty. The oxen had been speared, what ever was in the cart carried off. A child's body lay by one wheel, picked up by the heels and with its head beaten in against the steel. The child's mother lay dead beside it, her skirts rucked up around her neck, legs spread and a stab wound low in her belly to show how she'd died.
The Mackenzies stopped as if halted by an invisible wall. Edain felt his stomach try to rise as his eyes went round in disbelief; all the parts of the picture were there, but he couldn't force his mind to take them in-and he didn't want to. Eithne was making a sound deep in her throat, a growl that would have done Garbh credit. Rinn did bend and spew. Otter backed away, making protec tive signs with his left hand and shaking so badly that he obviously didn't think they'd do much good.
And maybe they won't, Edain thought, fighting blind panic and feeling the hair bristling on his neck. A curse, a curse, seven times a curse just to see it!
Rape was bad enough, a dirty profanation of the Mys teries, of the loving union between Lord and Lady that made all creation. But there were evil men in any people and such things happened sometimes, especially in war. To kill a woman's child and then force her and then kill her through the womb, though-he half expected Earth Herself to open up and swallow him and everything else male and breathing within a mile, down to the hedge-hogs, and at a gulp.
The thought made him look down uneasily and shud der, but at least it distracted him enough to let his stomach settle.
Rudi winced and looked aside and began to speak, to wave them all forward, but Eithne held up a hand and stopped him. Her face was white and set as well, but in fury rather than fear. She moved forward and bent quickly to rearrange the dead woman's clothes. When she straightened again there was blood on her hand; the woman's blood, and the child's.
"Stand still!" she snapped as he and the other men began to back away. "We don't have time for nonsense! You first, tanist of the Chief."
Rudi bent to receive the defiled blood with a face like iron. Edain shuddered again as she touched his fore head and cheeks, then repeated it quickly with the other men.
"You who bear the Lord's semblance-avenge this His Lady's blood, and make Earth clean of it," she said. Suddenly her lips skinned back over her teeth and white showed all around her eyes. "Kill!"
She was an initiate and priestess; Edain was still sim ply a dedicant, but he knew the voice of the Mother when he heard it… and She was angry. There was blood and death in that sound, and his skin rippled like a restive horse's at the midnight magic in it.
Rudi nodded grimly. "Let's go, Mackenzies!"
They did. Rinn and Otter dropped back a little to trot beside Edain.
"Your girl," Rinn muttered, tracing a sign. "The Night Face has her. The Dark Mother."
"That means we'll win this fight," Otter said, snarling eagerly. "Good!"
Edain shook his head. The Mackenzie herself had stood as Goddess-mother at his Wiccaning-and Dun Juniper was the center of the Mysteries. Also his mother was high priestess of a coven. He knew more about it all than most young men his age.
"No, it means the other side's going to lose this fight," he said grimly. "That's not the same thing as us winning, boyos, and you'd better believe it. Nobody's safe when the Devouring Shadow shows up."
Rinn winced. "The manure's hit the winnowing fan for true."
Whether the kettle hits the pot, or the pot hits the kettle… Edain thought, but did not say.
"Lord Goibniu, shelter us with Your arm," Otter prayed; his family were smiths, and favored the Iron master. "Goddess Mother of-All, gentle and strong, be gracious to Your warriors."
Fire showed through the murk. They stopped, fitted arrows to string, then moved forward at a walk. Mud squelched beneath his brogans, and the pleated wool of his kilt shed beads of wet as it swayed about his thighs. Edain took a deep breath and let it out, another and another; ground and center, ground and center.
Dad was right; waiting's hard. The fighting just past spun through his mind in a welter of foul images, like butchering time but with people, and then there was the horror near the cart. Lugh Long-Spear, spare me to avenge that!
The mud smell was starting to yield to that of burning timber, but the fog was thicker than ever close to where the river ran into the bay, like having wool pushed in your nose and ears. The firelight was like a candle seen through glass thick with frost.
"Good as a beacon," Raen said to Rudi, softly.
"Probably why they did it, to show their raiding par ties the way back. The fog works for them, but not if they get lost themselves."