Mom? Eilir signed.
Juniper started from a reverie. My heart?
Astrid and I thought we might take some of the Dunedain: and Alleyne and his friend: up through the woods after Lughnassadh, she said, and nodded eastward and north. These are some boar that have been sniffing around the gardens, and: well, just in case anyone was nosing around who shouldn't. Her eyes flicked to Mathilda Arminger.
Good idea, Juniper said. The crew working on Dun Laurel could use some feeding, if Cernunnos favors you.
Then on impulse, looking down at her son: "Nigel, give me a hand with these two, would you?" Not even the rocking passage through the woods had woken the two nine-year-olds.
"My pleasure," he said, and seemed to mean it.
"It seems a shame to wake them at all," Juniper said softly.
"Then don't," Nigel replied unexpectedly. "They grow so quickly, and very soon they'll be too old to be carried to bed anymore."
They lifted carefully; Mathilda was considerable weight in her arms, but the Englishman bore her son's solid sixty pounds without evidence of strain. The big loft room was dark but welcoming, warm from the heat soaked into the brick chimney that ran through it from the hearth below, scented with flower sachet, wool and wood and wax; neither child did more than stir and mutter as they were undressed and tucked into the blankets on their futon beds. Nigel Loring paused for a moment, looking down at Rudi Mackenzie. His sword-callused fingers brushed back a lock of tousled hair the color of raw gold.
"I envy you," he murmured softly. At her look he went on: "Alleyne has grown to be a man any father would be proud of, but sometimes I still miss the boy he was. There was so little time, and I was often away, as a soldier had to be then. Maude and I wanted more children, but-ah, well, forgive an old man's foolishness."
He looked up and smiled at her, blinking in the darkness. Suddenly the thought rammed home in her: I want this man.
Less a thought than knowledge, felt with heart and belly and loins as much as brain, but that too. I have been too long alone; and this man is the one I want-the one She sent to me. Fierce and tender, terrible and gentle. And I will bring out that quiet laughter, and make him whole again.
He rose and bowed slightly. After his footsteps had faded on the treads of the stairs, her smile remained.
I will have him. So mote it be!
Chapter Twenty
Mithrilwood, Willamette Valley, Oregon
August 10th, 2007 AD-Change Year Nine
These foothills the Dunedain Rangers had christened Mithrilwood were a day's journey north and a little east of Dun Juniper; the area was a mix of tall Douglas fir and overgrown fields and abandoned clear-cuts, ideal for game; more steep rugged hills than true mountains and surrounded by empty ex-farmland on three sides. Outside this canyon you could see the snow peaks eastward-Mount Washington best of all, and sometimes Mount Hood tiny to the north-but down here where the stream had cut its way into walls of basalt the world closed in, with rock walls, falling water, and dense growth. The light filtered through conifer needles and big-leaf maple into a thick umbrous green shadow, like being underwater; moss dripped from tree limbs, and mushrooms grew thick beneath them. Behind him the stream chuckled over polished water-rounded rocks and poured down a basalt ledge in a torrent of spray.
Alleyne Loring waited, alert, the boar spear gripped in his hands. The scrub ahead of him shook, amid an enraged squealing. He smelled a new scent under the green sappi-ness of bruised vegetation; something hard and rank with musk. They hadn't seen anyone in a week save one pair of Mackenzie hunters. Nothing human, at least:
Astrid's weapon came up to his right; the head was broader than a war spear's blade, and had a steel crossbar welded to the base. Dogs barked farther into the brush that crowded from the cliff face up to the edge of the old trail, and the beaters made noise of their own; the wind was from the north, in his face. Fairly soon those pigs would discover they'd been tricked: There was a series of deep snuffling grunts, then an enraged squeal, loud and shrill.
"Jesus!" he shouted as he saw what came out of the woods, on the heels of Hordle's "Bugger me!"
Wild boar were increasingly common in England; they'd been reintroduced just before the Change in game parks, and enough had hidden successfully from the clumsy attentions of urban refugees. The survivors bred fast afterward, spreading through the burgeoning wilderness. He knew from experience they could be dangerous, but most of the people here had talked about feral swine, and he'd been expecting something more like a barnyard pig gone wrong.
This one was five hundred pounds if it was an ounce, a black low-slung torpedo of muscle and bone and little clever hating eyes, tusks like daggers on either side of its bristling snout, heavy shoulders and hump armoring its vitals. Someone had brought the real wild-boar article from Europe in days long past, and those genes had been doing very well indeed.
The boar hesitated when it saw the line of humans, its hindquarters switching from side to side in a rush of fallen leaves and duff while its heavier forequarters pivoted in place. Other shapes were moving beneath the trees, but he ignored them as he crouched and flourished the spear, drawing the beast's attention. He could see it taking him in as it turned its head to get a view from either eye as slobber drooled from its champing jaws and every coarse needlelike hair bristled erect; then the hindquarters hunched and it sprang. For an instant he could swear it was off the earth, and then all four split hooves were churning the forest floor like tank treads, throwing twigs and leaves head-high as it hurtled at him as fast as a good horse.
The boar's shoulders were sheathed in gristle, and it held its massive dished head low to protect its neck and set itself for the upward rip with its tusks. Alleyne skipped a half pace to the side just before it struck, going down on one knee and ramming the butt of the spear into the earth. The broad sharp head knifed in, and then there was a shock like being thrown headfirst into a stone wall. He skidded backward as the spear butt dug a trough through the earth, and the crossbar below the blade fulfilled its ancient function: keeping the self-impaled boar from shoving itself up the shaft of the spear to savage him in a dying frenzy.
Eeeeeeeeeeee The squealing was loud enough to hurt his ears, and the spear shaft jerked like a monstrous fishing rod in his hands with Leviathan on the hook as the boar twisted and heaved against the palm-wide foot of steel, trying to thrash him against the unyielding ground. Blood sprayed out over Al-leyne's boots as he jerked his feet aside and tried to set them, and a four-inch spike of ivory missed the soles by a fractional inch.
"A Elbereth Gilthoniel!"
The words were a hawk screech as a spear lunged at the boar's flank, with Astrid's white-blond mane trailing behind. Eilir's struck an instant later from the other side, and the boar went to its knees with blood pouring down from its mouth mixed with slaver. Then it surged erect again, impossibly moving against the weight of three strong humans bearing down on the shafts that impaled it, its long grisly head tossed high in agony and rage. Alleyne went down again, kicking a heel against its snout as the beast lunged to try to grab his foot in its jaws.
"Out of my bloody way!" Hordle bellowed.
All three of them rolled aside. The big man's sword swung, a yard and a half of steel with both hands on the long hilt. It struck the boar's neck just before the shoulder hump with a hard crack as if the edge had hammered into an oak. The squealing was cut off instantly, and the great beast slumped to the ground. Alleyne lay panting for an instant before he climbed to his feet. The four of them stood looking at each other, the sweat of fear and utmost effort running down their faces, and then they began to grin. Arms went about shoulders in a momentary grip, and then they broke apart, laughing.