Sunrise Lands Page 7

  Juniper made a small choked sound, putting her hand to her torc as if the twisted gold were throttling her. Her eyes went wide as she turned to Nigel.

  “Do . . . do you . . .” she stuttered, something he’d never heard before, her eyes so wide the white showed all around the pale green iris.

  “Yes, my dear,” he said quietly, and pushed a crust into the cage.

  Then he began to smile, joy and awe struggling with natural reserve as the bird pecked. “It’s a passenger pigeon.”

  * * * *

  “What is it, my dear?” Nigel asked sleepily.

  “I don’t know,” Juniper Mackenzie said, sitting up in the bed and reaching for her robe. “But—”

  A fist knocked on the door; she turned up the bedside lamp and hurried over. Nigel was on his feet, hand resting inconspicuously on the hilt of the longsword. When she threw open the door a man stood there, white-faced and stuttering.

  Nigel’s hand closed on the rawhide and-wire binding of the sword hilt. He knew the signs of raw terror.

  “Lady Juniper! Sir Nigel! There’s been a fight at the Sheaf and Sickle, terrible bad. Folk hurt and killed!”

  * * * *

  Sheaf and Sickle Inn, Sutterdown,

  Willamette Valley, Oregon

  Samhain Eve, CY22/2020 A.D.

  Juniper Mackenzie pushed through the door into the familiar taproom of the Sheaf and Sickle, the armsmen at her heels; Nigel was outside, seeing to the circuit of the town walls lest any killers still at large try to es cape. She let out a quiet breath of relief at the sight of Rudi standing beside a table where a healer worked; the twins and Mathilda and Odard were nearby, and all five were unhurt. The smells of blood and violent death were there, mingling horribly with the familiar homey scent of the place.

  “Well?” she said. “It’s a slaughter this is, of my people on my land, and I’d know the meaning of it! It’s the Mor rigú and the Wild Huntsman we’re dealing with tonight, and no mistake.”

  Rudi nodded and gave her an account, succinct and neat as his tutors in the arts of war had taught him; she gasped at his account of Saba’s death. His mouth tight ened as anger drove the grue of horror out of him. Up stairs Tom and Moira and their close kin were keening their daughter; the muffled sound of the shrieks rose to a crescendo, then died away into rhythmic moans, laden with unutterable grief, before rising again.

  “I’m a warrior by trade,” Rudi said bitterly. “Saba wasn’t. She shouldn’t have had to fight her last fight alone. First I couldn’t save her husband, and then this. . . . May she forgive me, and speak kindly of me to the Guardians.”

  “She’s with her Raen in the Summerlands, and with all her beloveds,” Juniper said quietly, putting an arm around him for a moment.

  “I know, Mother. It doesn’t make me feel any better, much less her children.”

  “It isn’t meant to,” Juniper said, a little sternness in her voice. “That’s why we keen over the dead; grief is for the living.”

  He nodded; they couldn’t even do that, not being close enough in blood.

  “I’m glad we came here, though,” he said. “It would have been worse if we’d stayed at Raven House. These dirt were already here, waiting to strike; they might have gotten away over the town wall.”

  They glanced aside. The healer’s lips were pursed in disapproval as she worked at the big dining table; far too many of the inn’s guests were milling about and babbling nearby, despite its still being hours to dawn. A stranger was helping her, a monastic in a black Benedictine robe, with the loose sleeves pinned back up to his shoulders.

  Most of the rest weren’t making themselves useful. Some of the outlanders had even had the nerve to try to demand service from the staff. Rudi looked at Juniper, and she nodded slightly; he made a chopping gesture to his friends.

  The twins pushed the crowd back—once by the simple expedient of seizing a man by the elbows and pitching him four feet into the air, to land mostly on his head—and then drew their swords and stood like slender black and silver statues with the points resting on an invisible line across the room, and Odard and Mathilda beside them. Nobody stepped over it; after a moment a few neighbors came to stand around them, glowering at the strangers. Some of the wiser foreigners headed back to their rooms.

  That gave them space and time to go view the bodies of the assassins, laid out on tarpaulins. Juniper had never become entirely inured to the sight of violent death, but she could make herself ignore the wounds and the tumbled diminished look of a corpse when she must.

  “This is a strange thing, and you’re right, my darling one; these weren’t bandits; they’re too well fed and they’ve the look of trained men.”

  “They were,” he said grimly. “Well trained, at that.”

  “Nor was this any random killing, despite the wealth yonder stranger has in his baggage. Some ruler is behind this—and not one we’re familiar with.”

  “The Association?” he said reluctantly.

  Mathilda was standing out of earshot, her face still white as a sheet beneath her tan.

  She handled the fight well, from what Rudi says, Juni per thought. But she’s not as hard-bitten yet as she’d like to pretend, the which is all to the good. Lord and Lady preserve us from rulers who kill without regret or look on it without being shaken. Of which her mother is a horrible example . . .

  Rudi sighed in relief when his mother shook her head.

  “Not ... not quite their style, and those men”—she nodded towards the bodies—“are strangers to this land.”

  “Lady Sandra’s ruthless enough,” Rudi said quietly.

  “More than ruthless enough, but she has far more sense, and so do Grand Constable Tiphaine and the Count of Odell who’s chancellor now. None of them would risk anything while Mathilda is with us. No, this is . . . I feel something moving here. We’ve had the rest we were promised, after the war with Arminger. Perhaps it’s coming to an end, and the Powers sing a new song, with us as instrument and melody both.”

  Her gaze grew wholly human once more, but harder now and shrewd: she was Chief as well as High Priestess, the woman who’d pulled her friends and kin through the time of madness and the death of a world, and built the Clan from refugees and shards.

  “It’s best you know. It wasn’t just an old friend of Nigel who was calling after you left Raven House and came here, and I don’t think it’s entirely coincidence. We’ll have to learn how the threads knit.”

  Chapter Four

  Sutterdown,

  Willamette Valley, Oregon

  November 15, CY22/2020 A.D.

  Father Ignatius, priest, monk and knight-brother of the Order of the Shield of Saint Benedict, stopped and looked around casually as he wiped his quill pen and sharpened it with the little razor built into the writing set that was part of his travel kit. The writing was a combination of letters and numbers that would make no sense to anyone who didn’t know the running key—it was based on a medieval Latin version of the Gospel of Mark preserved in the Mount Angel library, and used letters based on their position in the Greek alphabet for numbers under twenty-six—but he didn’t want anyone to know it was in code.

  A balance of risks, he thought. If I were to write in my room, everyone would assume it was a secret message, since the light and space are so much better here.

  Nobody paid much attention to him, which he’d counted on. Mount Angel, the town and fortress monastery that held the Mother House of his Order, was only fifty miles north of here, and the Clan and the Benedictines had been allies since the early days after the Change. They’d fought the greatest battle of the War of the Eye together, not far from his parents’ little farm. He didn’t remember that well—he’d been ten—but re lations had stayed friendly, and a traveling cleric wasn’t rare enough to be noteworthy in Sutterdown.

  And he was nothing remarkable to look at himself, a dark man of middling height, slender save for the broad shoulders and thick wrists of a swordsman.

&nb
sp; There weren’t many people in the Sheaf and Sickle’s common room today in any case; this was the slow season for inns, as well as being a house of grief. He’d of fered to move out, but the Brannigans insisted that he stay as long as he wished—and he suspected that they welcomed the prospect of work, as a distraction.

  A round dozen guests didn’t begin to crowd it, even when half of them were playing darts and the rest sit ting, and occasionally singing, over their mugs of cider. A low fire crackled in the big stone hearth, giving off a pleasant smell of fir wood. One of the younger Bran nigan daughters came out with a tray bearing his lunch; she looked a little haggard, but the smile was genuine as she set the bowl of stew and platter of cut bread, butter, cheese and radishes down before him.

  “Thank you, my child; that smells delicious.”

  “Sure, and you’re welcome, Father,” she replied. “Call out if there’s anything more you’re wanting. We’re serv ing roast beef tonight, and there’s dried-cherry pie for after.”

  If she noticed him moving his arm so that the broad sleeve of his robe covered most of the writing, she didn’t give any indication of it.

  I like Mackenzies, he thought, not for the first time.

  They were a mannerly folk, if less stiff and solemn about it than some would prefer, and for all their free and easy ways they didn’t have the magpie inquisitive ness you’d find in one of the Association’s towns, or the single minded pursuit of either Mammon or some academic fad that grated on the nerves in Corvallis. Granted their absurd religion was silly at best and conducive to sin at worst . . .

  If only they could be brought to the Truth, what an or nament to the Faith they would be. O Lord, may it be soon! Do not keep Your light from these good folk! Mary pierced with sorrows, intercede for them.

  Still, evangelization was not his task, particularly not now; and Mackenzies were a difficult target anyway.

  Their cheerful eclecticism made ordinary argument about as effective as trying to wrestle with a sheepskin blanket. He signed himself with the cross and murmured a grace over the meal, then began to eat. The stew was mutton with barley and carrots and onions, tangy with herbs—what “savory” really meant, rather than the “dark and salty” which often had to substitute for it. It went down well on a cold winter day, with rain that was half slush beating against the roof and windows.

  As he ate he read: The assailants were definitely Cor winites and, to a high probability, of the personal troops of the false Prophet, who are often used for special op erations. Why the CUT was willing to risk provoking the hostility of the Mackenzies to kill Ingolf Vogeler I have been unable to determine; nor, I believe, do the Mackenzie leaders themselves know. Vogeler has been on the verge of death for many days but is now expected to recover.

  Mackenzie physicians were excellent, and those at Dun Juniper best of all. They added magic and pagan prayers to the drugs and instruments, but that apparently did no harm.

  I will attempt to gather further information when he does. My preliminary hypothesis is that he carries information that Corwin is desperately anxious the Western powers should not obtain.

  He looked down, wondering if that was a little ob vious. The Mother House of his order at Mount Angel had been worried about the Church Universal and Tri umphant for some time; they had missions and chap ter houses throughout what had once been the Pacific Northwest apart from New Deseret, and of course the Catholic Church as a whole was also concerned. Abbot-Bishop Dmwoski had hoped that as the Prophet sank further into madness the menace would subside, but in stead it had grown as his adopted son Sethaz took over more and more of the reins.

  The cardinal archbishop of Portland had been con cerned enough to forward their reports to the New Vati can in Badia. Not that the Holy See could do much more than offer advice and comfort and prayer; it was many months’ sailing away, across stormy, pirate ridden oceans and lands often hostile when they weren’t empty.

  Still, prayer is more powerful than armies, in the end, he thought. The sword is useless without the heart and will.

  His eyes traveled on through the neat letter combinations:

  With respect to my original mission, the Princess Mathilda is still at Dun Juniper, with her retinue. She and they take the Sacraments regularly from her chaplain confessor. No apparent change has taken place in her relationship to the Mackenzie tanist. I will—

  He finished the report and the stew at about the same time, mopped the bowl with a heel of the bread, then folded the pages into the envelope, sealed it, and heated a wafer over the tabletop lantern. That he pressed across the flap—with a cunning hair plucked from his tonsured head concealed beneath it in a certain pattern—and stamped his signet ring into the soft crimson wax. There were ways to lift a wax seal and replace it, but the hair trick hadn’t been discovered by anyone yet.

  Or at least not that the Order knows of, he thought dryly. Paranoia was an occupational hazard of intel ligence work. Many are the marvels of God’s Creation, but none so marvelous as man. Or so cunning, for good and ill.

  “Would you be wanting me to send that down to the station, Father?” the Brannigan girl asked, as she came back to collect the dishes.

  He smiled at the musical lilt. The Benedictines still encouraged scholarship, even if their main concerns were more immediately practical these days. One of his courses in the seminary had been on the post-Change evolution of variant forms of English, and the Mac kenzies’ speech was a fascinating case of the semide liberate formation of a new dialect. The process was continuing in the second generation, and even picking up speed.

  “No, thank you, my child,” he said, tucking the letter into his sleeve and picking up his sword belt. “I’ll take it down myself, and get in some practice.”

  Outside the dark afternoon was chilly, and the slush had turned to wet snow; even the bright colored carvings that Mackenzies loved so seemed a little dimmed in the gloom of the Black Months. The warrior cleric pulled up the hood of his robe and walked briskly, absently telling his rosary with his left hand as he walked and keeping his footing on the slippery sidewalk. Even before he’d joined the Order he’d been no stranger to cold and hard work; his family had a farm not far from Mount Angel, and he’d grown up with chores year round.

  Not many people were out—this was the school season for the Clan’s children, and most of the adults in Sutterdown had work indoors, being craftsfolk or artists or merchants. The sounds of labor came through the walls, or opened windows that spilled yellow lamplight; the thump and rattle of looms, the whining hum of treadle worked machinery, the quick delicate tap-tap tap the hammer of a silversmith made, the clank of a printing press.

  Those who passed him were bundled up against the weather; most gave him cheerful greetings. There were a fair number of carts on the streets, loaded with country produce and cut timber and hides and wool and linen thread and metalwork from the mills and foundry out side the walls. Father Ignatius took the west gate, nodding to the guards who looked cold and miserable and bored as they stood beneath the portals, then walked down to the railroad.

  The old Southern Pacific tracks were bare right now; the horse drawn trains came through only often enough to keep a strip down the center of each metal rail free of rust. The little redbrick train station still stood, though, and several new warehouses near it—full of flax and woolen cloth and huge kegs of Brannigan’s famous ale, and Clan handicrafts that were almost as well-known. The letter in his sleeve would go north more swiftly on one of the pedal driven railcarts that carried mail and high-value goods more quickly than anything else in the Changed world.

  One of the warehouses was empty save for a few long bundles of steel rebar against one wall, wired together and waiting to be delivered to some smithy or forge, and an assortment of battered practice weapons hung on hooks. Even here the support columns and rafters had been surface carved in a design of stylized leaves and branches, with whimsical faces peering out here and there. An elephant headed godlet sat on a
flower in a niche by the door, some protective spirit of commerce.

  The dry dirt floor was broad and empty, and a dozen Mackenzies were using it for sparring; this weather was a bit much for even the Clan’s longbowmen to practice their archery outside. Eight men and four women were at work, leaping and shouting in the active, foining Mackenzie blade style as they thrust and cut with short swords of padded wood or battle spears with rub ber blades and butt caps. Dull thunk sounds echoed as metal bucklers stopped blows, and occasionally a louder thwack and a yelp as one went home.

  Ignatius hung up his sword belt, pulled off his robe and drew his longsword. Beneath the monastic garment he was dressed in plain pants and tunic of undyed hod den gray wool, a bit chilly in this weather, but good for soaking up sweat.

  Then he began a series of forms, slowly at first to stretch and warm muscle and tendon, then faster and faster—singlehand, the two-handed style derived from old Japanese models, and then with a shield on his left arm. Soon the cloven air was hissing beneath the sharp steel as it swung in glittering arcs, his sharp barking hai! cutting through the clamor.

  “Come for a rest from prayer, Father?” a big Mackenzie with a dark beard said, as the cleric stopped to shake out his arm and take a drink of water from the bucket on one of the wooden pillars.

  Ignatius laughed. “It’s my duty to keep my skills sharp, Cethern,” he said; he knew the man, a wagoner by trade. “Prayer is a monk’s rest, our joy.”

  For a moment he was pierced by longing for the beau tiful ancient discipline of the hours behind Mount Angel’s walls, the sound of chant and bells and silence that was like a singing itself as the mind and heart turned wholly towards God.

  Take up your cross, he told himself. Each of us must. Give me strength, O Lord, that I may carry mine to heaven ’s gate.

  “Still, any skill can be an offering to God,” he said to the clansman. “Care for a bout?”

  And physical activity helped the mind relax. It would be some time before he could probe deeper into the dangerous mystery of the stranger from out of the east.