Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change (11 page)

“
Am Yisrael Hai!”

They broke off to give a baying cheer of
Artos! Artos!
to the counterpart of the ram’s-horn
shofars
in reply, then took up the song again as they passed; that league of villages was tightly organized for war and peace both, but not a large nation, even by today’s standards. Then came more
supply wagons, big Conestoga-style vehicles loaded with tinned meat and dried beans and hard-tack, and then…

“And I recognize that, sure and I do,” he said, grinning.

The droning squeal of bagpipes came first, and then the rattling boom of Lambeg drums. Then a chorus of voices, thousands strong, a deep rhythmic male chorus with women’s higher notes weaving a descant through it. The complex measure was carried effortlessly, the mark of a people for whom music was part of who they were and every gathering a choir:

“Your compatriots, Your Majesty,” Ignatius said, smiling. “And a song of the season.”

He’d spent a good deal of time in the Clan’s territories before the Quest, and made friends there despite his faith. And despite not being of the Old Religion…

Despite being cowan, as most of us would say
, Rudi thought.

…Ignatius didn’t find their ways alarming. Rudi had rarely met a cowan who didn’t find that this particular tune made them uneasy, but the monk was apparently one of them.

The bagpipers marched with the drones of the instruments bristling over their shoulders. The archers behind were all pushing their bicycles
up the slope—modern models, with solid tires of salvaged rubber. Their bows and quivers and knocked-down swine-feathers showed over their backs, fastened to the rings and loops in the green leather surface of the brigantine jacks; most had their bonnets on and the helmets hung from their sword belts as well, and a swinging rattle went by beneath the music. More gear was slung around the cycles, which was part of the reason for using them, that and the fact that you could cover about four times as much ground per day as on foot and keep it up longer than a horse could.

The slope was easy enough to let the Clan’s warriors sing, a tune with a haunting dying fall in it:

Riding at the front of the Mackenzie host was its First Armsman, Oak Barstow Mackenzie, a big man in his thirties with his yellow hair in a queue down his back, wrapped in an old bowstring in the Clan fashion. He raised a hand in salute, touching the tuft of wolf-fur in the clasp of his bonnet. Spears jutted up from here and there in the ranks, bearing the sigils of Duns and the outlines of the sept totems—wolf and bear, raven and elk, dragon and fox and more.

The Mackenzies didn’t stop to cheer, though many flourished their weapons. The Clan wasn’t much for military formality beyond what was necessary to the task; Bearkiller snap and polish had always struck them as mildly ridiculous, and the ostentatious chivalric pageant of the Association was something they usually mocked. But too many of them knew him personally, at least a man or woman from each Dun, and all of them had too much pride to break stride before the High King who was the son of their Chief.

And Samhain was close; the feast for the dead and the ancestors, when their spirits and the beings of the Otherworld both walked, and were invited in for good or ill:

“They wait for you to lead them to battle, Your Majesty,” Ignatius said. “It’s a heavy burden.”

“
There go my people,
” Rudi said, quoting a favorite saying of his mother’s. “
I must hurry to get ahead of them, for I am their leader.
”

They mounted their horses, waiting for a break in the road traffic.

“Yet leadership has something else to it,” Ignatius said. “To be a true King is to be touched by something beyond the human. By the finger of God, as David was when he danced before the Tabernacle of the Lord.”

“Beyond, beneath, and yet always kin to it,” Rudi said softly. “For the lord and the land and the folk are
one
. I may lead them to battle, and the
chroniclers may record this or that stroke as mine…yet how much of that is illusion? Such a mighty thing, a battle like this; so many tens of thousands, such courage and fear, rage and desperate cunning, the wills of so many—each of them with a world within their skull, just as I do. It’s not my story any more than it is theirs.”

“Where?” he murmured to himself. “I must know
where
.”

M
ary Vogeler winked at her twin sister as they settled side by side into the steep upward slope, a vastness of moon-washed rock and sage and occasional scrub conifer. There was just enough of the light of stars and full moon to make the gesture visible at arm’s length, and to see the way Ritva’s answering grin moved her face under the gauze half-mask that covered the front of her hood.

Behind the Ranger scout party the broad slow Columbia was palely luminescent, and deep shadow lay in the gullies that ran south from the hills towards the riverbank. Chill desert air bit as she drew it in slowly through her nose, not as dry as it would be in other seasons and with a little of the creosote scent of sagebrush and the volcanic dirt in which she lay.

And the wool and leather of her clothing and gear, which had the fusty-sweaty-old-socks odor that was unavoidable in the field.

I’ve been on the move for years now, since the Quest began and a lot of the time before. You know, I would
really
like to spend a while living in places with baths and roofs and windows and fresh underwear, and beds with linen sheets and decent kitchens. Where answering a call doesn’t mean going behind a bush with some leaves in one hand and a spade in the other and then you
itch.
Preferably a place where nobody was trying
to kill me, too, but that may be asking for a little much. I’m not eighteen anymore. I’ve got a man of my own, it’s time to have a home and some kids.

There was time for thought, as long as she didn’t lose focus. They weren’t going to be moving for a few minutes. You took this sort of thing slow, slow and steady, and you tried to
think
yourself inconspicuous as well as hiding physically. Both the Havel twins were good at that…

Thêl vell! Since I
have
to do this, it’s good to be on an operation with Sis again
, she thought.
Though I miss Ingolf something fierce. Granted it’s the best use of our skillsets to have him with that regiment of his and me here, but dammit he makes me
feel
better. The Quest was…well, not easy, all the running and fighting and getting cut up and scared silly and so forth…but at least it was all
personal.
This war is too big. I feel like one spindle in a Corvallis linen mill.

Since Mary’s left eye was missing and covered with a soft black eyepatch, that wink had left her blind for an instant. Before she’d lost the eye to a Cutter High Seeker on the Quest she and Ritva had been so identical that one of their favorite pranks as children had been impersonating each other.

I lost the eye. On the other hand, when we threw for Ingolf a little before that I won and that was a big score. Call us even.

She didn’t count the fact that Ritva had saved her life in the fight with the Seeker; they’d been saving each other’s lives since their mid-teens, not long after they left Larsdalen and decided to become Rangers rather than Bearkillers.

Because Mom was getting just fucking impossible. I love her and Mike Jr. too, but I’d have ended up hating them both the way she treated him like Dad’s reincarnation-in-training. Though it doesn’t help that he
looks
so much like Dad. And he’s not High King, Rudi is. Learn to live with it, Mom! The Music-of-Eru
Powers
chose him! In his cradle, complete with signs, wonders, portents and everything but a certified letter on parchment with a red wax seal! So Mike’s not going to be High King, so what? He’s going to be Bear Lord of the Outfit, not the third-class cook on a riverboat. If you love Mike that much, you should be
glad
he’s not saddled with the throne; Juniper envies the hell out of you for exactly that reason. Mike may live to see his grandchildren. Poor Rudi, he’s not only a fated hero but he has to spend most of his time listening to reports and having meetings since he became High King. It must be Angband on stilts.

She tried to imagine an epic about being High King, rather than
becoming
High King.

Û!
she thought.
You’d have to…oh, concentrate on his companions or something. And skip a lot of the meetings and reports.

Waiting stretched. The Dúnedain weren’t many, only a troop of thirty and the crews with the boats. There was no doing this by anything but stealth; not by force, and not by the speed that would make them obvious. Wait for the signal, not tense but loose. Tension traveled, it
smelled
.

A very soft chittering sounded. She rose into a low crouch and moved forward, elf-boots silent even on the rough basalt, keeping the edges of her war-cloak gathered up with a tuck of her fingers on either side. If she tripped over it she’d never hear the last of it from the other Rangers.

Well, never until the enemy killed us,
she qualified mentally as she sank down behind another rock.

And then for a long, long time in the Halls of Mandos. Aunt Astrid would…I can’t imagine what she’d do if I came early because of a screwup. Tell me how much better they did things in the old days in Eriador, I suppose. She was my liege-lady and kinswoman and a great leader but…a bit obsessive-compulsive sometimes.

It was impossible to think of the
Hiril Dúnedain
as really, truly dead; she’d been a part of Mary’s life since she was born, as her mother’s younger sister, and she’d been the re-founder of the Rangers here in the Fifth Age, together with her
anamchara
Eilir Mackenzie. Their liege-lady since the twins moved to Mithrilwood.

It was especially hard to believe her gone when all you’d heard was the tale of it and all you’d seen was the urn with the ashes—she’d been mortally wounded in Boise on the clandestine mission that rescued Fred Thurston’s mother and sisters and sort of by accident his sister-in-law, who’d been desperate to get herself and her son away from Fred’s brother Martin, the parricide and tyrant.

The murder and usurpation hadn’t bothered Juliet Thurston since it made her a ruler’s consort and her son the heir, but the way he’d become enslaved to the Church Universal and Triumphant
had
. Mary was almost sympathetic; she remembered the High Seeker’s eyes, windows into nothing. Waking up with something like
that
on your pillow…

Almost
sympathetic, not
really
sympathetic. But Aunt Astrid
is
dead and she died saving that worthless bitch’s life. Well, the bitch and her son, who’s just a little kid. And Ritva was there…I’m glad one of us was. They’ll be someone can tell the story to
our
children.

Wryly, with a smile that combined sorrow and humor:

Aunt Astrid will be even more powerful as a legend than she was as Lady of the Rangers. And Uncle Alleyne is taking it…well, he’s perfectly functional. In wartime, that’s all you can really ask. Afterwards he’ll have Diorn and Fimalen and Hinluin. Children take you out of yourself.

They completed the next leapfrog maneuver. Everyone’s equipment was silenced—no sounds of metal on metal, no creak of leather, no rattle of arrow on arrow in the quivers, swords worn slantwise across the back rather than at the belt, and the dark green and mottled gray of the Ranger garb blended into the late night better than black would have done. The sound of a score of her people settling into their new positions was less than the scuff of a glove on stone.

The cloth mask of the hood left a strip across her eyes bare, with a screen of gauze pinned up for nighttime; she let her eye travel with a slow methodical scan. Watching for movement. Watching for
patterns
, the outlines that would mean a man hiding, that you didn’t need to see as much as sense. Not the narrow focus that excluded everything but a target, instead the wide-open acceptance that took in all your surroundings as a network connected each thing to the next. Yourself a part of it, sensitive to the slightest tug on the web.