Rudi grimaced slightly to himself. That was sometimes needful, but never pleasant-much harder than killing in the white-hot savagery of battle. He noticed with relief that the wild-men were going about it with a rough mercy, taking care to make the final stroke as quick as possible. The sounds of agony died down into an echoing silence. ?Youze got free of our turf,? Jake went on to the Mackenzie clansmen.?Come Southside fires anytime y? want, sit down?nd put a hand in the pot like a Freedom Fighter stud.?
Rudi had to strain for a moment to understand the words through a thick accent, harsh and slurred and nasal at the same time, that turned these into deeze and are into ur. ?My thanks to you, Jake son of Jake,? he said, slowly and clearly. ?My name?s Rudi Mackenzie, of the Clan Mackenzie; my sept totem is Raven. This is my blade-brother and sworn man Edain Aylward Mackenzie, called the Archer, of the Wolf sept. And you saved my life with that last spear-cast, as well, so I?m thinkin? we?re even, so.?
From his frown Jake found Rudi?s lilt-stronger than most in Clan Mackenzie and the product of Juniper Mackenzie?s own County Mayo accent-hard to follow as well. One of his tribesmen brought up a horse with a dead man across it. ?Thass our bro Murdy. The bastards killed him,? Jake said. To the air:?You don?t haunt us none, spook-Murdy,?cause we got?em for y?!?
The others in the Southsider party added more to the same effect. Rudi nodded approval; it was a warrior?s duty to avenge his comrades, and a kinsman?s too. ?And speaking of duties, now that we have time…?
He and Edain each bent to one of the bodies of the slain foemen, touched blood to a finger and that to his forehead. Then they faced the west and he murmured with raised hands: ?To Your black-wing host we dedicate the harvest of this unplowed field, Morrigu, Lady of the Ravens. Dread Lord of Death and Resurrection, Guardians of the Western Gate, guide the souls of these our foemen to the Lands of Summer where no evil comes and all hurts are healed. Goddess Mother-of-all, gentle and strong, through whose Cauldron we are all reborn, witness that we killed these Your children from need and duty, not wantonness, knowing that for us also the hour of the spear shall come, soon or late. For Earth must be fed.? ?So mote it be,? Edain finished.
They exchanged a glance and a slight nod. Rudi could tell the other Mackenzie was adding the same silent observation:
And return these rotters in better condition for their next go-round on the Wheel, once they?ve spent some time with You.
Jake gave Rudi a sharp look.?Hey, that?s a good saying word t? keep spooks down… You two aren?t part?a those bastards from Iowa, are you? You sure don?t sound like?em and they pray to the Jesus-man.?
It took Rudi a moment to realize what doze bassids meant; he made a mental effort to switch sounds and fill in the missing parts of speech. ?No, that I am not,? he said.?We?re from the Far West, from the lands of sunset, where we follow the Star Goddess, Who is also Earth the Mother, and Her consort the Sun Lord.?
Well, some of us do, he thought. ?I came to Iowa with my friends on a journey eastward-? To the farthest East, to the lands of sunrise, to seek a sword seen in visions. That might perhaps be a wee bit complicated to discuss right now. Also the way the Prophet?s men pursue us. ?-and the Bossman?s men set on us and took them captive.?
Which oversimplifies a bit, but is true in the essence. ?He holds them hostage, until I return with a treasure-wagons left on a road north of here, just past a ruined town. The fall of… three years ago now.?
Jake?s brows went up; it was visible, in the light of moon and stars. ?Those? We know?em. Nothing worth taking there. We checked. Not cloth or saddles or blades or nothing. Wagons too big for us, so we left?em. Mebbe haunts there, mebbe bad spook luck.?
Rudi shrugged and smiled.?They?re what he wants, nonetheless. And I?ve been trying to get to them, and not be killed by everyone I meet.? ?Talk about it later,? Jake said. He glanced up at the sky, obviously judging distance and time by the stars.?We gotta get Murdy away fore we bury him. Otherwise the Knifers, they?ll track and dig him up and eat his heart?n balls.?
The dark young man, Tuk, spat on one of the bodies.?Bassids. Eaters. Monssers.? ?Monssers?? Rudi asked, as they collected Edain?s mount and the pack animal with their gear.
The living men mounted and headed westward along the river. Fireflies flickered across the waters, and a cool wet breath came from the river?s surface. Rudi took a deep lungful, glad to be away from most of the stink of blood and opened bodies, though Murdy and the game on the packhorses-a white-tail, an elk and a feral cow-weren?t all that fragrant either. Something hooted in the woods; they all stiffened, and then relaxed when experienced ears told them it was a real bird. Tuk continued: ?Yeah, monssers, like the ones who chased our pamaws-?
Ancestors, Rudi realized, as they crossed the river where a fallen bridge broke the current and made a ford. ?-outta Chi-town in the Bad Time. They were just littles, but they was clean, our pamaws. Clean!?
In fact Jake and his friends were a fair bit ranker than the wet heat of summer here demanded, and their ill-cured clothes and harness smelled worse, not to mention the spatters of sticky drying blood that they ignored, despite the river being close at hand. Jake explained for the stranger as Rudi quickly bent and scooped up water and sand in passing to rub his hands free of the sticky mass that threatened to gum his fingers together. He could finish the job later, and take care of his sword-even the finest metal got nicks when you slammed it through bone. ?Didn?t eat nobody, even when they had to kill?em anyhow to keep their own asses off the cookfire. Not even once. The Knifers, they still eats man-meat sometimes. Even when they don?t hafta. Think it makes?em spook-strong.?
Pride of ancestry rang in his voice, and Rudi gave a little sigh of relief. That spared him the necessity of explaining what was geasa to him, taboo.
And that story would help account for how crude their gear is, Rudi thought. If their parents were mostly children… teenagers at most… themselves. And how much their speech has changed. And if this man is chief, none of the pamaws survived much longer than it took their own children to be three-quarters grown. He?s no older than me, I think.
From what he?d heard, most of the folk of the old world had been utterly helpless when the Change came and the machines stopped, country-folk and farmers only a little less than townsmen. In some places enough skills had been found or pieced together to build life new on old foundations; the Clan Mackenzie had been luckier than most, since many of its founders had been lovers of the ancient arts. Close to the great cities it had been worst of all. There tens of millions were left without food or water; everything went down in a doomed scramble to keep alive an hour at a time, and plague ran through the surging masses like wildfire through dry grass.
From the Mississippi to the east coast, where the cities had been thickest, little remained but bands like these-and Rudi seemed to have been fortunate indeed in the ones he met.
Luck of that sort is only to be expected, if you?re fated to dree a hero?s weird, he thought with an inward grin, half at himself, half defiant mockery at the Powers. It?s one of the compensations for the fear and danger and general misery and the prospect of an early death. You?re lucky until you aren?t, so to say. ?They was all littles, the pamaws,?cept old Jake, he was my pa, and Tuk?n Samul?s,? Jake said.?He brought everyone out and hid?em till the New Year. He was a good one, old Jake the sailor man. Dead a long time now, though; he?s a good spook? Spirit-guardian, Rudi translated mentally.
– ?for all of us Southside studs n? bitches.?
Men and women, his mind added.
It was going to be a strain talking, until he learned a bit of this dialect. He?d heard many on his trip across the continent, but none quite so strange except those that weren?t English at all.