The Given Sacrifice (26 page)

“Here they are, three of them,” she said. Then: “Oh. It
is
our old friend with the badges, right? Not just the bunch he runs with?”

“Right,” Ritva confirmed when her sister passed her the optic.

The party of the
Hîr Dúnedain
, the Lord of the Rangers, pulled up and dismounted. The standard-bearers thrust the
butt-spikes of their flagpoles into the ground—the silver-and-black tree, stars and
crown of her people, and the green-and-silver Crowned Mountain of Montival.

Mary and Ritva stepped forward to greet the three emissaries; presumably they weren’t
their people’s sovereigns, which meant proper etiquette would be for them to meet
someone of rank, but not one of the lords of the Dúnedain. She recognized the tall
lean redhead from her sister’s description; he looked a lot neater and cleaner now
than in that tale, but then he was on his home territory and not leading a fast pursuit
on the trail of nine Questers. And
she
wasn’t dazed with pain and horror, in a way that still gave her bad dreams occasionally.
With him were a medium-tall man in his thirties with dark brown skin—several shades
darker than Fred Thurston—and a pale freckled woman of around her age with braided
black hair.

The two men both wore broad-brimmed hats with wings of eagle feathers attached; the
woman had similar headgear, but sporting falcon feathers. All three had loose well-tanned
leather britches that ended above the knee, moccasins, and long belted tunic-shirts
sewn over with round badges bearing stylized symbols—bows and arrows, tents, knapsacks,
various tools. There were kerchiefs around their necks, too, run through carved bone
rings. They had knives at the belts, and tomahawks a lot like Ingolf’s; her old acquaintance
and the woman had recurve bows and quivers over their backs, and the dark man had
a broad-bladed spear taller than he was.

“Good G— . . . by Manwë and Varda,” Alleyne Loring said quietly from behind her. “I
thought you were exaggerating, Ritva.”

“Not in a
report
, Lord,” she said. “But they’re a bit . . . fancier than the one I saw three years
ago. I suppose because it’s a diplomatic mission.”

“I was one myself once,” he murmured. “Before the Change. I wonder if I should mention
it or not? It seems another world.”

The three halted. The redhead smiled at Ritva. “We meet again, woman worthy of badges,”
he said, then gave a broader smile and nod to Ian’s scowl.

The man with the spear frowned himself and stepped forward and grounded the weapon
with a formal gesture, raising his right hand shoulder-high, three fingers up, thumb
crooked and holding the little finger. The other two copied the movement and the spearman
spoke:

“I am Andrew, called Swift, a Scout of thirty-one badges, a bearer of the Eagle, of
the Keen Spear Patrol of the Snow Tiger Troop, and I speak for the Council of Troops
of the Morrowland Pack,” he said.

“I am Sheila, called Dauntless, a Scout of twenty-eight badges, a bearer of the Falcon,
of the Thrown Hatchet Patrol of the Otter Troop, and I speak for the House of Girls
and the Council of Troops of the Morrowland Pack,” the freckled woman said.

“I am George, called Tracker, a Scout of thirty badges, a bearer of the Eagle, of
the Bright Lightning Patrol of the Wolverine Troop, and I speak for the Council of
Troops of the Morrowland Pack,” Ritva’s old acquaintance said.

The spearman went on: “You have come on the Pack’s land and hunted our game without
our consent, game that we need to feed our cubs in the cold months. Who are you, to
make free with what is ours?”

Alleyne bowed slightly, with hand over heart; the other Rangers copied the gesture,
and the rest made salute in their own fashions.

“Mae l’ovannen,”
he said, in the formal mode. “Well-met, Scouts of the Morrowland Pack. I am Alleyne
Loring-Larsson, Lord of the Dúnedain Rangers, vassal and kin to Artos the First, High
King of Montival. We have come onto your land as part of the Host of the High Kingdom,
for we are enemies of the false Prophet of Corwin. High King Artos needs this meat
for his army, and passage to the north . . . and you have served the Prophet. Are
you our enemies? Or our allies? Or will you stand aside and take no part in this war?”

The Morrowlanders . . . whatever that meant . . . looked at each other. Mary would
have been very surprised indeed if they hadn’t been following events outside their
bailiwick, and even more surprised than that if they didn’t know the approaching Montivallan
army down to the nearest battalion.

“We have heard of your war and we have scouted your great army,” the spearman named
Andrew said, confirming her guess. “But the Prophet’s men . . . the red-robes . . .
can find us in the forests. Find our cubs and our dens. There are not enough of us
to fight their soldiers, if the woods cannot hide us. Nor can we live entirely without
trade; we need metal for tools, and salt and cloth. But we could hurt them badly,
so they leave us be in return for Scout service.”

“We come to cast the Prophet down, destroy his city of Corwin, and free all his slaves,”
Alleyne said. “Then this will be part of Montival, and under the High King’s peace
none will trouble you in your own land if you keep his law.”

The three looked at each other again. “We must test your words,” their spokesman said.
“Send us emissaries, and we will see if they are worthy to speak with the Last Eagle.”

The woman spoke: “Send us emissaries, and your she-wolves among them. We see that
you are not as the Prophet’s men, who seek to turn Girls—”

I can hear the capital letter there,
Mary thought.

“—into sheep.”

Well, good for you, Scout of twenty-eight badges! I know everyone’s entitled to their
own customs, but some are just plain creepy about that. At least we can beat some
sense into the Cutters.

The dark spearman frowned; he seemed to be the senior here, but
primus inter pares
rather than commander.

“We must see that you are worthy of badges, folk of merit,” he said.

Alleyne raised his brows. “You want us to send our people among you without guarantee
of their safety?”

“If you wish us as allies, there must be trust,” the woman said.

“And I will stay as hostage,” the spearman said proudly. “A Scout is trustworthy!”

The redhead grinned. “And you hold our best hunting-ground hostage, too,” he said
irreverently, looking at the parties of horsemen and butchering-camps scattered for
miles to the westward.

I think this one has gotten out of the woods more,
Mary thought. Then to Alleyne, in the Noble Tongue:

“Lord, I think this is a time for . . . for the sort of gesture Lady Astrid would
have made.”

He looked at her quickly, his sky-blue eyes blinking thoughtfully. Ritva made a small
private sign:
Good call, sis!

Uncle Alleyne had always been affectionately respectful of the founder of the Rangers,
but while he was the husband of the living woman he’d been a mixture of chief-of-staff
and Reality Anchor. He’d always loved
The Histories
, that was how he and Astrid had first come together, but he hadn’t had the
fire
she did. Since she’d died, though . . . since then, he’d lived her dream for her,
meticulously.

“You’re right, woman of Westernesse,” he said quietly. Then he replied to the Morrowlanders,
with the air of a man quoting from a sacred book, the way bards did from
The Histories
around a winter hearth in Mithrilwood:

“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf,

And the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”

They looked at him sharply, obviously recognizing it. “I need no hostage, Andrew,
called Swift,” he said. “For a Scout is, indeed, trustworthy.”

•   •   •

“Well, thanks,” Ingolf muttered. “For this glorious heartwarming display of trust
and so forth your Uncle Alleyne made.
He’s
back there, I note.”

“We need to take chances,” Mary said back, quietly. “We’re in a hurry.”

She’d seen hints some of their . . . guardians was a more tactful way of putting it
than
guards
 . . . knew Sign. If they really needed to be secret they could use the Noble Tongue,
but Ingolf wasn’t really fluent yet, and Ian could follow simple sentences but not
really talk it at all, beyond stock phrases. Cole had none at all, and Talyn and Caillech
only a few words. So far everyone had been impeccably polite to them anyway.

In the meantime the seven of them followed the trail at a wolf-pace, which was what
the Morrowlanders called it too: a hundred yards at a jog, a hundred at a fast walk,
a hundred at a normal walking pace, then repeat, with a ten-minute rest every hour.
You could really cover territory that way. If you could keep it up, which they all
could without much trouble. The Morrowlanders seemed slightly surprised, which they
might well be if their standard of comparison was Cutter cowboys who thought they
lost caste if they got out of the saddle. The Dúnedain didn’t think that way, nor
Mackenzies, nor Cole’s service, and Ingolf was just plain versatile.

The game trail wound as their boots made a dull thudding on the soft pine duff. It
took the easiest way through the hilly woods with the unerring skill animals had for
a slope and for the least-effort way between two points. The land it led through varied,
from open flower-meadow to dense pine forest and Engelmann spruce and pockets of aspen,
and there were almost always mountains in view. The thin air was crisp in the mouth
and lungs, like a dry white wine, scented with sap and meadowsweet and an intense
green savor. Once she stopped for a moment with a gasp as they turned a corner and
came into the open.

A river lay well below the hillside trail, winding in S-curves through a meadow intensely
green and starred with blue and crimson and gold like one of Sandra Arminger’s neo-Persian
carpets, only at this distance the color was more of an is-it-there mist flowing over
the velvet, teasing the edge of vision. Beyond was the darker green of forest, turning
to blue distance rising to the white teeth of the Absaroka Mountains.

It wasn’t a painting, though: it was full of life. A bison bull shook his bearded
head and snorted as red-and-white mustangs swept by with their tails raised like plumes.
A pack of lobos had started the horses moving, but they skirted the bison warily as
they followed, their heads held high to keep them over the level of the grass. From
a twisted spruce below the hillside trail two golden eagles launched themselves into
the cool limpid air, banking out over the murmuring white water with the feathers
splayed like fingertips on their yard-long wings. Waterfowl rose up in a cataract
from a quiet stretch surrounded by willows where a bear nosed through the shallows,
climbing like a twisting spire of smoke.

“Now that’s pretty,” Ian said, and everyone nodded agreement; several whistled softly.

Nearby tiny hummingbirds with iridescent orange-red throats circled each other in
a buzzing blossom-war.

“Even compared to the Drumheller Rockies, that’s pretty,” he went on. “Even compared
to
Banff
, that’s pretty.”

“Damn, yes,” Ingolf agreed. “I bet the winters here are something to behold, though,
even compared to where I grew up.”

“
Oh
yeah,” Cole said. “Lucky to get two months without a frost around here, probably,
up this high.”

He was a native of the interior, if considerably south of this, drier and at a lower
altitude. Ian nodded too, looking around at the vegetation. He had a right to be a
connoisseur of winters, since the Peace River country lay a thousand miles to the
north. The two Mackenzies and the Dúnedain winced a little. They were from the Willamette,
off west of the Cascades. Where winter meant chilly and rainy and muddy, not howling
weeks of freezing blizzard that could snatch you dead. Campaigning and travel had
shown them the difference.

“I’ve done winter training, ski and mountain stuff, in country a lot like this,” Cole
said. “And it’s no joke. But it’s pretty then, too. Sort of . . . pure.”

They all took a moment to absorb the quiet. The two Mackenzies drew their pentagrams
and nodded, then opened their water-bottles and poured libations. Mary put her hand
to her heart and bowed. It was actually difficult to say what part of what she saw
was prettiest, like a complex piece of music; she’d heard that people came from far
away just to walk these woods before the Change, and she could believe it.

The three representatives of the Morrowland Council halted too; they didn’t say anything
directly, but they did make that salute gesture again.

“A Scout is reverent,” one of them added.

The whole group—less the unseen but definite escorts who were pacing them out of sight
of the trail—stopped at a shelter built into the side of a hill for the night. It
wasn’t elaborately camouflaged, but it was fairly inconspicuous anyway, being three-quarters
sunk into the slope. There was a bark-shingled roof extending a bit outward over walls
of notched logs; a trickle of spring had been turned into a rock pool. A corral stood
not far away with stone posts and wooden rails, and a lean-to packed with hay—baled
hay tied with straw twists, which was an oddly advanced touch for the backwoods.

Aha, they do use horses, at least sometimes,
she thought.
Those horse apples are about a day old. This run is a test, too.

The interior of the shelter was interesting, when they spread their bedrolls; neatly
folded robes of tanned wolverine fur tied to the bottom of the bunks, mattresses of
fresh spruce boughs, clean polished wood table and benches, and a puncheon floor.
The stove was an ingenious little affair of stone and metal sheets at the rear with
a water heater of salvaged aluminum around the flue, and the food-store was built
into the wall where the natural temperature-control of the earth would help it, lined
with more aluminum to keep the vermin out.