The Ranger-sign Alleyne had left was faint, easy to miss if you didn’t concentrate even when you’d helped invent it.
The Histories are frustratingly vague there. Runes, yes, like Weathertop, but that’s not really very specific. Oh, well, it was long Ages ago. We’re lucky so much was preserved.
A rough triangle of twigs, a scuff-mark, a broken weed, all things that could have happened naturally. At one point they guided her down to a rocky stream; they led their horses through it for half an hour. That wading was hard on the hooves and human feet inside the greased, waxed leather of boots, but the risk was worth it to break the trail so conveniently. When they were about to lead the animals back up the bank and check for loose horseshoes and change into dry socks themselves the horses grew restive and someone said quietly:
“Brog!”
A bear it was, an adolescent male grizzly too young to be very massive yet but already near its full length, and thin with spring. For a moment it looked at the equally surprised humans, black nose wrinkling as it took in the scents of man and horse and metal, and then it reared up to its seven-foot height as if to say:
I’m dangerous, so take no liberties!
Grizzlies ate plant food as much as anything-this one had been nipping at green spring shoots-but they were more than ready to kill for meat when they could get it. She put her hand to Arroach’s nose as the animal swung its head up in a startled gesture. Six of the Rangers brought their bows to half-draw and two leveled spears in a moment of stillness that stretched. Then the bear decided to move aside, lumbering up with a crackle through the stiff vines and saplings at the edge of the creek. It wasn’t afraid, nor moving fast, just reasonably cautious, which struck her as an eminently sensible attitude in a chance encounter. She’d hunted bear, but never without careful preparations.
“Go in peace today, Brother Bear,” Astrid murmured.
“Yeah, heel and toe it, namesake,” Rick Three Bears said in relief.
His hand was tight on the bridle of his nervous mount. If the big bruin had turned ugly they would certainly have lost horses before they could have taken it down, and probably warriors as well, since they were not in a position to dodge. Grizzlies took a good deal of killing.
Then the slopes gentled as they descended; they saw plenty of bird-life and game-sign, and now and then some mule deer, but they weren’t pausing even to shoot for the pot. The sun was high enough that the grassy open expanse ahead seemed to shimmer with green and patches of bright blue as they caught glimpses between the trees. The other side was a line on the horizon, vaguely suggesting hills; it must be many miles away, to be so small from this height.
I hope we’re just where I think we are. I don’t want to blunder around wasting time looking for the rendezvous.
“Is that swamp, the blue?” Red Leaf asked. “Standing water with grass growing up through it?”
Astrid smiled and shook her head. “Camas flower,” she said. “It’s early this year, but later it looks even better. This is the Nann i Camas, the Camas Prairie I told you of.”
She could feel the Lakota relax; she’d observed that they liked a big sky and a long view and felt cramped in close country. Dunedain tried to be at home in all types of landscape, but there was no dispute that forest offered more scope for their particular talents.
“Yeah, we got camas in the makol too, but not nearly so many. Too dry, I suppose,” Red Leaf said. “That’s some good-looking pasture out there.”
Astrid breathed a soundless sigh of relief as she saw Alleyne rise from a nest of branches and war-cloak that had made him the next thing to invisible. The rest of the column came up and spread out to either side of his waiting place at the edge of the woods, far enough back that no betraying glint would make them apparent to a patrol out on the prairie.
“Secure?” Alleyne asked.
“No sign of those cavalry. Eilir and John are holding the rear in case we have to move back quickly, but I don’t think so.”
He nodded and called: “Hirvegil, Imlos,” while pointing upward.
The two young Rangers unwrapped their war-cloaks from their packs, and donned them and their claws. Then each ran up a tree with a cat’s hunching speed, picking ones with good fields of view on the back trail as well as ahead.
Astrid unshipped her Zeiss palantir en-crum and leaned against a half-fallen pine to brace her elbows. Back and forth; no sign of man, save for a big herd of red-and-white Herefords already at the very edge of sight and slowly moving eastward with only two mounted cowboys in attendance; they’d vanished within an hour. This was rich farmland, well-watered dark basaltic soil planted to wheat and canola before the Change, but there was no need to till nearly as much now when crops weren’t shipped to great cities far away. Most of it was sparsely grazed prairie where it wasn’t outright abandoned these days, with planted fields only around the widely scattered ranch-houses and little hamlet-towns. The dirt roads that had marked it into square-mile sections had long since grown over in grass and brush, the telephone poles burned and fallen, plowland gone back to green wildness.
Like Eriador in the Third Age, and I saw the beginnings here back right after the Change, she thought, with a complex mix of emotions. Remembering myself at fourteen is like remembering being someone else, almost. Then I was only beginning to know what my fate was, and what I must do in the Fifth Age.
Man’s hand lay lightly enough on the Camas Prairie now that she could see a lobo pack in the middle distance, trotting from north to south in single file. She smiled to herself as she watched them moving confidently with their heads high to keep them above the tips of the thigh-high grass, eight big shaggy gray adults a yard high at the shoulders and four youngsters, gawky adolescent one- and two-yearolds. Then they caught her party’s scent; the wind was light, but from the west. She saw them halt and look her way, then give the canine equivalent of shrugs and head on their journey once more, wary of humans but not particularly frightened. A few bison cows and their calves an hour later were more cautious, veering away before they became more than dots to the naked eye.
Ohtar-warrior-squires-came by with water for humans and horses, and carrying the last of the cracked grain to feed the mounts. They were well-trained beasts, but it tugged at her heart to see them yearning towards that rich tender grazing when she had to deny them.
“You can graze tonight to your heart’s content, my darlings,” she murmured beneath her breath. “I know war is hard on horses.”
The sun crept across the sky and moved behind her; she ate another stick of jerky and some raisins and ignored the way her stomach gurgled. She even tried to ignore the thought of how Diorn and Hinluin and Fimalen would be missing her, back at Stardell Hall. Children grew so fast. . Diorn was past ten now and tried to hide his fears, but the twins cried whenever they saw her getting her war-gear together, though Miresgaliel was an excellent nanny.
Though I’ d be even more upset if they didn’t miss me. And I’ d like to have at least one more. Another boy, say, though a third girl would be welcome too. I’m thirty-eight, time’s getting a little tight. . maybe it would be another pair of twins if we’re lucky? My family always ran to them and so does Alleyne’s. Uncomfortable but it saves time. If we live through this war, perhaps we should let the younger generation have the active tasks and settle down to teaching and policy all the time.