The Given Sacrifice (39 page)

“Far down the roots bind

The heart’s joy to summer’s tide—”

Then the oxen staggered forward as the grip of the dead vine parted with thunderous
rippling
brack-kak-kak
sounds. The heavy knotted black form of the stump was dragged to join a windrow of
other thigh-thick shapes amid laughter and cheers.

Several dogs had been lying in a patch of shade, of the big shaggy breed Mackenzies
kept as companions and guards of hearth, hunt and war. They sprang to their feet and
barked as the mounted column came in view, a deep baying that carried through the
spring air like a bugle. Several padding along with the travellers answered in kind.
The workers threw down their tools and turned towards the nearby spots where their
longbows and quivers and sword belts rested, then relaxed as they saw men-at-arms
and archers, not a skulking gang of wildmen. Glances turned to smiles and waves as
they saw who it was; Órlaith and her father both wore plaids in the Mackenzie tartan
pinned across their torsos over their saffron-dyed shirts.

“Oak, you’re looking hale!” the High King called as he drew rein and raised a hand.
“Merry meet!”

“Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again,
Ard Rí
,” Oak Barstow Mackenzie replied. “Your scouts told us you’d be by, but not when.”

“We’re not in any haste. It’s hard you’re working, and that on the holy eve.”

Oak was nearly sixty now, a tall man gone stringy and tanned to the color of his namesake
tree’s wood but still knotted with strong muscle moving under the sweat-wet skin.
A long queue of graying blond hair hung down his back wrapped with an old bowstring,
warrior-fashion; he’d been First Armsman of the Clan Mackenzie for long years before
leading a party south to found a new settlement. A grin split his bearded face:

“We set ourselves a goal to be met before the festival, and when it looked like we
wouldn’t meet it our High Priestess—”

“That would be your daughter Rowan?” her father the High King said.

“So it is, her own self. She lost her temper, just a wee bit, and made it
gess
to stop before it was done, feast or no. This was the last stump we were scrambling
at, cursing it to a Christian Hell the while, and your coming at its demise a good
omen.”

There was a little teasing in his voice as he went on:

“And doubly so since you brought our Golden Princess, and her so grown-up and lovely
now, a fair young maiden like a vision of the Maiden of Spring herself!”

Órlaith blushed a little; that was what her name
meant
, but it sounded a bit embarrassing in common English. Also she hadn’t been a maiden,
technically speaking, for some time now; four Beltane Eves to the day, to be precise.

Ah, Diarmuid,
she thought reminiscently.

Heuradys caught her eye and winked, obviously reading the thought—natural enough,
she’d teased Órlaith about it at the time. Also, she’d renewed the acquaintance as
they passed through the McClintock territories and guested with their Chief. His current
leman hadn’t minded—though as she’d said bluntly, that was not least because the Royal
party
was
just passing through. In a way it was a pity he’d settled down, she was going to
need a consort someday . . . no need to think of that right now, though.

It’s a good friend you’ve been, Diarmuid, and a more than pleasant companion. I wish
we saw each other more often.

“Merry met, Uncle Oak,” she said, trying for a casual dignity; they weren’t related
by blood, but younger Mackenzies usually addressed the older generation that way,
unless they were unfriends or the occasion formal. “How does Dun Barstow fare this
fine day?”

“We’re doing well, with Her blessing and the Lord’s favor.”

He made the Invoking sign. High King Artos—who was also Rudi Mackenzie—echoed it,
and so did Órlaith and the others of the Old Religion behind them; some of the Christians
crossed themselves politely.

Some of the clansfolk raised a brow in surprise when Heuradys echoed their gesture.
Even apart from the arms of the Ath embroidered in a heraldic shield on the breast
of her rust-colored T-tunic with a crescent of cadency, the rest of her garb left
no doubt of what she was. She wore a teal-blue chaperon hat on her braided brown-red
hair with the liripipe over her shoulder and a golden High Crown livery badge on it,
sapphires on the buckle of her sword belt, tight leather breeks and folded thigh-boots,
flared gauntlets and the small golden prick spurs of knighthood. Catholicism wasn’t
technically required by law among Associates these days—hadn’t been since shortly
after Órlaith’s grandfather Lord Protector Norman Arminger died at the Field of the
Cloth of Gold, in fact—but it was overwhelmingly the most common faith there, especially
among the nobility.

Oak tossed a leather drinking-skin to her father, who uncorked it, spilled a drop
in libation and took a swig before he handed it around; it was water cut with wine
or possibly vice versa, and made them all formally guests on the Dun’s land. The old
clansman went on:

“We’ve got the watermill’s Pelton wheel and the hydraulic ram working; the Dúnedain
from Stath Ingolf just over the hills have been most helpful. The last harvest was
good and the next looks to be even better—”

He spat aside and made the Horns with his left hand to show that he wasn’t tempting
the Fates.

“—this is fine land and we’re learning its ways and how to please the spirits of place,
who’re happy to have humankind about once more. What brings you and your Da here,
so far from Dun Juniper and so near Beltane?”

Rudi answered: “Seeing the land, and introducing Órlaith to it. And to mark out what
we of the two-footed kindred and the animals who live with us may use in this valley,
and what’s rightly the domain of Lady Flidais and Her especial children.”

Oak and his people nodded solemnly; so did Órlaith and Heuradys. Flidais was the Goddess
in Her aspect as Mistress of the Beasts; She drove a chariot pulled by sacred white
deer, and Her very name meant
doe
; the wildwood and its dwellers belonged to Her and Her consort, the Horned Lord most
often hailed as Cernunnos.

Órlaith knew that in other parts of Montival her father would have used different
terms—in the United States of Boise he’d have talked of National Parks, and in the
Association fiefs of the old north-realm about the rights of the Crown and Counts
and baronage under Forest Law. In Corvallis, where the Faculty Senate of the University
ruled, they’d speak confidently of the biodiversity of riparian wetlands and watershed
maintenance; in the territory of Mt. Angel the learned warrior-monks of the Order
of the Shield of St. Benedict would say the same, but also cite God’s command that
the sons of Adam exercise wise stewardship. The Lakota said White Buffalo Woman had
told them what men might rightly take, and there were so many other stories. . . .

It all meant more or less the same thing, and she preferred the Clan’s way of describing
it. Besides, she’d seen Flidais in dreams herself, though not to speak to, and had
a proper awe of Her power after a single glance from those moon-pale eyes. Wise folk
asked Her permission to enter the unpeopled lands and walked lightly there, just as
they thanked Cernunnos for luck in the hunt, and showed respect to the prey itself
for its gift of life. You never knew when the Hour of the Hunter would come for you
yourself—except that soon or late, it
would
come.

“It will be Órlaith’s business soon enough,” her father went on. “And—”

His blue-gray-green eyes narrowed. The High King was just as old as the Change, born
near Yule of that terrible year as darkness turned towards light, a tall handsome
man with close-cropped red-gold beard and shoulder-length hair of the same sunset
color; it suddenly shocked her a little to see how the wrinkles at the corners of
his eyes were deeper than she remembered. Your parents seemed to go along changeless
while you were small, but she was getting beyond that stage now.

Allowing for gender and age they were much alike, something more obvious now that
she’d reached her full growth, save that her eyes were cornflower-blue and her hair
wheat-blond with only a slight tinge of copper; she was about three fingers shorter
than his six-foot-two, taller for a woman than he was for a man, with a similar long-limbed
build.

“—and . . .”

His hand fell to the pommel of the sword by his right side, a sphere of milky crystal
gripped by antlers. He wore it on that hip because his right arm had been injured
long ago, on the great Quest to the eastern sea that brought the Sword of the Lady
back from the fabled magic isle of Nantucket. The wound still pained him sometimes,
and it had leached a very little strength and speed from the limb.

Everyone looked grave for a moment; the Sword of the Lady was
far
more than a weapon. Far more than merely a symbol of sovereignty, even, though it
was that in truth. The bearer never talked much about it, but common knowledge was
that it conferred powers, only the first of them being the gift—or curse—of telling
truth from falsehood.

“. . . and a feeling that I should be here, somehow.”

“You’ll guest with us?” Oak asked, plainly assuming they would.

“If it’s not an imposition to feed four-score. We’ve supplies with us.”

“There’s plenty for the Beltane feast, and we’re glad to share it. The lions and leopards
and catamounts and tigers and wolves are a troublement to our herds, not to mention
the grizzlies, but the hunting here . . . ah, you’d have to be blind and have no string-fingers
to go short of meat. We’ve wild beef and fine yearling buck and a sounder of pig hanging
in the icehouse right now, thanks be to Cernunnos, and everyone who isn’t here pulling
this last Annwyn’s-Hounds-devour-it stump is cooking or baking or making ready to
do so. Or rolling out barrels, the which requires a liberal testing of samples to
make sure they’ve not gone off. Forbye we’re also making trial of roasting a whole
young ostrich overnight in a pit with hot stones. Halfway between chicken and veal,
the taste is.”

“Now you’re making me drool. Offer accepted! You know Sir Aleaume?” the High King
went on, indicating the commander of the men-at-arms. “He’s come to the Guard since
you hung up your bow.”

The knight was a man in his twenties with bowl-cut reddish-brown hair, regular high-cheeked
features only slightly marred by somewhat juglike ears, and slanted blue eyes.

Órlaith had known him off-and-on for years and thought him toothsomely handsome as
well as brave and able and a fine singer and with a pawky sense of humor when you
could get him to unbend a little. Unfortunately he was paralyzingly conscious of the
gap in their ranks, or too much given to the troubadours’ wilder flights of chivalry.
The ones about true knights pining chastely over a fair maid from afar. Or both.

Particularly with her father about; Associates just thought differently about such
things, and Christians were plain-and-simple strange. She understood, being half of
that stock herself, but it could be a hindrance.

It’s a fine thing to journey with Da, but it has its drawbacks. Not to mention that
it took me and Herry falling about laughing at his painful discretion to convince
Aleume that we’re not lovers. Mother-of-All, but men can be idiots sometimes.

Oak gave a nod, friendly but not particularly deferential to the heir to the Barony
of Tucannon; Mackenzies didn’t pay much attention to rank.

“Aye, we’ve met,” he said, to the knight’s evident surprise. “Your father Baron Maugis
and I worked together a good deal in the Prophet’s War, young lord. I saw you once
back then, but you’d not remember it, most likely. As I recall you were tugging at
your mother’s skirt and asking for a honey-tart. I hung up my bow about the time he
became Grand Constable, and that in time of peace.”

“I’ve heard the stories about what you and my father did at the battles around Corwin,
good Clansman,” the knight said in the clipped formal tones of a north-country noble
minding his manners, leaning over to shake hands. “You and he and the others of your
generation had all the grand adventures!”

Oak snorted, but declined to comment directly; a similar sound came faintly from Edain
Aylward Mackenzie, the commander of the High King’s Archers, who was riding just behind
them. Órlaith could read the minds of both the old soldiers:

Adventure? You’d be welcome to my share, that you would, boyo.

She caught Heuradys’ amber-colored eyes, and her liege-knight gave an almost imperceptible
shrug. In theory she dutifully agreed with all the scarred middle-aged veterans who’d
helped raise her; a ruler responsible for the homes and safety of her folk couldn’t
wish the wild times and deadly deeds back for their own sake . . . but they both understood
young Sir Aleaume de Grimmond as well.

They’d both grown up in the shadow of those thunderous stories, much more immediate
and more
real
than the tales of the ancient world. Then all their own lifetimes had seen a steadily
spreading peace and prosperity in the broad lands of Montival and among the many peoples
who hailed her father as liege, paid his scot and kept his laws. What the bards had
taken to calling the Age of Gold, when a child with a full purse could walk from the
western sea to the Lakota plains unmolested, and old feuds and hatreds receded into
song and epic . . . or at least into nothing more serious than the odd brawl in a
tavern.

It could get a little boring.

She suspected that was why many came south to this new province. It wasn’t crowding,
since there was still plenty of good land unplowed even in the Willamette Valley,
the heartland of the realm.

Órlaith herself had taken to worrying a little about the hopefully distant day when
she
had to do the job and maintain what his father had built.