He nodded thanks as Ignatius ladled him out a bowlful and added a couple of bannocks and a lump of hard white cheese. The coarse twists of barley bread were made from flour mixed with baking powder and a little salt, and were palatable enough when fresh-particularly if you had butter, of which they still did a little. The stew-soup-whatever was buckwheat groats with dried onion, dehydrated vegetables and bits and pieces of venison mixed in-lean, stringy venison at this time of year, but meat was meat, and you got the most out of it by cooking it this way.
Artos shoveled down the thick kasha-style porridge-soup and enjoyed the feeling of relaxation and the warmth in his middle. Thirty miles wasn’t all that far to cover, not when you were cycling on smooth steel. This stretch was the last that had been reconditioned by the Norrheimers while the expedition put together their pedal-carts and rail-wagons. Each day so far had been brief, lest they outrun the capacity of the horses to catch up before nightfall. Even on ordinary roads bicyclists could run horses to death; on rails there was no comparison at all. In the west there were ways around that, but they required skills and machines the Norrheimers couldn’t possibly acquire in time.
He settled in and looked around. Mathilda was over at one of the other fires, teaching a couple of the Southsiders their letters. He waved and she returned it, then went back to using a stick of charcoal and pieces of old board from a wrecked building not too far away; more of that had gone under their tents and blankets to keep out the damp. Fred took out a hand abacus and soon was in some deep calculation; he played a game of chess with Virginia at the same time. Edain was methodically checking the fletching on his arrows, fingers delicate on the thread as he bound on another goose feather to replace one that had been disturbed by use; as he worked he sang a song old in his father’s family:
His voice sounded well, though old Sam Aylward’s was fit to frighten a rook; singing skillfully was as much a part of being a member of the Clan as shooting with the bow, since Juniper Mackenzie had been a bard by trade before the Change. Asgerd was not far away, knotting her brows over a book that had a man in a mail shirt and conical helmet on the cover, drawing a longbow to the ear-The Free Companions, by Donan Coyle, one of Artos-Rudi’s childhood favorites and one of three he and the younger Mackenzie had brought with them all across the continent. She absently scratched Garbh’s ears as she turned the pages; the wolf-mastiff was lying with her head in the girl’s lap, eyes closed and chin thrust forward in bliss. At the last lines of the song she looked up:
“What do you mean by hearts that are true, master-bowman? We here call ourselves the true folk.”
“True to what?” he asked in turn, holding the arrow point-first to the fire and looking down its length as he gently turned the shaft to check the twist of the feathers that would twirl it in flight.
“True to the Gods-Asatru. True to their kin and their friends, true to their oaths.”
“Ah, well, then. The song means much the same thing, perhaps with a little less talking about it. Mind you, it’s an English song-me da was born there and his family forever before him, farmers and fighters in a land called Hampshire. But it’s widely sung among Mackenzies; we say that a man can lie with his lips, but not with a bow, and if you watch him shoot you’ll know his soul more than you would from an hour’s talk.”
She snorted slightly, looked at the book again, and said quietly: “More than you would from an hour’s talk. I like that. I like the tale in this book too; the folk are brave and true, and they know how to take joy in life even in hard times. Even if they follow the White Christ and not Thor Redbeard.”
“Some of my best friends are Christians,” Edain said, and tipped one of them a wink to the side.
“Finish this,” Ignatius said gravely, and handed the young man and woman the last of the kasha. “Waste is an affront to God. And here is the last of the apple turnovers, only slightly stale.”
He turned to Artos. “Perhaps we’d better see to the scout report, Your Majesty.”
Artos scoured his bowl, rinsed it out and rose; they strolled over towards the spot where the twins were huddled over their latest map, with Ingolf looking on, but they went round-about. And stopped by a pile of gear wrapped in burlap; bundles of arrows and little kegs of apple brandy and rounds of hard cheese and boxes of rye flatbread harder still. The warrior-monk chuckled under his breath.
“I’m not even the oldest of our company. . or Fellowship, as your half sisters would put it. But sometimes those two there make me feel an ancient of days.”
“I know what you mean,” Artos said, brushing his bright red-blond hair back out of his eyes. “Dancing around each other like grouse in the spring.”
He cocked an eye at the cleric. “You approve?”
“They are two fine young people, and I think there is more in their attraction than the body’s needs. . not that there is anything wrong with those, when properly governed. There are many ways of serving God; and most often, we do it by turning to the service of others. Duty to a wife, a husband, a beloved child; the fulfillment of such are reflections of the one great duty our souls owe to Him. If they wed and work together to raise a strong family, then God is glorified indeed.”
“Even a pagan family?” Artos teased. “Two varieties of pagan, at that! Sure, and if you think so well of them, shouldn’t you be converting them?”
“I pray for it,” Ignatius said, perfectly serious, but also with an ironic note in his narrow black eye. “As I pray for you, Your Majesty. We are all called to tell the glad tidings, but again, not all in the same way. Some are so blessed that they speak with the tongues of men and angels and set a fire in the souls of those that hear them. That is not my gift. I. . try my poor best. . to make my life an imitation of Him, and hope that does His work.”
“You’re not without eloquence yourself, Father. You’ve strengthened Matti in her faith, that I know, by example and by word both.”
The priest smiled, and for a single instant his face seemed as if lit from within. “Thank you, my son. By serving her who will be our Queen in Montival I serve the Queen of Heaven whose knight I am. How could I do otherwise, when she laid that charge on me herself?”
“That One could have bound you to duties far worse than being Matti’s guard and guide,” Artos observed.
And I pray to the Lord and Lady and to my Luck that your duty as you see it never clashes with mine. For you make an excellent friend and a rare comrade, knight-brother of the Shield of St. Benedict; but you would be a very dangerous foe indeed. And I would very much regret the day I had to kill you.
Ignatius laughed softly. “No, that One could not have bound me to a duty that was other than good. But I know what you mean. She has the seeds of greatness in her, our Mathilda; her mother’s cleverness, her father’s strength of will and ability to dream grandly, but also a sound heart which-frankly-neither of her parents did or do, and a nature that seeks truth and justice strongly, not counting the cost to herself and not forgetting that to others. Nurturing those seeds and seeing them come to their fullness is a task worthy of everything a man can give; or a priest. So does God turn even great evil to lasting good.”