"What's that?" Juhel said. "Horses? Weapons? Gold? Land, even?"
"Better than that. Write a letter to his father, telling what he did-and that he wouldn't take anything for it, either. I'll deliver it."
Edain stifled an impulse to shuffle his feet. His father wouldn't say much, just smile to himself and nod. He blushed again and fought not to grin.
"I will write, then," the baron said. He looked at the son of the Mackenzie chieftain, a long considering glance. "Your people don't have princes, Rudi, do they?"
Rudi looked a little impatient as he replied: "I'm not even really a lord, Juhel; just the Chief's tanist. My moth er's Chief, and I may be after her-if the Clan wants me, and for as long as they want me. No, no princes."
"That may be a great pity," Juhel said thoughtfully, then looked around. "Now, I'd better get to work."
Ingolf raised his brows as the story came to an end; si lence fell, save for the low crackle of the fire and the howl of the blizzard outside.
Well, I guess there is a reason Rudi picked the kid. Though from the sound of it, maybe his girlfriend would have been just as good a choice… no, too spooky.
Edain yawned enormously, breaking the quiet that had followed his tale.
"Yeah, even if we can sleep in late tomorrow, we'd better get some rest," Rudi said.
Edain nodded, mumbled something, and slept with sudden finality. Ingolf drifted off next; his last sight was Rudi dropping a careful handful of sticks on the coals.
Rudi Mackenzie knew that he dreamed. But the dream was different. .. this time he was a viewpoint, detached.
Same place, he thought.
The little overhang was still there. The trees weren't, though a few charred stumps still showed where they'd burned. Great gullies scarred the mountainside instead, the mark of torrential rains long gone; the only other vegetation he could see was a few stems of some thorny brush, and those were dead. A white-gray light pervaded everything, but he couldn't see all that far. The air held no haze-it was painfully clear-but somehow he had a sense that it was thick with a crushing weight. Thick and hot, very hot, like a sauna just at the edge of your ability to bear, so that rocks and clods glimmered in the middle distance.
A body lay under the overhang, dressed in a seamless overall of some odd silvery stuff that merged into boots and gloves of the same, and into the base of a helmet like a glass bowl. The face within was a sunken-eyed mummy's, desiccated into the texture of leather and an eternal snarl of yellow teeth, gray-white hair still stubbly on the scalp.
The dream seemed to last for a very long time. The slow heavy wind blew; now and then a piece of rock would flake off the barren mountainside and skitter downwards. Nothing else happened. Nothing else ever would.
"Huh!" He woke with a start.
"Last up, Chief," Edain said cheerfully, and handed him a bowl full of the oatmeal.
Cold sweat prickled under his arms and at the back of his neck where his hair lay on the skin. The horrors of the dream faded, leaving only an overwhelming sorrow; it was as if he felt another's grief, and that too large for a human mind and spirit to contain. Then that lifted too, as he shook his head to clear it. The little shelter was dark, just a little red glow from the fire… and a trace of cold grayish light down the improvised bark chimney.
"Storm's passed," Ingolf said, wolfing down the thick fruit studded gruel. "But it's four feet deep out there, I'd say."
"Higher with the drifts," Rudi agreed. "Best we make as much distance as we can. Snow's bad, but this time of year it could warm up and melt right up to the saddle of the pass-and that would be worse."
Chapter Twelve
Rover Territory, Eastern Oregon
April 15, CY23/2021 A.D.
Joseph Kuttner's single eye gleamed in the light of the fires as he sat in the folding canvas chair. The Rover chiefs squatted across from him, all hair and eyes and teeth and a strong outdoor stink of badly cured leather and horse and sweat, and of lanolin from the sheepskin cloaks some of them kept around their shoulders against the evening chill. Sparks flew upward into the huge star-flecked dome above, and the gnawed bones of a roasted sheep littered the ground.
"You want us to chop some CORA folks for you?" one of them said, grinning. "What for y'want that? We'd do for our own selves, if them western bastards come on our land."
He spit into the fire, a brief hissing sound. Kuttner nodded politely; he was very glad a dozen Cutters stood behind him, fully armed. These new nomads of the sage brush country weren't former Eaters like the savages you found east of the Mississippi… not quite. They were nearly as dangerous to outsiders; a little less likely to attack, but much more effective if they did.
"I want them dead because one of them gave me this," he replied, touching the scar that traversed his empty left eye socket.
That brought more grins, as he'd expected. It was motivation they could understand.
"And they're enemies of the Prophet and His Son, and so of the Ascended Masters and the Unseen Hierarchy."
A few of them nodded; the mission was going well here. The Rovers' extreme poverty was a major reason. It wasn't that the land here couldn't yield a reasonable living, given how few and thinly scattered the dwellers were. What they lacked were the tools and the skills to make them, or anything much to trade for them in more fortunate areas. The Church Universal and Triumphant was willing to supply them, for allegiance and fighting men rather than for profit. It wouldn't be the first time that readiness to seek out the folk who'd had the most trouble recovering from the Change had aided the sacred cause.
What was that old-world expression? He searched his memory. Ah, "rice-bowl Christians." But from that comes true faith, in time.
"They're soulless pagan idolaters, minions of the Nephilim," he amplified. "Nine of them, and they'll be traveling with a large wagon and many good horses."
They all nodded at that, with eager greed. This was a hard place to scratch a living, even by Montana standards. Men who didn't grasp at anything they could with both hands hadn't survived here.
"And there will be CORA men as well, probably-from Seffridge Ranch. Rancher Brown's cowboys."
That brought more scowls and muttered curses, but a little apprehension as well as anger; they recognized the name of the holding, and of its lord. Kuttner made a gesture with one hand, and a Cutter came forward with a bundle of shetes. The fine steel glittered in the fire light as he laid them out with their hilts towards the four chiefs, and the brass pommels glowed.
"Two dozen good shetes. And many fine bows, and many arrows for each. If you kill them, the Church promises two slaves who understand bowmaking… for the most deserving of you, of course."
The chiefs glanced at one another, calculating who would get the most, and how it would affect their own balance against one another. Making horn-and-sinew horseman's bows wasn't a skill that was common around here, and such weapons were precious beyond words, even more than fine forged swords. Many of their men made do with javelins, or carefully preserved pre Change hunting bows. Those were good of their kind, but they seldom had a draw weight sufficient for modern war. Deer didn't wear shirts of steel, or even cured bullhide.
They didn't kill you if you missed, either.
One of the ones who'd been stubborn about the Church's preaching leaned forward. "Tell me more about the Prophet," he said. "If'n he can hand out gear like that, maybe God does favor him."
Seffridge Ranch,
South-Central Oregon
May 7, CY23/2021 A.D.
"Well, that's a relief, Chief, and no mistake," Edain said, looking back at the mountain peaks.
It was the moment just before dawn, when a few stars still lingered in the western sky. That was cloudless, but the mountains there were snowcapped all along the horizon, like a jaw full of white fangs pointing at the heavens, high enough to catch the ruddy light before groundlings could see the sun rising. The great peaks of the Three Sisters were just visible at the northern edge of sight, eighty miles away and more beneath the endless darkling blue.