The Sword of the Lady (46 page)

They spiraled inward and then threw the torches high with a last shout, pinwheeling against the sky in a spray of yellow and red sparks.

The dry stacked wood of the fireset was woven with even more flammable straw and pine needles full of resin; it caught with a roar, a tall pillar of hot gold and molten copper that erupted skyward in a shower of flaming glory. Even at this distance the dry clean scent of it cut through the dew-heavy evening smell of the woods, and the light formed a circle that made darkness more absolute beyond; Mathilda blinked against the dazzle.

Out of those cave-dense shadows came the coven and its guests, in a file of men and another of women, barefaced or masked as wolf and badger and bear, raven and coyote and cougar and more. A woman led them, fair-haired, heavy of breast and hip, comely with a full woman′s beauty; a headband carrying the Triple Moon was around her brows, and a belt around her waist with the Pentagram hanging from a chain to lie below her navel. She recognized the Vogelers′ housekeeper, and wondered distantly if they knew what
else
she was.

The coven sang as they came, in voices that held merriment and awe and a husky wildness:

All of them put their clenched fists to their brows for an instant to mark where their God′s horns sprouted, and shouted:

The High Priestess stopped before the altar, made reverence and turned. Arms raised, feet spread in the Stance of Power, she let her palms face the ground, then rise to cup the moonlight. Her voice cried in a high chant that called:

The witches lining the edge of the firelight swayed together, faces in-humanly rapt or blankly hidden by the masks; their voices answered as the swaying turned to a spiraling dance, stately and slow at first but growing faster as she watched to match the beat of the cry:

The call went on, and on; she realized that the voices were taking it up in relays. The sustained rise and fall of the sound had a savagery to it, an elemental need, and somehow it
spread
—until it began to ring from the stones beneath her and the sky above and the hills to either side, until her own bones and organs buzzed with it. Her skin tightened until she felt she must burst, as if her very life depended on ripping her clothes away and running to join the celebrants; unconsciously her fingers dug into the thin earth and her body ground against it.

Silence, sudden, jarring, leaving her as breathless-winded as a punch in the gut. The High Priestess spread her arms in welcome, and the coven-folk bent the knee, inclining heads bare but for flowers or grotesquely masked. Then a great voice sang the next verse of the hymn from the circling woods—not far from her. A voice she recognized, but altered as if speaking from some deep well of time, growing as it approached:

For a moment the song turned to a huge shout from every one of the worshippers, drowning even the crackle of the need-fire:

It was Rudi who came, naked save for the great stag mask and spreading antlers, the firelight shining upon the long-limbed grace of his body; in his hand was a tall spear tipped by a flame-shaped bronze head. Mathilda shuddered and bit her lip until the pain cut through the haze that seemed to cloud her eyes and fill her brain. Bending, leaping, strutting in rampant maleness, the figure of Herne turned amid the laughter and the dance, feinting with the spear. Its blade touched some of the revelers in the whirling snakelike chains, metal delicate as a kiss.

Rudi—no,
Artos
—flung his arms high, the blade of the spear glinting like ruddy flame, and as if the gesture had called it forth the worshippers roared:

The Coven answered, swaying forward together, stretching out their hands to the tall shape of the Wild Huntsman:

The spear lanced out again, as if it were pointing at
her
. It was impossible, but she knew it was true even if Rudi had no idea she was there; and from the point fire seemed to crinkle every tiny hair on her skin.

Even then she didn′t quite lose control of herself; she eeled backward with a lifetime′s skill before she ran blindly, half sobbing. And when folk about the work of the Sheriff′s steading stared at her she made herself walk into the lamplight, smile and nod.

Odard looked up in alarm as she came into the chamber the travelers had been given as their common room. His questions died as she sat.

″Just . . . play, would you, Odard? Remind me of home.″

″As your Highness commands.″

He bowed deeply and sat, taking up the lute. The clear notes rang in the night, drowning all the sounds of the wildwood where it rested like a great feral beast, beyond the walls and laws and rules of men.

″I wish we were
home
,″ she said at last.

He kept his fingers moving on the lute, and his face averted.

″The problem is, your Highness . . . I think things may be going badly at home, too.″

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Signe Havel cursed quietly beneath her breath, and spat to clear the alkali dust from her mouth. It was futile; the cold morning wind that snapped the dark brown banner with its snarling crimson bear′s head beside her blew more back into her face, along with a little dry snow from yesterday′s thin fall. The sun was far enough over the horizon now that a squint and the shade of her raised visor did well enough to show the huge rolling landscape that opened out before her. Gray-green sage, a frosting of white snow blown in numberless little crescents against the sides of brown dead bunchgrass, the slightly darker brown of bare soil, aching-blue sky . . .

She was a tall fair woman a little past forty; the face under the raised visor of her sallet helm was still beautiful, in a fashion now slightly harsh. The sixty pounds of Bearkiller cavalry armor—breast- and backplate of articulated steel lames, similar cover for upper arms and thighs, vambraces and greaves—didn′t bother her.

It′s about the only thing about this cock-up that
doesn′t
bother me very much indeed,
she thought.
But Mike taught me a long time ago that you have to look positive for the troops.

She′d kept all her skills up, enough that she wasn′t a handicap on a battlefield where command was her primary job, but she hadn′t taken the field for years. Most of the time she ran the civil side of Bearkiller affairs from Larsdalen—the core of which had been her family′s summer home even before the Change—and left active military leadership to her twin brother, Eric Larsson.

But most of the time we′re not scraping the bottom of the barrel and holding on with our fingernails
, she thought bleakly.

And then, as she watched the skirmish half a mile away:

It was a chilly winter′s day here up on the high sagebrush plains east of the Cascades, which introduced yet another of the discomforts of wearing armor—in summertime she′d have been roasting like a pig after a
blòt
in the suit of articulated plate, and now it made her sweat whenever she was active and then let the moisture in the padding beneath turn dank and greasy-chill as soon as she was still for more than a few moments.

Which right now is the least of my worries
.

The enemy had thrown up the earthwork fort beside the old road bridge in less than a day; her own field engineers were lost in professional admiration at how swift and thorough it had been.

Damn them all,
Signe thought.
Hella eat them and spit the bones into Ginnungagap!

The foursquare earth walls appeared as if dug by a race of giant prairie dogs, with four low thick towers of prefabricated timbers at the corners, sheathed in steel plates and a broad abatis covered in angle iron and barbed wire. The United States of Boise′s flag flew over it; since they considered themselves the United-States-of-America-full-stop they used the Stars and Stripes. Which her husband, Mike Havel, had always considered slightly blasphemous for
any
of the thousand-and-one successor states in the ruins of the world left by the Change.

At least Lawrence Thurston had really believed in restoring the United States. His parricide son, Martin, just wanted to be Emperor, as far as the reports could tell.

The cavalry deployed around it to protect the construction were mostly Pendleton rancher levies, light cavalry armed with bow and slashing-sword, few with any protection beyond a bowl helmet and steerhide jacket. And a platoon′s worth of the Sword of the Prophet, elite troops of the Church Universal and Triumphant out of Corwin. Boise′s theocratic allies were armored in lacquered leather and chain mail, and unlike the ranchers and their cowboys they used both lance and bow.

Which was supposed to be our Bearkiller A-list′s monopoly,
she thought.
There aren′t as many enemy horses as there were yesterday, when I decided we couldn′t take them on. That′s because the fort′s
finished
today. Do we get anything by winning this action? But if we just retreat every time they run up a fort, why not surrender right away?

The Bearkillers had ranchers′ retainers with them as well, men and the odd woman from the CORA, the Central Oregon Ranchers′ Association. The two forces of light horse were skirmishing, loose knots of horsemen galloping and exchanging arrows that twinkled as they reached the top of their trajectories and plunged downward. Now and then a man would fall, or a horse. A clump of riders would drive in to the rescue, and light broke off the honed edges of the swords as little squads cut and stabbed at each other, saber against shete. One such rescue party got a little too close to the new fortlet, and there was a deep unmusical
tunnnggg-whap!
sound as the heavy truck springs that powered a murder-machine on one of the towers cut loose.

″Shit,″ she said flatly.

The ball from the six-pounder scorpion was too fast to really see save as a streak until it was nearly to the target. Distance mercifully hid the details, but she thought it smashed a man′s head off; certainly he rode on for a dozen paces before toppling. The others exploded outward like a drop of water on a hot greased skillet; one of them paused a second to swing the unhorsed comrade they′d first come for up behind him. The dead man′s horse followed the rest of the war band with the stirrups bouncing loose.

″The High One receive him, and the valkyr bring him the mead of heroes,″ she murmured, and signed the Hammer with her was.

″And that one who rescued his friend is a brave man too,″ her son Michael Jr. said.

He′d filled out and shot up as he turned sixteen, and though he was taller now he looked more like his father than ever—save that his hair was fine and corn yellow, rather than Mike Havel′s coarse black mane. That meant Michael Jr. also looked more like his half brother Rudi, a thought which made her force herself not to scowl; they were both exceptionally handsome young men, straight-nosed, with square dimpled chins and high cheekbones. Mike had the brand of the A-list between his brows, despite his youth. He′d won it by bravery on the field, at the Battle of Pendleton last year, and the privilege of carrying the lance that bore the Bear-head flag.