The Sword of the Lady

NEAR DUN LAUREL CLAN MACKENZIE TERRITORIES WILLAMETTE VALLEY,

?Advance in skirmish order with fire and movement!?

That bellowed order was faint with distance, but the dunting huu-huuhadd-hurrr bray of the cowhorn trumpet carried more clearly.

The old man leaned silently on his unstrung bow stave and watched the warriors deploy, popping a few blue-black serviceberries from the shrub next to him into his mouth from time to time. Sam Aylward was in his sixties, and had never been more than middle height, though deep-chested and broad in the shoulders; now he stooped a little, and the square tanned Saxon face was gaunt and furrowed, the once earth-brown hair turned gray and white. There was strength yet in the scarred gnarled hands on the yellow yew-wood but they were starting to twist with age, and they were battered with a lifetime of working with animals and weapons and tools, heavy weights of flesh and wood and metal and urgent speed.

He was grateful for the heat of the summer sun sinking into flesh and bone, even as it brought sweat out on his face and flanks; somehow he was cold a lot of the time these days. A deep breath brought a scent of rank greenery and silty mud, windfalls rotting beneath apple orchards gone feral, crushed grass, a few blue lupins still blossoming. Grass heads scratched at his legs below the pleated kilt. This was the time to practice the arts of war, after the grain was in and the stacks thatched and waiting for the threshing, when strong young hands and backs could be spared.

Time to read Edain?s letter, too, he thought; he could almost feel the weight of it in his sporran. The boy?s had a bad time. That were cruel hard, not being able to save that girl he met. There?s a lesson you have to learn: sometimes you give it everything and nothing works

… But he?s all right, and he?s been doing a man?s work and no mistake. And tonight I can show it to Melissa.

A slight smile moved his lips at the thought of his son and the prospect of his wife?s face. She?d been worried badly, which was natural enough, and spending a lot of time spell casting and trying auguries until Lady Juniper told her once a month was enough.

I?ve been worried about the boy too. Boy? He snorted. I?ve bred and raised me an Aylward fighting man to reckon with! Now stop woolgathering and get back to work, Samkin. They?re shaping nicely-and Oak Barstow has them well in hand. He?ll be better than his dad at it. More fire in the belly.

The ground the warriors were using was part of the empty zone that separated Dun Laurel from Dun Carson, far enough out in the flats of the Willamette Valley that the Cascades were a line of blue topped with white in the eastern distance; his own hobbled horse grazed behind him, and John Hordle?s thick-bodied warmblood, and his younger son Richard?s elderly little cob. The boy-he was fifteen and a bit, still a few years too young for the First Levy-was aggressively red-haired, freckled, and looking at the exercise with naked envy, unconsciously edging forward bit by bit and reaching over his shoulder to finger the arrows in his quiver. ?Dickie,? the elder Aylward said mildly, without looking around, and keeping the inward grin out of his voice.?If you don?t want to mind the?orses, you could always be to?ome helping your mother set up that new loom. Or there?s them hurdles that need replacing in the ?ill pen…?

A hundred clansfolk were advancing through the burgeoning wilderness. They moved by threes and nines, dodging swiftly from bush to tree to clump of tall grass that nodded like hair blowing in the slow warm wind. The kilts and plaids of the Mackenzie tartan-which here in Oregon was mostly green and dark brown, due to a salvaged load of blankets that first year-made them hard to see; so did the green leather covering their brigandines, and the matt surface of the same color on their open-faced sallet helms. They shot as they came, stopping briefly to bend the long yellow bows and send a gray-fletched arrow whirring downrange before the next dash; shafts thumped home in the man-shaped targets of straw matting bound round posts, or now and then vanished near them. ?Nossir! Sorry, Dad!? Richard Aylward Mackenzie said.

The boy wrenched his eyes from the dance of war, straightened up and chivvied the mounts a little closer together; they responded with lazy good manners. ?Nice to have room for this bit so close to the settlements,? John Hordle said, lowering a set of binoculars that looked like toys in his great fist.?Even?ere in farmin? country.?

His rumbling bass held the same slow yokel burr as Sam?s, deep English of a south-country village sort. Usually his wasn?t as ripe-he was a generation younger, around forty-but he unconsciously fell back into the speech of their shared birthplace as they spoke. ?Moind, with bows you don?t?ave to worry about some git a mile downrange catching one. Still, nice not to be crowded,? Sam replied.

The Mackenzies numbered over sixty thousand now, more than half of them born since the Change and more too young to remember much before it, but they weren?t short of land-even good land like this, not counting the vast mountain forests to the east on the slopes of the Cascades. There were probably more people about in the rural areas of the Willamette Valley than there had been before the engines died, but they used a lot less of the landscape, now that it wasn?t machine-cultivated to feed some distant metropolis. Most of the Clan?s territory down in the valley flats was like this, kept as a reserve against future growth, and the same was true in the other realms. ?Not much loik the land east of the Cascades, though,? Hordle said.?Less cover out there, mostly.?

Grazing livestock and dry-season wildfire, deer and elk and sounders of feral swine had kept the scrub and saplings from covering everything here, but the golden summer grass was shaggy and nearly waist high, studded with rosebush and hawthorns gone wild here and there. Scarlet English corn poppies starred the fields with swatches and dots of crimson.

My doing, that, Sam thought, with an inward grin.

He?d helped it along, at least; quietly dumped several score pounds of seed salvaged from garden-supply stores here and there in the first years, and they?d spread far in this agreeable climate and fertile soil. Not that he?d ever admit it, and he cursed the weeds with the best.

Bit of old Blighty, and sod the nuisance they are in the corn. We don?t have to squeeze every acre until it squeaks.

There was a stretch of wetland over westward to his right, thick with green cattails and reeds where a field drain had been blocked; most of the birds had fled the noisy humans. Elsewhere the trees that had lined tilled fields or roads before the Change had sent out waves of saplings, poplar and Douglas fir, bigleaf maple and garry oak, the oldest of them of respectable size by now. Another patch of forest marked the site of a farmhouse, snags of tumbled brick showing where the roots gripped and ground away at the old world?s works with slow vegetable patience.

More arrows flew; the levies were retreating now, the same stop-shoot-and-dash maneuver. This wasn?t the massed volleying by ranks that could darken the sky and smash armies, but a very respectable number of shafts were flicking in their long shallow arcs, blurring through the air. ?Not bad at all,? Sam said; in fact he was proud and happy with the performance.?Easier to make summat of?em than it was in England before the Change. Christ, it?d make you cry, to see some of the things that came into the recruiting offices back then. More like garden slugs on legs than?uman bein?s they was, sometimes. Present company excepted.?

The bigger man grunted agreement.?Well, this lot?aven?t spent their lives layin? about watchin? the telly and scarfing crisps.?

He smiled reminiscently and went on:?Remember those types they said were cheese and onion flavor? Made from rendered cow?ooves, I read once.?

He leaned on the brass pommel of his sheathed sword as he said it; the weapon was four feet in the blade, with a long double-lobed hilt and a cross guard. It wasn?t outsized beside John Hordle, who was six-foot-seven and broad enough to seem a little squat. In armor he could look overweight, something his great boiled ham of a face might suggest. ?No, it?s shoveling muck and hoeing spuds and chopping trees for these, murr loik,? Aylward said with satisfaction.? And practicing with the bow fraam the toime they?re six, naat to mention?unting. And they don?t worry themselves so much as folk did in our day.? ? Your day, Samkin.?

Today Hordle wore a sleeveless linsey-woolsey shirt in the warmth, besides trousers and boots and broad belt and the baldric for slinging the weapon over his back, and you could see that the three-hundred-odd pounds of him had scarcely an ounce of spare flesh. Massive muscle ran and flexed across thick heavy bone on a body the same width from shoulders to waist, with dense auburn furze on the backs of his hands and his arms and great barrel chest. The baldric had a device picked out on it in silver, of a bare tree surrounded by seven stars and topped by a crown. ?Gives a good start,? he agreed.?It?s the same with most we get for the Dunedain Rangers. All you?ave to teach?em is how to foight. And you?re roit about their not worryin?. Just take things as they come, which is sommat even sojers came hard to before the Change.?

One archer got a little too enthusiastic, shooting as he ran without taking time to aim. A bow captain came up behind him and administered a tremendous kick to the man?s backside, hard enough to send him forward onto his face with the surprise and shock. ?You?ve a fine old English discipline goin??ere,? Hordle said approvingly.?Sir Nigel must approve.? ?No,?e says there are toimes an officer?as ter be blind,? Aylward said.?Take a walk, loik, while the sergeant deals with things. No names, no pack drill.?

Hordle nodded.?Funny being one meself-an off?cer, that is. And you, Sammy, for all you swore you?d die a sergeant.?

Aylward grinned.?Some folk?ave ancestors. The Lorings go all the way back to Bastard Willie?s time-? ?Live up to it, they do,? Hordle observed. ?That?s so, bless?em. But you and me, John, we don?t?ave ancestors. We are ancestors, and the kiddies will?ave to live up to us.? ?Poor little buggers!? Hordle laughed.?Better them than me.? ?But you?re king o? the woods, too, eh?? Aylward observed dryly.

Hordle shook his head.?King?s roit?and, p?raps,? he said.?Or Prince Consort?s. Alleyne allus was better at the strategy side of it. Well,?e?s Sir Nigel?s son, and?e went to Sand?urst, so it staands to reason, dunnit? Still, I?m surprised how you?ve tamed these wild Irish.? ?Wild Irish?? Aylward asked, with a derisive snort.?These synthetic Scots and plastic Paddies? Stage Oirish, more loik, John. I swear if Lady Juniper?s last name had been von Hoffenburg they?d?ave taken to spiked helmets and jackboots that first year; they?d prob?ly have worn lederhosen wi??em, too. They?re no more Celts than you or me.?

Hordle grinned, a slightly alarming expression, and flicked at a lock of his dark red hair for an instant with one sausagelike finger; the first gray threads showed there this year. ?Speak for yourself, Sam. I don?t reckon the Saxons in our stamping grounds scragged all the Early Welsh girls they found when they landed at Gosport Hard and started gettin? antisocial wi? fire and sword. That?ud be proper wasteful.? ?It?s the way they talk I was thinking of,? Sam said. ?Saw-?eard-it happen, these twenty years and some. Oi was here roight from the beginning, not like you three late arrivals. Drove Lady Juniper fair mad, it did, but they wouldn?t stop. I give you the youngsters… they just grew up with it, so to say.? ?Could have been worse, Samkin. They could have imitated you instead of the way?er Ladyship sounds-? ?-what they thought she sounded like, y? rammucky lurden-? ?-I?d?ave landed here ten years later and found thousands of ?ampshire?ogs, only talking through their noses loik this.?

Hordle finished with an alarmingly accurate impression of someone who?d grown up on General American trying to speak with the accents of a Tillbury villager. ?Says the man who talks sodding Elvish most of the time, y? great gallybagger.?

The big man winced slightly.?That?s Lady Astrid?s fault. She were always mad for those tales. Not that I don?t loik them myself-and Alleyne liked them even better. Allus did, even when we were lads in Tillbury, back before the Change, and you were drinking my Dad?s beer at the Pied Merlin and telling us lies about the sojer?s life.? ?Which is why he ended up married to her,? Sam said.?But your missus is near as bad.? ?Oh, no, no, now there you?re wrong. She just loiked them stories. It?s Astrid who took it all for Gospel; Eilir went along with it, and now the youngsters all believe it, God?elp us. Anyway, they were already living in the woods and doin? the?ole bit when Sir Nigel and Alleyne and I arrived. Doesn?t hurt, does it? It?s useful, having a language nobody else speaks, like using Sign. Sort of like a regimental badge for us Rangers, too. And we?re the next thing to the SAS about these days.? ?And you sound a complete pillock when it comes out of your mouth, John.?

He sighed and nodded agreement.?You know the worst of it? When I start thinking in soddin? Sindarin. Going on sixteen years now I?ve been in those woods, and everyone reciting and singing at me about every bloody thing.?

Hordle sang, in a deep rumbling bass: ?Alack, Lord Hordle!

Woe to the Men of the West

Who get no rest

For there is no bum-wad

In the Silvan crapper!

Nor any yet

In my Flet

No knotted grass

For my ass

In Stardell Hall

Is?t there none at all?

Of any stripe?

That we may wipe??

Sam chuckled like gravel in a bucket.?Still, they?re clever as foxes and they fight?ard as badgers, so let?em sing, Oi say.?

The big man went on in more normal tones:? You don?t have to live with it. It?s a good thing the missus is deaf and gives me some peace; I?d have done someone an injury, else.? ?How?s the ear coming?? ?She?s foine; the wound?s healed up proper. Weren?t serious, and she says she never used the ear anyway. Still more of a looker than I deserve!? ?How?s the other??

That could only mean Astrid Havel, the Hiril Dunedain, the Lady of the Rangers. ?Lady Astrid? Fine, and lucky with it. The?eadaches tapered off. .. you know?ow it is after you get a bad thump on the noggin.?

They both knew; you didn?t get up from being knocked unconscious and walk away as if from a nap. Blinding headaches for months were a small price to pay. Hordle?s fingers played with the hilt of his great blade for a moment; Sam turned his head for an instant and raised one shaggy white eyebrow at Dick, who was leaning forward towards the conversation with his ears almost visibly stretched. The boy went over and began fiddling with his mount?s tack.

Hordle lowered his voice a little:?It gave me a fair turn, Sam. That burke in the red robe caught Astrid?s sword right in the middle of a lunge, caught the flat between his?ands.?

He slapped his palms together to illustrate how. ?Caught it and punched it back into her?ead. If it hadn?t been slippery with some blood on it?e?d have knocked her brains out. Gospel, Sam; I?m not?avin? you on.?

Sam Aylward whistled through his teeth. He?d seen the Hiril fight.

You couldn?t catch her sword like that. John?s roit; it?s not natural. ?And the skinny little git who did it had already knocked me for a Burton,? Hordle said.?One punch under the short ribs and I couldn?t move until I got my wind back. One punch through a mail shirt and padding! And I had to chop?is?ead off to put him down; he was about to twist Astrid?s off like a cook with a chicken. So she?s talking about a real Dark Lord this time.? ?Daft,? Sam replied.?But you got out and you took Peters with you, right from his own house. Astrid?s daft, sure enough, but she?s roit fly too, and she does mad things and gets away with them. Of course, you and Alleyne?elp.?

Carl Peters was-had been-Bossman of Pendleton; he was now a ?guest? in Castle Todenangst, up in Association territory. Unfortunately his wife had always been the real brains of that partnership, and she?d escaped the Dunedain commando raid with her two sons and was now ruling Pendleton in cooperation with the Prophet of the Church Universal and Triumphant and the President-General of the United States of Boise… and playing those uneasy allies off against each other to maintain her own family?s power. ?Keep?er feet on the ground, as it were.? ?Samkin…? Hordle said unwillingly.?I?m not sure she is daft, not about this. The Prophet was in that room, and I saw the bugger, and my bollocks crawled up so high I?ad lumps on me neck and had to massage them down again with warm oil and cloths later.?Alf the time I think Astrid?s barking mad… but the other half I think she may know summat I don?t, like this.? ?He?s certainly a nasty piece of work, our lad Sethaz,? Sam acknowledged.?I?ve talked to a few refugees from out east, and Lady Juniper to more.? ?No, Norman Arminger was a nasty piece of work. Sethaz is all that and a bit more, believe me.? ?Well, I?ll let Lady Juniper deal with that side of things, eh? It?s?er job, so to speak. Meanwhile we?ve got to fight?im.?

John Hordle shook off his mood and grinned again.?We? I thought you were retired, Samkin??

Sam Aylward snorted.?I?m too old to do much shooting or bashing,? he said.?That doesn?t mean me brain?s gone soft, not yet. Since we lost Chuck at Pendleton I?m advising his boy Oak.? ?Good man, Chuck. Good sojer, for all that he came late to it. He?ll be missed.?

Aylward nodded. He?d been First Armsman-in charge of training and leading the war levy-for the Clan from the beginning, when it was just a few dozen people; Juniper Mackenzie had found him trapped and dying of thirst near her cabin when the first Change Year was young, fruit of an early retirement and unlucky hunting trip financed by an unexpected legacy. Chuck Barstow had been his second for most of that time, a man ten years younger who?d been one of her coven before the Change and a Society fighter. He?d taken the top job after the Englishman got too stiff and slow for field command, in this age when a general had to match the stamina of twenty-year-olds on the march, and fight with his own hands now and then too. ?Good farmer as well, for all?e came late to that, too,? Aylward said.

Chuck had been a municipal gardener in Eugene by trade. Sam Aylward had been brought up on the poorest and most backward little farm in Hampshire himself, a joke and scandal to the neighborhood. They?d been organic when it just meant you couldn?t afford anything better, not that you got premium prices from fancy restaurants and a pat on the head from the Prince of Wales. Until the land was sold out from under his father?s feet to be a stockbroker?s toy and the younger Aylward took the Queen?s Shilling just in time for the Falklands War.

A thousand years of farming Aylwards, and I thought Dad would be the last. But what he taught me turned out to be as useful after the Change as fifteen years in the SAS, or even making bows as a hobby. All the more so as we couldn?t afford the latest gear.

The exercise had ended; the Mackenzie warriors were collecting arrows or sitting crouched on their hams or leaning on their longbows or sparring with shortsword and buckler. The bow captains and commanders grouped around the standard of the antlers and crescent moon; a discussion was going on there-Mackenzie-style, which involved a lot of arm waving and raised voices. A tall fair man ended it by listing things that hadn?t satisfied him. ?And by the Powers, you?ll do it all over again, or my name isn?t Oak Barstow Mackenzie and my totem isn?t Wolf!? he finished. ?Oak did well getting the Mackenzies out at Pendleton, after Chuck died. I talked it over with Eric Larsson. But it?s still bloody silly to name yourself after a tree,? Hordle grumbled. ?Says the man whose kiddies are called Beregond and Iorlas,? Sam commented dryly. ?Well, they?d have felt left out in Mithrilwood, loik, if we?d called them Tom and Bert,? Hordle said defensively. ?We?ll be sending a thousand archers east next week,? Aylward said soberly.?They?re about ready, I think.? ?They?ll be welcome,? Hordle said. His thumb ran along the guard of his sword again.?Welcome and no mistake. We?re stretched thin.? ?Not as thin as Rudi and my Edain and their lot, wherever they are by now,? Sam said quietly. ?Roit, Samkin. But thin enough. Thin enough.?

TheSwordoftheLady