The man overseeing the loading looked up; it was Chuck Barstow's foster son Oak. Smears of dried blood across his face looked black in the fading light, leaving his blue eyes like jewels of turquoise set in jet.
"Sure, and you're welcome, a hundred thousand welcomes," he said. "We'd none of us have made it out if you hadn't held them until we broke contact."
Eric waved the others forward; Billy was there, nothing but scrapes and bruises, memories of horror warring with the exhilaration of realizing By God, I'm alive! on his face. He was helping Mike Jr. along; the boy still had the broken shaft and the blood-clotted Bearkiller banner clutched to his chest. Getting onto the railcar without fainting occupied his next few moments. Then he realized whose body he was next to.
"Oh, shit," he said, looking down at Chuck Barstow's still face, relaxed into an inhuman calm beneath the blood; someone had closed his eyes. "I didn't realize-"
"He died well," Oak said, his voice harsh despite the musical lilt. "And he'll have company beyond the Western Gate before the last thread of this is woven!"
Chuck Barstow stood and breathed. For a long moment the sheer wonder of that was enough; and the air was like all the Willamette springs he'd ever loved, and warm scented summer nights amid the fields and the long wistful mornings of Indian Summer and a crisp autumn evening with the leaves blowing yellow about his feet thrown in. He was naked, but the feel of the grass on his bare feet was like a caress, and the forest floor was thick with white fawn lily and blue camas. Douglas fir towered over him, as majestic as redwoods, dropping their deep resinous scent into the still dim air. There was a thrill to it all, an eagerness for the day that he'd lost long ago bit by bit without even noticing it.
Motion drew his eyes. There was a meadow ahead, hints of color and greenness amid a sunlight whose brightness was almost painful. Two figures came out of it, shadows at first, and then a woman and a wolf-the great beast was chest-high on her, and she walked with a hand resting on its ruff. The animal cocked head and ears and dangled a tongue like a red flag across bone-white fangs, its amber eyes amused.
The woman was Judy; as he remembered her from that first meeting, solid in her festival robe and three-colored belt, and beautiful. His own eyes went wide with alarm.
"No," she said, smiling at him, that smile that had made him feel like a boy on his first date for thirty years of marriage. "Time's different here. You came first, but I've been waiting."
He nodded. Somehow that made sense. The wolf made an impatient wurrrff sound and jerked its nose towards the meadow where light shimmered on flowers of gold. Judy extended her hand.
"Breakfast's ready," she said, and grinned as his stomach rumbled. "And Aoife's eager to see you again-you wouldn't believe the argument we had over who got to meet you first. Fortunately Liath talked some sense into her."
He took the infinitely familiar hand and grinned back at her. "Will there be gardens?" he said.
She nodded as she turned to lead him into the brightness.
"There's everything."
LARSDALEN, BEARKILLER HQ, HALL OF REMEMBRANCE OCTOBER 31, CY
The great rectangular room fell silent as the food was cleared away from the long tables and the ceremonial drinking-horns set out, rimmed and tipped with gold and carved with running interlaced animal patterns. The central hearth beneath its copper smoke-hood flickered and boomed, for the night outside was cold and hissing with winter's rain. Light from that shone on the oak wainscoting between the tall windows, wrought in similar sinuous forms and hung with weapons and shields-round concave ones marked with the Bear, backswords and lances and recurve bows, and captured trophies and banners.
The fire scented the air, and the wax of candles from the wrought-iron chandeliers overhead, and the memory of the feast's fresh hot bread and the roast pigs and a dozen other dishes. Now military apprentices went their rounds with jugs of the wine from the Larsdalen vineyards and from elsewhere in the Outfit's territories, that the dead might be hailed in the drink grown on the land their blood had defended.
There had been a memorial mass in the Larsdalen church, and a blot in the Hoff that Signe had built years ago, and private rites in each family, but this was a ceremony they all had in common; both faiths accepted the arval, the grave-ale.
The feast hadn't been too somber despite the mourning; the Bearkillers remembered how their founder Mike Havel had joked with his comrades and his wife as he lay dying on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, scorning death. Most of those present believed that the spirit outlived the body, in Heaven or the halls of the High One or Hella's domain or by rebirth; and they and the minority of unbelievers all shared a faith that a man lived not one day longer than he lived, and that what mattered was how he met his end… or hers.
Strong bearded faces waited, and women no less fierce, many of them also with the brand of the A-list between their brows. Youngsters newly blooded were there, and the solid landholders of the A-list steadings, and representatives from the others of the Outfit; merchants of Rickreal, Larsdalen's craftsmen and engineers, and the commons from the Strategic Hamlets. The A-list's pride was that they were the first to fight, but they kept Mike Havel's law, that every member of the Outfit would defend the others at need, and to the death. The toasts ran up the tables; it was the custom for close kin to make them. Finally they reached the head table, the one that stood crossways to the others and centered about an empty chair.
No human sat in it tonight, but a sheathed backsword rested across the arms. The high back was draped with a bearskin cloak clasped with a gold broach, and above it was a helmet-the simple bowl with nasal-bar and mail aventail the Outfit had used in its earliest days, but with a snarling bear's head mounted on it so that the snout projected like a visor, and a fall of hide behind.
On either side were the seats for the war-leader Eric Larsson, and his sister Signe Havel who held the Bear Lord's power until his children were grown. They both stood, ending the toasts to the fallen with a collective tribute.
"I drink to our glorious dead!" Eric Larsson said, taking up his horn from its stand, and signing it with the Cross. "In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost; may the blessed Virgin intercede for them, and my patron, St. Michael, and all warrior saints welcome them to everlasting glory, they who fell fearlessly for home and kindred; in Jesus' holy name, amen!"
There was a long murmur of amen from those who followed his faith. Signe took up her horn in turn and used her right fist to sign it with the Hammer; it was one of the set her grandfather had commissioned in a fit of youthful ethnic self-rediscovery eighty years ago, much copied since the Change by the Outfit's makers. With innocent eclecticism the craftsmen of the 1930s had included Northwest Indian symbols along with the Norse, but that was appropriate-she had a little of that blood too, after all.
Her voice rang out:
"I drink to our glorious dead. May they feast with the High One this night. May His daughters bear them the mead of heroes, and greet the new-come einherjar thus at the gates of Vallhoclass="underline"
"Hail to thee Day, hail, ye Day's sons;
Hail Night and daughter of Night,
With blithe eyes look on all of us,
And grant to those sitting here victory!
Hail, Aesir, hail Asynjur!
Hail Earth, that gives to all!
Goodly spells and speech bespeak we from you,
And healing hands in this life!"
Then together the siblings raised the horns high and shouted: " To our glorious dead! And to all the Brothers and Sisters of the A-list, always first to fight! Drink hail! "
A hundred and fifty voices roared reply: