The Scourge of God c-2 Page 10

  "He couldn't," Frederick said. "Too risky."

  They all looked at him. "Dad… OK, Dad ruled with a hard hand, and it was an awfully long time before he decided to hold national elections. But he didn't want to be king; he really wanted to restore the United States. That's one reason he waited-electing a government from just part of one State would be like an admission of failure. It really ate at him. He thought everyone would rally round once he got going and it didn't happen. A lot of our people wanted, want, to put the country back together too. Especially the army officers. If my.. . if Martin is going to hold on to the Presidency, make it into something like being a king, or an emperor-"

  He nodded to Odard.

  "-then he has to make some progress on reunification."

  "Conquering other realms," Mathilda said-but musingly rather than a sharp-toned correction, simply translating the young man's words into the terms the others would think in. "An emperor is a king of kings, after all. If he conquers widely, it'll make his claim to the throne solid."

  "OK, if you want to call it that," Frederick said. "That's more or less what I meant. Nothing succeeds like success."

  Mary and Ritva came back to sit on their haunches with their arms wrapped around their knees.

  "Like Saruman and Sauron in the Histories," one of them said thoughtfully. "Both want to conquer and rule. Our side can probably use that."

  "Our side?" Frederick said; not bitterly this time, but with a genuine humor in the curve of his full mouth. "All nine of us?" He glanced at the Mormon leader. "Well, with all due respect, all thirty of us?"

  "You're after forgetting," Rudi said gently. "We here are not just travelers from over the mountains. What we know, we can send to our homelands-and there, our parents are people of importance, with the power to bind and loose."

  "And I'm not just in charge of twenty-one fugitives," Nystrup said. "There are other Deseret units still in the field."

  Kindled, he looked at Rudi. "With you to help us-"

  "In passing only," Rudi said, his voice still gentle, but with an implacable determination behind it. "This isn't an affair of greedy warlords only. Those are like bindweed or couch grass; it's the work of the season to uproot them. There's more to it. The Powers are at work here, and we the song they sing."

  "Soup's on!" Rebecca said.

  Nystrup seemed to be glad of the interruption. He stood and faced his people, folding his arms across his chest and bowing his head with closed eyes:

  "Heavenly Father, we are grateful for this food which Thou knowest we needed badly, and for the generosity of Rudi and his friends. We ask Thee to bless them and watch over them as they journey East, that they may always find sustenance provided for them, as they have so generously given to us, and we ask that Brother Rudi complete his quest safely. We also ask Thee to bless this food that it may nourish and strengthen us, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

  The nine comrades had remained respectfully silent during the Mormon ceremony; now they took their bowls, said their own forms of grace and fell to with the healthy voracity of hard-worked youth. The stew was thick and filling, fuel more than food, the sort of thing you ate without noticing the ingredients. The refugee-guerillas devoured theirs with careful speed; one or two gobbled, but the rest swallowed every spoonful as if it were a sacrament. Rudi hadn't met many Latter-day Saints before, apart from the ones who bought Rancher Brown's horses-Mormons were thin on the ground in the Willamette country-but they seemed to be a mannerly folk; and these ones were very hungry.

  Rudi took his bowl and a bannock and sat beside Frederick, who was prodding at his food with a spoon and looking out over the dusk-darkened plain to the north and the distant purple line of the mountains.

  "All a bit of a burden, isn't it?" he said kindly.

  " Tell me!" Frederick replied. Then, lowering his voice: "You know, I wonder if I should be the one to fight Martin, eventually."

  "Why?" Rudi asked, surprised. There was no luck in turning aside from a fate the Powers had laid on you.

  "Well… the whole reason he quarreled with Dad-turned traitor, eventually-was that he thought being Dad's son gave him some sort of special right. He wanted to be a king. I don't."

  Rudi nodded. "Well, you've a point there. But think on this; if not you, who? Isn't it better you than him? And it isn't you who'd pay the price of a noble renunciation; it would be your people, who need someone they know to lead them."

  "Urrr."

  "And also, what Martin wants is to be a tyrant, someone who takes power by lies and force and rules for himself alone, or his own kin alone."

  Although… he looked at Matti. That's a precise description of your father, and you will rule well. Many a kingdom starts with a pirate, or a lucky soldier. Of course, he didn't have the raising of you all to himself, Matti. Nor did Sandra. My own mother's fine hand is in the making, there, too.

  He went on: "A tyrant's not the same thing as a king, sure and it isn't. A good king… a good king is father to the land. What his people are together, their living past and the line of their blood for ages yet to come, their land that they've fought and died for and the sweat they've shed on it every day, and the way their songs and stories and being are woven into it, all that… he stands for it in the flesh. And he leads them not just in war and lawmaking, but in the rites that give meaning to life, that make them a people. My folk hailed me as my mother's tanist of their own will; who am I to tell them no? Perhaps yours will hail you. Perhaps not. But if they do, isn't it your duty to answer their call and serve their need?"

  "Yeah, I can see what… I'll have to think about that." A grin. "And since I'm going East with you guys, I have a long time to think about it."

  Rudi chuckled. "And you're not the only one who'll be thinking. From the old stories, a vanished prince who's fated to return and make things right again may be more powerful than one who's there in the flesh. My mother always said that it's by the thoughts and dreams within their heads that men are governed, as much as by laws or even swords from without."

  "Dad said something like that too. The moral is to the physical as three is to one. "

  Rudi nodded. "Also she says that no man can harvest a field before it's ripe."

  "I'd like to meet your mother. She sounds like a cool lady," Frederick said shyly.

  "She is that, and a great lady for all that she hasn't so many airs as some, and fun too."

  Mathilda came to sit by Rudi when Nystrup drew the younger Thurston aside; she had a small bunch of yellow wildflowers tucked over her right ear.

  "Giving him a pep talk?" she said dryly, not whispering but leaving her voice soft; the tune Odard was playing helped cover it.

  Rudi nodded; they were both the children of rulers, and knew the demands of the trade.

  "It's a little worried he is, over whether it's good for him to contest with his brother for power. As his father didn't want the succession settled by blood-right, you see."

  Matti leaned against his shoulder. "Well, at least he gets a choice! I'm stuck with it. I get to be Protector… and then wonder when Count Stavarov is going to launch a coup and stick a knife in my back, or the House of Jones is going to flounce off in a snit and haul up the draw-bridges on their castles. Or whether the Stavarovs are going to launch a coup and"-she shuddered theatrically-"make me marry Piotr. You wouldn't think that even Alexi Stavarov could have produced a son who's more of a pig than he was, but-"

  They both chuckled. "If you can call what he's got a real choice, and not just wittering," Rudi went on. "After all, Matti, you have a choice too. You could run off and be a sailor in Newport, or a nun in Mt. Angel. Or to the Mackenzie lands and take up a croft!" he added slyly.

  She thumped his shoulder. "I can just see myself putting out milk for the house-hob… and leaping naked over a bonfire on Beltane!"

  "There are Christians in the Clan," he said righteously. And that latter is a rather attractive image, sure.

  "Yeah, both of them," Mat
hilda said in a pawky tone. "But anyway, that's not a real choice. Portland's my home, I can't run out on it. .. Things would go to hell… And what sort of an example would it be, shirking my duties? God called me to a task when He made me heir to the Protectorate."

  "That's what I said to young Fred, more or less. Struck him with the force of a sledgehammer, so it did."

  "I'm worried enough about coming on this trip. And there's a lot better reason for doing it than just because I don't want to sit around in a cotte-hardi listening to petitions and arguments over who gets seizin of what or whose vassal stole whose sheep."

  She put an arm around his waist and leaned her face against his upper arm. Rudi looked down and batted his eyes.

  "And here I was thinking it was the sweet charm of me and my beautiful eyelashes that brought you on the journey… yeak! Those bruises still hurt!"

  It was getting a bit chilly; he unpinned his plaid and stretched it over their shoulders, blanket-style, and they sat in companionable silence. They'd been doing that since they were little kids… although the weight and warmth and fragrance of her made him a little conscious that they weren't children anymore.

  Admittedly a bit of a gamy fragrance, but we have been on the road for weeks, and it's exceedingly female.

  Odard had launched into another song; Mary and Ritva sang it, in two-part harmony:

  "I hear the horse-hoof thunder in the valley below;

  I'm waiting for the angels of Avalon-"

  He looked up at Rudi and Mathilda as he finished, then aside to the twins with a charming smile:

  "And I'd like to thank whichever of you beautiful ladies was considerate enough to bring along my lute. Perhaps it's not quite so essential as the dried beans, but I'm fond of it."

  "It was her idea," Mary and Ritva said in perfect unison, each pointing at the other.

  Odard's smile grew a little strained. "All right; thank you to whichever evil, teasing bitch preserved my lute. I'm fond of it."

  "She's evil teasing bitch Number One," one of them said, pointing to the other. "And I'm evil teasing bitch Number Two."

  "You are not! I'm evil teasing bitch Number Two!"

  Ingolf laughed, which did Rudi's heart good to see. The big Easterner extended a hand.

  "That's a pretty instrument," he said. "Could I see it for a moment?"

  "It's not a guitar," Odard said in warning as he handed it over.

  The man from Wisconsin touched his strong battered fingers to the strings with a tender delicacy.

  "I know. My mother's sister was a luthier. Aunt Alice loved the oldtimey music. She was a bit touched after the Change-she was in Racine on the day of it, showed up nearly dead at our door in Readstown six months later, never talked about how she came through-but she could make ones almost as fine as this, and play them too. Taught quite a few people."

  Odard's instrument had a spruce sounding board with a carving of vines over the sound hole, and touches of mother-of-pearl and rose-wood along the edges of the swelling body. It was actually his second-best lute, of course; you didn't take the finest on a trip like this. Ingolf began strumming.

  "You don't have fireflies out here, do you?" he asked. "Not that I've seen, anyway."

  "No," one of the twins said. "We've heard of them… bugs that glow?"

  "Glowing bugs? Like the stars are little lights in the sky," he said, and his fingers began coaxing out a tune from the six-course instrument, plaintive and sad. "It's a pity you've never seen 'em. There's nothing prettier than fireflies on the edge of a field in a summertime night, with that sweet smell off the corn, and a little mist coming up from the river. Like stars come to earth, winking at you…

  "Like the lights I shall never see again

  The fireflies come and sing to me

  Of trains and towns and friends long gone-"

  He had a deep voice, a little hoarse but true; the twins began to sing along after a while, and then some of the Mormons joined in. Most people were happy to learn a new tune, since it was about the only way to increase your stock of music.

  "Alice made that one; she surely did love the fireflies, and it was a pleasure to hear her singing while she watched them from the veranda. We kids caught some in a jar once and gave them to her, but she cried until we let them go. She was a bit touched, like I said, but good-hearted."

  He passed the lute back to Odard, who gave him a considering look and played another tune. Rudi rested his chin on Mathilda's head while they listened. Yawns signaled the end of the impromptu sing-along.

  "Did you bother to take a bath?" he said teasingly, sniffing loudly.

  "And on that note!" she replied, and headed off for her bedroll.

  Rudi yawned himself and stretched, looking up. The stars grew as his fire-dazzled sight adjusted, even more thickly frosted across the sky than they would be at home; the air of this high desert was thin and dry, and the Belt of the Goddess shone in red and yellow and azure blue. A little away from the fire Ingolf sat looking at the embers, rubbing his hands across his face occasionally. The relaxed pleasure that had shown while he sang was gone.

  There's a man who's afraid to sleep, Rudi thought with concern. And he isn't a man to be governed by his fears, usually. I wish I were better at mind healing, or that Mother or Aunt Judy were here!

  Father Ignatius came back from an inconspicuous tour around the outer perimeter of the camp, left hand on the hilt of his sword and the right telling his beads. He bent to speak softly to the man; Ingolf shook his head with a moment's crooked smile, and the priest went to his own sleeping place. A little way from that, something flashed in the dying light of the fire. Rudi turned his head and saw Mary snatch a gold coin out of the air; Ritva looked a little put out, and watched carefully as her twin slapped the little ten-dollar piece on the back of her left hand and uncovered it.

  Rudi wouldn't have been entirely satisfied with letting that stand. Both the sisters were cat-quick, and they practiced sleight of hand for amusement and use as well, and while both were honorable neither had much in the way of scruples-you had to know them well to know how they saw the difference. Evidently Ritva felt the same way. The two young women spoke a moment more, then faced off and did scissors-paper-rock instead. Ritva lost two out of three, shrugged and rolled herself in her blankets.

  I wonder what that was about, Rudi thought. He looked up; they'd take the third watch together, when that star was there. So they couldn't be settling that.

  His own would start in three quarters of an hour, which was not enough time to be worth sleeping. Instead he pinned his plaid, picked up his sword and walked a little out of camp, then climbed the rock under which they'd camped. The steep crumbling surface required careful attention in starlight, particularly as he went quietly, but in a few minutes he was atop it, six or seven hundred feet above the rolling plain.

  It stretched on every side, dark beneath the stars, pale where the green of sage or the bleached straw of the summer-dried grass caught a little light, the shapes of the conical hills curiously regular, and there a glitter on a stretch of obsidian. He controlled his breathing, deep and steady, and opened himself to the land, to the smell of dust and rock and the coolness of night.

  "Well, perhaps they were wiser than I thought, the old Americans, to make this a monument," he murmured.

  No light showed in the circuit of the horizon, and he could see for many miles from here. A few minutes, and an owl went by beneath the steep northern edge of the rock, a silent hunter's rush through the night that ignored him as if he was part of the landscape. Far and far a lobo howled, a sobbing sound deeper and more mournful than a song-dog. Its pack echoed the call, and Rudi nodded; he'd amused himself by counterfeiting that sound many a night when he was out in the woods and wilds, hunting or traveling, and having the fur-brothers answer him as if he were one of theirs.

  What are our wars and our kingdoms to them? It makes you realize our littleness, and how everything has its own concerns, he thought. But the Lor
d and Lady have given us power to mar or mend the world beyond what the four-foot brethren have. So it's for the world and all Their children that the Powers are concerned with humankind's doings, as well as for our own sake.

  He knelt and drew his sword, laying it on the sheath and sitting back on his heels, with his hands on his thighs and his vision centered on it. The forge marks in the damascened steel were like ripples in watered silk, dim and sinuous in the starlight; Mathilda had given this blade to him for his birthday when he turned eighteen and had his full height, though it had been a touch heavy for him then. The blade proper was just long enough to reach his hip bone with the point on the ground, tapering gradually from three fingers' width to a long point, and the cross-guard had been forged of a piece with it, something that took a master smith. The hilt was long enough for both single- and double-handed grips, wrapped with breyed leather cord and brass wire, and it had a plain fishtail pommel; you had to look closely to see the Triple Moon inlaid there, rose gold in silver.

  Rudi Mackenzie had grasped the Sword of Art in his infant fingers, when Juniper had held him over the altar in the Nemed at his Wiccanning. Something, Someone had spoken through her then, and she'd made prophecy. He'd been but a babe, of course, but he'd heard the words often enough since. Now he spoke them softly to himself:

  "Sad Winter's child, in this leafless shaw Yet be Son, and Lover, and Horned Lord!

  Guardian of My sacred Wood, and Law His people's strength-and the Lady's sword!"

  A sword isn't like a spear or an ax or a knife. It's the tool that humankind make only for the slaying of our own breed, Rudi thought. So You have chosen me for the warrior's path. And as husband to the land, father to the folk, I must walk in the guise of the God, the strong One who wards Your people. But You know my mind. I don't fear death; when it's my time to walk with You, Dread Lord, and know rest and rebirth, I am ready. I don't fear battle, though I do not delight in it. It's… that others depend on me and look to me that harrows my heart; my friends, my kin, those I love, those whose need I must serve. I fear to fail them.