The Given Sacrifice (25 page)

Rudi smiled. “I have . . . contacts there. They’ll deal with it.”

Hopefully
, he added to himself.

Morrowlander Scout Pack Domain

(Formerly Yellowstone National Park)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

August 15th, Change Year 26/2024 AD

T
he glider blazoned with the crimson bear’s-head whispered by overhead. Sunlight blinked
from the canopy as the wings waggled, once and twice and thrice; then it banked off,
caught an updraft, and spiraled up into the sky.

“OK, cousin Alyssa, message received,” Mary Vogeler said, waving broadly with her
sword in one hand for emphasis a
nd to catch the light as well. “Company’s coming.”

Then she repeated it aloud and in Battle Sign, and the word was passed on from mouth
to mouth, quietly and without visible stir. The Dúnedain Rangers were out in force
for the great hunt, along with the other scouts and light troops. The day was only
just warm even in high summer, for this rolling volcanic plateau rose seven thousand
feet above the level of the sea; nights would make bedrolls and fires very welcome,
though actual hard frost was unlikely for another month.

Somewhere a work party was singing at their labors, in the Noble Tongue:

“East and west of the Misty Mountains

North and south of the sea—”

Mary smiled; it was good to be back among her own folk for a while. She’d been travelling
and adventuring among strangers for a long time by the time they got back from the
Quest, and even since. Spending some time in Mithrilwood would be even better, badly
though Aunt Astrid’s absence was felt there . . . though she had to admit that this
part of Montival was just as comely. Mountaintops winked eastward, icy teeth stretching
towards a sky aching blue and streaked with high white mare’s-tail cloud.

The rolling ground around was mostly grass tall and lush and green, starred with yellow
sand lily and thick drifts of crimson Indian paintbrush, yard-high purple bunches
of fringed gentian and more. There were occasional stumps or the remnants of logs
in the grassland, charred and rotting; this land had a natural burn cycle that pushed
it from forest to prairie and back. Already there were clumps of aspen and tall slender
lodgepole pine up to forty feet high on the most favorable locations on south-facing
ridges. They’d cut some of those and erected tripods to hoist up the carcasses of
the bison and elk and black-tail deer; if gutted and drained they would keep acceptably
for days in this climate.

There were dozens of the tripods in use within sight, and teams of horses dragging
in more bodies. This was strictly killing for meat, just methodical hard work like
farming. Very much like slaughtering season in the fall, in fact, down to the collective
thanks-and-apology prayer. They’d used screens of beaters to drive the herds onto
the waiting spears and bows. Even upwind the smell of blood was strong, though clean
enough, mingled with the smell of grilling kidney and liver, the strong-tasting organ
meats that went off so quickly and were the rights of the hunter. They’d dug trenches
for the guts, once the dogs had gorged themselves into a stupor, and the hides were
stacking up, to be used to wrap around butchered, quartered carcasses for easy transport.

Mary still felt slightly guilty, since they’d be wasting so much valuable sausage
casing, horn and fat and leather and sinew and bone, not to mention the brains that
could be used for tanning. The Valar recognized that humankind had a right to eat
just as the other carnivores did, but they disapproved of wantonness with the gifts
of Arda and Eru the Creator.

This is rich land and we’re not taking the calves or young females,
she thought a bit defensively.
The herds will bounce back quickly. For that matter, the way the herds are composed
shows that
someone
is cropping the wildlife here, and someone who knows what they’re doing, too. You
see the same thing in Mithrilwood or our other steadings. I think I know by whom,
too.

The Lakota had been most impressed; they lived by ranching as much as anything these
days with a little gardening here and there and some crafts, but they managed the
swelling buffalo herds of the
makol
, the high plains, very carefully.

Nobody was alarmed at the message from the glider; she wasn’t the only one tasked
with waiting for it, and anyway they had a perimeter of guards out and everyone was
on the alert. If nothing else, the killing had brought every opportunistic predator
in the area out hotfoot, and when wolf-packs and grizzlies and tigers got the scent
of blood, you had to be cautious.

Oh, wolves usually didn’t attack adult human beings, unless they were cornered or
mad-hungry or had some other good reason . . . but
usually
was the operative word and it was
their
idea of a good reason that counted. Not to mention what would happen if they caught
you alone with a broken leg. Grizzlies were another matter. Oldsters said it was amazing
how fast they’d realized that guns weren’t a problem anymore. And all tigers were
either man-eaters or their descendants, since that was the game they’d survived on
right after the Change, the easily caught meat that tided them over while they gradually
learned how to live in the wild once more and then bred and spread explosively.

It was difficult to imagine the landscape she’d grown up in without tigers. That would
be like seeing it without dandelions or tumbleweed or sparrows, but apparently the
ancients had just liked keeping big cats around in pens for some reason and be damned
to the risk to their descendants’ children and dairy cows.

They were . . . strange back then. Very strange.

Ingolf came up, naked and still running with water. He’d stripped as most did while
working his turn on the butchering and then he’d gone for a dip in the nearby pond
to clean off. That was much easier than getting blood out of cloth or, even worse,
leather.

“Oh, now you’re tempting me to neglect my duty,” she said, giving her husband’s hairy,
muscular, glistening six-two a long look;
just
the right height for a woman who was five-ten herself. “It’s not the time to drag
you into the bushes, more’s the pity. The Expected Guests are on their way.”

He was carrying his clothes and gear strapped up into a bundle in one hand, but he
put them aside while he dried in the mild warmth. He also had a bunch of smoking skewers
in his other hand, and juggled things to hand her one.

“And here I thought you were reading the life-story inscribed into my tattered hide,”
he grinned, with that boyish look she’d always liked.

He
did
have a remarkable collection of scars; you could tell he’d been flogged once, knotted
white tracks that told of a barbed whip. That had been the Cutters. And the thick
white mark across his shoulder had been them too, a triad of assassins pursuing him
into Sutterdown. If you knew wounds that one told you how tough he was, to have lived
and healed. He’d gotten that the night she first saw him, in Brannigan’s Inn. There
had been something about him, even then.

She touched the patch over the socket where her left eye had been. It gave them something
in common.

“The scars just show you’re a survivor type, lover, fit to make excellent babies,”
she said, and stood hipshot for a moment, looking out at him from under a fall of
yellow hair and putting a hand behind her head. “It was your manly charms I was thinking
of.”

“Good thing that water was
cold
,” he grinned.

“Oh, we’ve managed. Remember that little waterfall?”

“My back hurt for days, but it was worth it. Here, keep your strength up.”

She took the skewer, blowing and biting off a chunk. “Mmmm!”

There was nothing quite so good as fresh buffalo liver taken right out of the beast
and onto the coals with no seasoning but a little coarse salt; richly meaty, but with
a very slight tang of musky bitterness. Even buffalo-hump and kidney pie wasn’t quite
as tasty.

“Remember that time we were with the Lakota for their summer hunt, on the Quest? Around
the time they did that adoption thing with the tent and the sweetgrass?” she said.

“I’m not going to forget that,
Yellow Bird
.”

“
Iron Bear
backatcha,” she grinned.

In fact they’d both taken that ceremony quite seriously. They ate in companionable
silence. After a few minutes there was a coded whistle and five figures came trotting
towards them from the westward through the waist-high grass, where a dark green line
marked the beginning of the thick forest. Two wore Mackenzie kilts with a pair of
enormous dogs loping at their heels, two were her sister Ritva and Ian in Dúnedain
field gear, and the last was a young man in Boisean Special Forces camouflage outfit.

“Cole,” Mary called with a grin and a wink and a raised index finger: “Cousin Alyssa
just paid a call. That girl chases you in aircraft.”

“She gave us the heads-up first,” Cole said, stolidly ignoring the teasing; Boiseans
could be annoyingly businesslike at times.

But then, so can Bearkillers, so maybe they deserve each other. Manwë and Elbereth
witness we were right to move in with Aunt Astrid.

Ingolf handed out more of the skewers; Talyn gave a sharp
no
when Artan and Flan looked interested, whereupon the dogs completed their sniff-and-greet
and flopped down with sighs. As far as they were concerned it was a wonderful day
to do nothing in particular but enjoy a well-fed nap in good company. There were times
she thought that dogs were more sensible than human beings.

“Company?” Ingolf asked.

“Yeah,” Cole said. “
Sneaky
company.”

Ritva rolled her eyes and nodded with her mouth full, and Ian spoke:

“If we hadn’t had warning, we wouldn’t have known a damned thing. As it was, we
just
had time to make it look like we’d seen them a mile off. I think they were pretty
disappointed. Anyway, they said their Council emissaries would be showing up soon
and then faded away again.”

Cole frowned thoughtfully: “I don’t think they know about aerial reconnaissance at
all. Apart from that . . . perfect technique.”

Talyn rolled his eyes and juggled one of the sticks of hot meat. “
Ochone
, the black pity of a Mackenzie hunter and First Levy warrior being surprised! Still,
this is their home ground, and doubtless the spirits of place—”

He made a gesture of propitiation and tossed aside a fragment of the liver.

“—help them. They’d not do so well about Dun Tàirneanach, that they would not.”

“Not unless you were drunk,” Caillech said dryly. “Like that time you swore you missed
a deer with two heads by an inch and saw it run off north
and
south. That was
just
before the Lady Flidais bore you off to her bower of love, I do not think.”

Ritva nodded. “Only guy I’ve ever met who successfully snuck up on me came from around
here. He was working for the Prophet at the time . . . but I don’t think it was a
love-match. I kicked his ass in the fight, and he did tell me about sis being in trouble
so I could save her life
again
—”

“Which
just
made us even,” Mary said. Lightly, but she shivered a little inwardly. The man who’d
cut the eye out of her head had been technically dead at the time, and if Ritva hadn’t
known—

“—but it was close. Far too close for comfort,” Ritva said soberly.

Ingolf grunted. “Now we find out how they’re going to jump. I do resent that he tried
to carry my sister-in-law off.”

“Well,
you
carried
me
off,” Mary pointed out.

“The hell you say,” Ingolf replied. “As I recall, you won me from Ritva at dice.”

“She cheated—”

“
I
cheated?”

“—one or both of us cheated, so we did rock-paper-scissors,” Ritva said helpfully.
“Nobody can cheat at that . . . well, maybe Rudi could, but he wouldn’t.” Virtuously:
“And we were really deciding who got a
chance
at you. I mean, twin sisters should share, but there are limits. Combs and pads yes,
men no.”

“Sure, you were deciding who got a chance. And how much chance did I have?”

“None at all,” Mary said cheerfully. “I mean, we’re the
Havel twins
? What man could resist us?”

“Rigobert de Stafford aside,” Ritva added, which Mary had to admit was true.

“All right,” she said. “No man who likes women.”

She saw a dangerous glint in her twin’s eyes; hair-splitting was a favorite sport
of theirs, and Rigobert
did
like women. The baron of Forest Grove was delightful company, in fact, not to mention
gorgeous in a rugged manly middle-aged way. He just didn’t consider women to be sexy.

“Correction: no man who
desires
women can resist us. But I got dibs, so there.”

“Hey, what does that make me?” Ian said. “The alternative menu selection?”

“It makes you younger and prettier,” Ritva said, giving his arm a squeeze.

“But mine has more
character
,” Mary said.

“Character? You mean he’s grumpier in the morning and makes bad puns,” Ritva said.

“Honey-smooth skin and chiseled jaws aren’t everything.”

“Hey!”
both men said, antiphonally.

Ingolf started dressing. He’d just finished cinching his sword belt over his mail
shirt when two parties of mounted Dúnedain closed in from the north and south; one
included John Hordle on his usual warmblood destrier and the other Alleyne on a more
conventional dappled part-Arab. Alleyne was tall, around six feet, but if you put
Uncle John on an ordinary horse . . .

He looks like a man trying to ride a big dog.

Mary put her monocular to her good eye and looked eastward. The people she saw weren’t
making any attempt to hide, but they ran through the tall grass with a smooth economy
that made them look just at home there as the lobo packs.