″It would be a good place for a Ranger steading,″ Ritva said. ″We don′t farm. We keep to the woods and wilderness, mostly, and live by the hunt and what the forest yields. And what we′re given to
protect
farmers from bandits and beasts,″ she added virtuously. ″That buys us grain and wine, and cloth and weapons . . . whatever we can′t make or grow for ourselves.″
Edain snorted. ″That, or what
merchants
pay you for protection of their caravans,″ he pointed out.
″They don′t
have
to hire us,″ Mary said.
″No. You just loudly announce that so-and-so isn′t under your protection. The which is to pin a great sodding sign on their backs: Rob This One, eh?″
Mary sniffed as her skis hissed rhythmically. ″If we didn′t announce it, that would be like cheating the honest ones who pay. Overcharging them, you know? And there′s what we get from the other realms by treaty for bandit hunting and patrolling.″
Edain grinned, enjoying the teasing game: ″And what you get by
exploring
for the good of all, the which so often leads to stores of gold and silver and jewels and other treasure from the old times falling into your hands, somehow, and isn′t that a curious thing, the wonder and the joyous surprise of it!″
Ritva frowned. ″It′s traditional,″ she said, in a slightly huffy tone. ″Dúnedain have
always
done those things. Except for that bit just before the Change when the world got so weird and crowded.″
Edain snickered when her nose went up, and she didn′t go into detail.
Mostly because I don′t think I
could
go into detail,
she thought.
When you were the child and niece of rulers, you grew up knowing how much effort and planning had to go into provisions and equipment, and what a disaster it could be if you didn′t have something essential when and where it was needed. The Histories painted Gondor as normal enough, if a bit seedy and run-down, but they were irritatingly vague on how the original Dúnedain had made their livings after the fall of the North Kingdom, much less on how they outfitted their warriors. Supposedly the Rangers of old hadn′t even
told
people how their labors in the wilderness kept settled folk safe, much less demanded dead-or-alive rewards and head prices for outlaws and a yearly stipend as they did now.
How
did
they get the price of a meal and a night′s sleep at the Prancing Pony in the Third Age? Barliman Butterbur didn′t strike me as the sort who′d let you run up a big tab.
Where had the Dúnedain children and old people lived? Armor was expensive and needed skilled specialists to make and keep up, as well—did they have weapons smiths of their own? For that matter, how had they gotten pipeweed from the Shire? It wasn′t as if the hobbits would give it to you.
They couldn′t
all
have sponged off Elrond in Imladris, like hairy smelly short-lived poor cousins,
she thought.
Or hocked ancestral treasures to the dwarves whenever they ran short. Aunt Astrid has enough trouble making the people who owe us money pay up even
with
a contract! It′s a puzzlement.
Edain′s hiss brought her up; she angled the points of her skis together, snowplowing to a halt and focusing outward. Garbh was standing at point, her body lowered and muzzle locked forward like a compass needle; the cold muffled scent to a human nose, but hers was almost infinitely keener. They all kicked their toes out of the loops and stooped low, motionless, listening.
″Gruck! Gruck!″
That was a raven; a deeper cry than a crow. A black shape flogged itself into the air a little ahead, where a lone spruce leaned over a boulder, then drifted stiff-winged back to its perch, cocking an inquisitive and hopeful eye downward.
Something dead
, she thought, as she reached over her shoulder for an arrow.
Someone, rather. Garbh wouldn′t act that way for ordinary carrion.
Mary held up two fingers and then tapped them to the left. Edain nodded and ghosted off to the right, with Garbh swinging wide to cover his flank. Asgerd followed man and dog with blade in hand, creditably quiet, the gray steel of the Norrheimer broadsword at one with the brown and white and green of the winter woods. The two Rangers traced a course like drifting mist by drilled habit, from bush to boulder to tree, until they looked through a tangle of reddish wild blueberry canes. Ritva relaxed and let her breathing slow, let her gaze drift a little out of focus for an instant—that was how you could see patterns best, if nothing was moving.
Her eyes met Mary′s single one, and they nodded slightly. The man curled in the shadow of the rock was unmoving, and snow had collected on his thin sparse beard. Edain came in from the other direction, and waved them forward.
″Garbh found his back track,″ he said. ″Only one, and hours old. Blood spoor, too.″ He looked down at the corpse and pointed a toe.
″Arrow,″ he said succinctly.
The fletching had broken off, and a stub of it stood from the body′s ribs, two hands down from the left armpit and a third of the way in towards his spine.
Ritva nodded. ″Someone got him while he ran. And he kept going longer than I′d have expected, with that in him.″
People did, sometimes, when great need or a very strong will drove them. She and Mary dragged the man into the light. The body was slight, less than their own weight; a very young man, just old enough to raise a brown peach fuzz of beard, and long in the legs. Even beneath the winter gear his gawky coltishness was obvious. The open eyes were hazel. Ritva paused to close them, before she continued her examination.
Poor lad,
she thought, with the slightly abstract pity you felt towards an unlucky stranger
. You didn′t get many years, did you? But Earth must be fed, soon or late. Dread Lord, be kind; Lady Mother-of-All, comfort him. Return him from the Halls of Mandos to a better fate.
″He′s been here a while, but he only
died
a little while ago,″ she said. ″See, he′s not very stiff yet. Blood on his face and under this leather armor—″
Ritva rubbed some between thumb and finger, before she scrubbed with snow and put her glove back on:
″Some has dried, but some of it′s still tacky. The arrow nicked a lung, I′d say.″
Asgerd spoke, alarmed: ″That′s a war sark of the kind they make at Kalksthorpe! He′s a Norrheimer, but not a Bjorning. He must be one of Kalk′s folk. But I′ve never seen an arrow like that. It′s some sort of cane, not ash or cedar.″
″The unfortunate fellow was headed
out
of Kalksthorpe, and kept going as long as he could though he must have known he was dying, the sorrow and black pity of it,″ Edain said thoughtfully.
Asgerd pointed north and west. ″There′s a steading that way. About ten miles. We didn′t go near it but anyone coming inland without supplies would head there first. Or if he bore a word of war for others to spread.″
″Rudi needs to know about this,″ Ritva said with conviction.
″Now.″
″Yes, yes, I′m ready,″ Heidhveig said. ″But—″
Rudi looked at her with concern; the journey had been hard on her, despite taking it by easy stages and the well-made sled, and her getting the indoor bed when they stopped at some lonely farmstead. Her wrinkled face was a little gray, though she′d made no complaints.
Sure, and I′ve gotten well used to traveling only with those young and very strong
, he thought.
Even armies would have trouble matching the pace we′ve often set. And I
need
her to talk to this Kalk.
″But it′s odd . . . someone should have met us by now,″ she went on. ″There are always hunters out, and winter is the best time for traveling.″
His glance turned keen, but she shrugged beneath the bearskin rug. ″No, no, nothing definite. Just a feeling.″
Thorlind paused: ″She doesn′t
just
have feelings!″
″My thoughts exactly, good lady,″ Rudi said.
She′s a fussbudget, is Thorlind
, he thought silently, while most of his mind mulled distances and numbers.
But a fussbudget of considerable wit.
And
no mean worker of her craft, either.
Thorlind pulled a precious pre-Change thermos out of a box beneath the driver′s seat of the sled and poured steaming hot rosehip tea into a cup. Heidhveig took it meekly, which made him a little more worried about the old Norrheimer seeress, but there was a prickle down his spine that hinted at more immediate problems.
I haven′t seen my unfriend Graber of late, nor the red-robe. Too much to hope for that they both drowned when the ice broke. I don′t see how they could know where I was heading, much less get there first . . . but then, they′ve done things I don′t understand before.
Rudi′s head went up and down the trail of sleds. The little portable stove on one was smoking beneath a cauldron. The Bjornings made endless pots of stew in early winter, boiling it thick and then freezing it in blocks to store in their cold pantries. The travelers had brought a good many of those bricks along from Ericksgarth; it meant a great saving in time and effort since you need only throw in some snow for extra water and put the pot over the fire until it was hot enough to be served.
Virginia oversaw the distribution of the results today. Rudi accepted a bowl, a spoon and a slab of rye bread, stale but with some sharp hard yellow cheese melted onto it. The stew was ground moosemeat again, with potatoes and peas and onions and carrots and turnip in it too, plain food but good fuel for the furnace. He′d put far worse things past his lips at need.
″I′ll be glad to get out of these trees,″ the woman from Wyoming said, and looked around with a slight shiver. ″Gol-durn, but it′s bleak country here!″
Rudi nodded gravely, though he had a flash of what it had been like in the Valley of the Sun amidst the Tetons last winter. It would be worse out on the High Plains, in the Powder River country where the Skywater Ranch of the Kane family had been before the armies of the Prophet overran them. There a wind could travel a thousand miles without a wood to break the hard teeth of it; they called that a lazy wind, too idle to go around a man—so it went right through like a spear instead. Riding after herds in a blizzard
there
. . . the very thought was enough to make a man′s stones ache and his nose feel frostbite. Not to mention that the commonest fuel in those parts was dried cowpats.
It′s all where you′re raised, I suppose,
he thought.
I don′t think it′s the cold that oppresses you, Virginia, but the strangeness.
Then he looked around at dark pines, pale snow, leafless maple and birch, low clouds the color of frosted lead. And remembered blossoming orchards below Mt. Hood, with drifts of cherry pink and apple-blossom white flying free amid a scent to make a man drunk; or lying in a clover mead near Dun Juniper with the bees humming beneath a sky of cloudless blue so deep a man could lose his soul in it and the High Cascades hovering on the horizon like banners of green topped with silver; or riding across the Horse Heaven Hills with the sun on his back and mustang herds running with the wind in their manes . . .
No doubt this place had its own loveliness; even now there was a stern majesty to it. He′d never seen it in the short bright nights of its summertime, or the quick flowering spring, or the gold and scarlet beauty of its fall plumage. Still and all—
″I′m
tired
of this,″ Mathilda said quietly from beside him. ″I want to go home. I want to
be
home. I want to be at a garden masque in Castle Todenangst and
bored
out of my mind.″
Rudi′s mouth quirked. ″And it′s precisely my thought you′ve just given voice,″ he said. ″Though I might call it sitting in judgment at Dun Juniper, listening to a pair of stubborn crofters quarreling over a cow until I yearned to smack their thick skulls together. Yet then again,
a chuisle mo chroi
, darling treasure of my heart, where you are, home is. For there my heart dwells.″
A brilliant smile rewarded him, the smile that turned her strong face beautiful for an instant.
Heidhveig gave a slight snort, and Rudi pulled out a map Bjarni Eriksson had given him and spread it before her, a new one on fine white calfskin parchment, but based on an ancient guide for wayfarers called
Rand Mc-Nally
. He thought the blue and scarlet and golden border of writhing dragons and curl-tusked trolls was probably modern work, along with the bearded faces puffing wind from the corners. The trail they were following came down from a lake—frozen now—and debouched onto the shore where Kalksthorpe stood, its little harbor sheltered by a nook of land.
″Robbinston,″ he murmured, reading the other name in brackets below
Kalksthorpe
.
Heidhveig nodded, revived by the drink and hot food. ″That was the name before Kalk′s folk came . . . myself among them. Right after the Change; we knew we had to leave Houlton. All my family and friends I′d talked into coming east, and Kalk′s followers, and a bunch of others who thought we knew what we were doing. There was this barge full of canned goods—″
It′s natural for the old to dwell on the past,
Rudi thought.
Her finger traced their path. The low hills gave way to flat land along the water′s edge; it was where the St. Croix—what the Norrheim folk called the Greyflood—gave out onto the ocean; sheltered still, but easy of access, and with islands and a rugged coast of fiords to the southward.
″The land is mostly cleared back a mile from the palisade,″ the seeress said. ″There are mills outside, here and here, and timber yards. Not much farmed land, just enough for summer pasture and truck gardens. The thorpe′s food mostly comes from the sea, and in trade down the river and from inland.″
Rudi was about to reply when one of the sentries sounded an alarm. They all looked up as the twins came gliding in on their skis, with Asgerd and Edain behind. His teeth showed a little at the sight of a man′s body slung over the younger Mackenzie′s back.