The Tears of the Sun (27 page)

Bjarni and the Norrheimers stood aside, inclining their heads to show a guest's respect for customs and Gods not their own. The massed voices rolled on, bidding farewell to the day in a hymn that Rudi's own mother had composed:

The silence held for a long moment afterwards, as the sunlight faded. Rudi dropped his hands, still feeling the peace of it plucking at his heart, like a bard's hands on the strings. Then he shook his head slightly. There was little enough peace he'd have in the next few years.

Well, the more reason to grab what moments I can,
he thought.

He strode forward towards the area in front of the command tent. There was a fair-sized fire there, down to red-and-yellow coals now, and a bustle of cooking. A big man dressed only in a kilt was crouched over a young sheep, no longer quite a lamb—a yearling wether, he thought—holding its shoulders pressed between his knees and its head in his hands.

“So, little brother, we are sorry,” he said, in a soothing, crooning voice as he stroked its head until it quieted. “But we are hungry and must eat. We thank you for your gift of life. To us also the hour of the Hunter will come, for Earth must be fed. Go swiftly and without pain to the green clovermeads of the Land of Summer where no evil comes, and be reborn through Her who is Mother-of-All.”

The big hands clamped and he twisted with a sudden violent swiftness. Muscle moved and then stood out on his bare shoulders and arms like a swelling wave. There was a crackling snap like a green branch breaking, and the animal gave one single kick and died before it had time to bleat. A boy and girl in their mid-teens stepped forward, took the carcass away and began bleeding and butchering it efficiently, the sort of task helpers of their age did in any Mackenzie force, learning the routine of war before they were old enough to stand in the bow-line. A collection of big shaggy dogs gathered to watch intently, tails wagging as they waited for their treat of blood and offal but too disciplined to do more than whine softly and lick their chops.

“Merry met, Oak,” Rudi said to the man as he straightened.

Oak Barstow Mackenzie nodded back; they clasped hands for a brisk shake. The First Armsman of Clan Mackenzie was about Rudi's height and not unlike in build, though eight years older and a trifle heavier; his long queue of hair was the color of summer-faded meadow grass, and so were his long mustaches. He'd been an orphan of the Change, one of a busload of schoolchildren on tour left stranded by the roadside and lucky enough to meet the bulk of the Singing Moon coven on its flight from Eugene to what eventually became Dun Juniper. The fledgling Clan had continued to adopt such foundlings as often as they could without actually starving all through those early years, and it had paid in a manner which showed the truth of the Law of Threefold Return.

“Merry met,
Ard Rí
,” Oak said, using the old tongue's term for a High King. “And to you too, Bjarni Ironrede. Join us; there's plenty for all. And Mother sent along some of her BBQ sauce.”

“That's an offer I'll accept gladly,” Rudi said. “Aunt Judy's herb-lore is of the best, for healing and cooking both. And merry met to you as well, Fred, Virginia. How are your men shaping? More in?”

“Two hundred thirty altogether, sir,” Fred said. “And they're shaping very well indeed. A lot of squads decided to come over together and they're glad to be in the field instead of in a camp.”

Rudi sat on one of the rocks that had been rolled around the fire. Absently, he noticed Edain detailing units of the Archers to eat by turns while the others stood watch; Bjarni's guard-chief was doing something similar.

I'll just be learning to live with that unsleeping vigilance, for I think it's my fate,
he thought.

Darkness was falling now, as the long summer twilight faded; the coals underlit the faces around him, giving them an odd bony look with the lanterns in the tents throwing contrasting shadows. The meat had gone on the fire, mostly on wooden skewers, sending up fragrant smoke and making the coals flare where drops of fat landed. There was a bubbling pot of beans stewed with onions and dried tomatoes and chunks of bacon, another of greens, and one of the helpers was frying sliced potatoes in a pan.

“This is more like a hunting trip than a war, so far,” Oak said as plates were handed around. Grudgingly, as he took a loaf of rough maslin bread from a basket and tore off a piece: “The PPA has done all they promised in the way of supplies. We're even getting these from the city bakeries by the wagonload every day. And they've assigned us enough wells, though only just.”

Rudi understood the scowl. Oak's sister Aoife and his foster brother Sanjay had all died in the wars against the Association. But his foster father had been killed by the CUT in the battle at Pendleton last year. Chuck had been First Armsman after Sam Aylward resigned the position, but Oak hadn't inherited it because of anything but proved ability. He'd been his father's right hand for years anyway, as Chuck had been Sam Aylward's before him. The Clan had an informal approach to such matters.

“It'll be dog biscuit and jerky soon enough,” Rudi said.

He pulled the eating tool out of the little sheath on his dirk scabbard, with a spoon on one end and a fork on the other.

“You're ready?” he went on, catching the chunk of bread Oak tossed him out of the air and sticking the fork-end in it.

“The last three thousand from the southernmost Duns are just here the now,” Oak said. “All together, twelve thousand one hundred fifty-two archers fit to stand in the bow-line. Not counting healers, pipers and
eòghann
.”

Seeing Bjarni's puzzlement, Rudi spoke aside to him, nodding to indicate the teenagers: “
Eòghann
. Youths and maidens not yet old enough to fight, to ‘take valor,' as we say. In a stand-up battle they mainly carry arrows forward to the bow-line from the reserve stocks. It's important work.”

Someone handed him a plate loaded with fried potatoes, boiled kale and skewers of grilled mutton. He made the Invoking pentagram over it and murmured a quick thanks to the Mother, and Her Consort who died to give the grain life and rose again each year. The Norrheimers and Fred Thurston hammer-signed theirs, and spoke their own blessing:
Hail, all-giving Earth
.

Oak nodded as he ladled out beans: “The test for the First Levy is shooting twelve arrows to the measured minute and keeping it up for ten minutes, from a bow of eighty pounds pull or better, and putting nine of each twelve into a man-sized target a hundred yards away. That's the minimum, you understand, not the average. Against massed targets we usually start shooting at about three hundred long paces' distance.”

Bjarni's brows went up. “Twelve thousand archers . . . twelve arrows a minute . . .”

“That's twenty-four hundred a second,” Rudi said, touching the Sword. “Or just under a hundred and fifty thousand in one minute. It is,” he added gently, “a great whacking lot of arrows, the which is why we call it an arrowstorm. Nor are most battles only a minute long. Hence the
eòghann
scurry about a good deal, the darlings.”

Bjarni pursed his lips. Behind him Edain chuckled very quietly; he'd been the first to show the Norrheimers what the Mackenzie yew longbow could do, in their own distant homeland. Now their king was contemplating what twelve thousand such bows could do to a force trying to close with them. Rudi knew that wasn't entirely fair; Edain was known as Aylward
the
Archer for a reason. Nor was the great armor-smashing stave he carried typical.
That
bow drew over half again the minimum allowed.

But it's
mostly
fair if not entirely,
Rudi thought.
A fifty-pound draw on a hunting bow will put a broadhead through a bull elk's body, breaking ribs going in and coming out; I've seen it done. Eighty pounds on a warbow will do for a man, sure, often enough even if he's wearing a tin shirt.

“That
is
a great whacking lot of arrows,” Bjarni said. “How many do you lug about with you?”

Oak grinned. “You ask the right questions, Bjarni King,” he said. “And the answer is
as many as we can.
Also the
eòghann
run out to scavenge as many spent ones as they can from the field, when it's safe. Food can be foraged at a pinch and you can fight barefoot or even bare-arsed if you must, but a cloth yard arrow needs well-seasoned straight-grained wood for the shaft, good flight feathers from a goose and glue and thread for fletching, horn for the nock and fine hard steel for the bodkin, and all put together with skill in the making. Fashioning arrows is one of the tasks we do in the Black Months, when the farm work is less. It's part of the Chief's Portion.”

“The scot, you'd say,” Rudi amplified. “The tax.”

“And nobody skimps the work, when their lives and families might rest on it,” Oak said. He turned his face to Rudi. “And another four thousand archers in the forts in the Cascades, the ones who can fight but aren't up to much hard marching for one reason or another. The enemy's withdrawn some men from overmountain and the Bend country, but not all of them.”

Soberly, he met Rudi's eyes. “This is all we have, High King. If we lose it the Clan dies.”

Rudi nodded, equally grave; all that was a fifth of the Clan's total population, and a much higher share of its adults.

“I know. It's still our best chance. Our archers and the Association's knights are the biggest edges that we have, and sure, I intend to wring every scrap of advantage from both that I can.”

Then he took up a skewer of the wether's flesh, biting off a chunk. The tender meat was juicy-pink in the center and Judy Barstow's sauce, tangy with garlic and sage and peppers, was crusted on the seared outer surface. It would have been finer still for marinating a while, but it was better than ample for a war-camp.

“See you, Oak,” he said, gesturing with the remainder of the kebab, “I've read your reports on the fighting you did in the mountains west of Bend while I was gone on the Quest. You beat them handily, but don't judge all that they can do by what happened when they had no choice but to charge you on your own ground in the passes.
Or
by the poor and pitiful performance of hungry frightened plainsmen clumping in high-heeled rawhide boots through a strange snowbound forest.”

Oak nodded. “From first to last the CUT's horse-archers were a pain in the arse at Pendleton,” he said. “Much more so when we were forced to retreat, and
they
had room to maneuver fast. They're hard trouble in any sort of open country, and that is a fact. That's how my father died.”

And you took a spectacular vow of vengeance at Chuck's passing ceremony,
Rudi thought.
Will it cloud your judgment?

He didn't think so, and he wasn't sure whether that was the long knowledge of growing up in the same Dun as this man, or something the Sword of the Lady gave him. He'd always been fair to excellent at reading folk, but with the Sword at his side no man could lie to him, even if the words deceived the speaker himself. He found himself fighting to keep that from souring his view of humankind, sometimes.

“We had a lot of trouble with them in the battle at Wendell,” Fred observed. “And that's how they beat Deseret—more cavalry and moving faster. You can fight them with infantry but you need
some
horse-archers yourself, and a shitload of field artillery really helps, since it outranges their bows. Then if they thin out their formations to cut down their casualties they drop the intensity of their firepower a lot.”

“We needed the cavalry and catapults badly to hold them off so that we could break contact,” Oak agreed. “We'd have been surrounded and whittled down to nothing, else, instead of just hurt.”

“Just so, and Lugh of the Many Skills knows the Boise infantry are a bad lot in a fight too. Very disciplined, very well drilled in their maneuvers and it's an annoyingly persistent set of
omadhauns
they are to boot.”

Fred grinned. “Yup. If they try charging us, well, we'll give them as much trouble as they want.”

“Exactly. It's uncomfortably good at combined-arms work Boise's army is, and
they
have no religious scruples about making catapults of their own, unlike the CUT. I'm doing what I can about that stubbornness, breaking their heads from the inside, you might say, and Fred's been a help. But in the meantime I think you're going to need a reaction squad of head-bashers in the more usual sense of the word, more than Fred's band can provide, and I've just the men for the core of that.”

Bjarni was mopping up beans with a chunk of the bread. He nodded, still chewing, drank from the mug of watered wine beside him, and spoke: “That we can do. We're not wizards with the bow like you Mackenzies, but handstrokes are our sport and our delight. And my five hundred are picked men, the best fighters of all the tribes of Norrheim. Well used to fighting side by side by now too.”