“Does it really matter if you know they’re going to eat you after they kill you?” Mary asked curiously.
Ingolf nodded. “Yeah, darling, it does. Feels different, anyway. Every one of my Villains was pretty much a hardcase even before they went into salvage work-”
“Went in viking,” Artos said.
Ingolf nodded, but his mood didn’t lighten: “And I didn’t know one of them who wasn’t creeped out by it. Even Kaur and Singh, and half the time they didn’t care whether they lived or died.”
Artos nodded. Much farther south and there would be at least scattered bands of Eaters-the savage descendants of those who’d lived through the Change Year even in the heart of the death-zones of megalopolis. Never very many in any one spot, but there were a great many spots.
Such wild-men were not always irredeemable. The Southsiders had been a band who’d started as near-children in the outskirts of Chicago before drifting to the banks of the Illinois River, and though pathetically ignorant of even the simplest arts they’d been good-hearted. But most Eaters were considerably more vicious than any animal, if only because they were more cunning; their parents had generally made it through the first year by hunting and eating men, that being the easiest source of food and the only one they had skill to catch at first. Being raised by insane cannibal murderers didn’t make their children more agreeable and often they were just as crazed themselves.
The Powers have a good deal to answer for, Artos thought.
His hand caressed the pommel of the Sword, and images flitted through his mind. The alternatives to the Change were something They could show him. He shook his head violently, pushing the thoughts/visions/knowledge away; there were worse things than the Change, evidently, but he didn’t want them paraded always before his innermost eye.
I’m a Changeling. I wasn’t hag-ridden by seeing the old world die; hearing about it and coming across the leavings is bad enough. Leave me that, will you!
Ignatius seemed to sense his mood, and returned to practical things, tracing his finger westward: “Then south of Montreal. . Royal Mountain. . southwest through the old province of Ontario to the ruins of Windsor-Detroit, then across the base of this peninsula. .”
“Michigan, they called it,” Ingolf said. “That whole part that looks like a thumb. There’s some farms and little towns up north. Nothing near those cities but wild-men.”
“Then a swing south of Chicago and back north, and we will be in striking distance of your home, Ingolf. By Readstown we’ll be out of the Wild Lands, and back to the settled realms.”
“Readstown’s my former home,” Ingolf said, and looked over at Mary. They reached out and wove their fingers together for an instant. “I guess home’s in Mithrilwood, now, even if I’ve never been there.”
Mary smiled, a remarkably piratical expression with her eye patch.
“For a while!” she said. “I don’t want to drive you away! I’m not inclined to hang around Aunt Astrid all my life. That can get a bit tiring. I don’t think you’ll want to either. I’ve been thinking-”
Which means we’ve been thinking, Artos thought. Ingolf may have wed only the one of them, but he’s gotten a conspiracy as well as a bride.
“-and when the war’s over, we could lead some of the Dunedain southward, south of Ashland, the way Legolas did from Mirkwood to Ithilien after the War of the Ring. The Westria project will be getting under way, and settling new land they’ll need Rangers. More even than in the older parts of Montival. It’s beautiful country, from the stories and the pictures, and the first comers will have their pick.”
“Redwoods! They say they make Douglas fir seem like saplings,” Ritva said. “What a place to build a flet.”
“Sounds like fun,” Ingolf said, stretching with a faraway look in his eyes. “I would like to have a homeplace for ourselves, and that’s a fact.”
“Let’s win the war first,” Artos said dryly. Then: “But kinship apart, Ingolf, you’ve been a true right-hand man to me and will be even more in the days to come; and so have you been a strong support, my sisters.”
He made a gesture, the Horns with his left hand: “Fate and For-tuna willing, vacant lands will be in my gift, and you won’t find me niggard. They say there were fine vineyards in old California. I’ll expect many a glass of the best when I come visiting, to play bear with my nieces and nephews before the hearth!”
Ritva cleared her throat. “Ah, Rudi. . Artos. . Mary and I were thinking.”
Something warned him as he looked up into her turquoise-blue eyes, as innocent as the gaze of heaven. Behind the two women Ingolf held both hands up palms out, waved them a little as if to say Don’t blame me! and walked away towards the horse herd. There was always something a man could find to do there convincingly. Ignatius seemed to evaporate; he was an exceedingly quiet man, both in his body and in the calmness of his mind, and could do that without fuss or bother.
“Thinking of what?” Artos asked. “Because the last time I saw you thinking with just that expression was when you two put garden slugs in my bed when I visited Stardell Hall in Mithrilwood.”
“Oh, Rudi!” Ritva said. “That was years and years ago! And it was just a joke.”
“Not to the one whose toes were covered in cold dead slug.”
“We’d only just decided to become Rangers. We were just kids then!”
“Says the crone of twenty-one summers,” Artos said dryly. “Get to it, please!”
“No, no, this is serious.”
“Very,” Mary added.
“It’s about the Sword.”
“Ah, is it so?” Artos asked.
He sank back against the stump, hitching up the blanket a bit and laying the scabbard across his knees.
“Well, you see, it’s a sword of the far West,” Mary said, a slight frown knotting her yellow brows. “Isn’t it?”
He nodded at the rhetorical question; the compass directions had special significance for the Rangers, since the Histories made goodness proceed into or from the West, rather like an ethical version of water running downhill.
“True,” he said cautiously.
“And it’s supposed to defend the Uttermost West. Which Montival is, because if you go farther west it turns into East, since the Straight Path to Aman the Blessed was closed back in the Second Age at the Fall of Numenor, you see.”
“True,” he said, his voice even slower. “According to the Histories at least.”
And everyone’s entitled to their own beliefs. Though sometimes not to their own facts.
The other twin took it up-it was easy to see that it was Ritva because she had two eyes, unlike the old days when they’d often tag-teamed him and others. It was still a little disturbing, like listening to someone with a stutter.
“And have you noticed that when you draw it there’s this sort of flame? At least it seems like a flame. And it’s going to be the sword of the Kings of the Men of the West, too!”
“So it’s the Sword of the Lady, but it’s also the Flame of the West, and it would make Aunt Astrid so happy if-”
“NO!” Artos roared, leaping to his feet, almost entirely Rudi again.
Mary and Ritva bounced erect too, moving back with graceful speed, hands held up in a soothing, placating gesture.