A Meeting at Corvallis (38 page)

Mathilda was off in one corner of the loose-box, sitting cross-legged on a bale of hay and watching him currycomb his horse, with a book open on her lap—he could see an archer in a helmet and jack drawing a longbow on the cover. He recognized his own copy of
The Free Companions
with the Wyeth illustrations, a gift from his great-great-uncle to Juniper before he was born, and from her to him; he'd read it with Matti while he was in the tail end of his convalescence, restless with the orders that kept him quiet and in bed so much.

It was a great story, and the people and everything in it were a lot more understandable than most books from before the Change. Sir Nigel had told him more stories about the people in it, too; he'd had more books by the same writer when he was a kid, a man named Donan Coyle.

Two big, shaggy, brown dogs named Ulf and Fenra were curled up with her, siblings from a litter old Cuchulain had sired with a mastiff bitch three years ago. Ulf had his head on her feet, thumping his tail absently when she patted him now and then, and Fenra was pretending to be asleep, but occasionally sneaking a mock-casual peek at Saladin and heaving a wistful sigh. She was far too respectful of Epona's hooves and probably of the cat's claws to do anything about it, though.

“She needs a run,” Rudi said to the air, clearing his throat to add emphasis. “Epona needs a run.”

Aoife and Liath were on guard, which for the past half hour had meant sitting in the
next
loose-box; they'd been talking softly until a few moments ago.

He cleared his throat again and spoke more loudly: “I
said,
Epona needs a
run
! I'm gonna take her out.”

A giggle came from the loose-box beyond this one, hidden by the barrier between, planks as tall as a grown man's chest. Then Aoife cleared her throat in turn and said from there, a bit breathless: “Didn't Sally say something about an arithmetic assignment your crop of little goblins had to have ready by Monday?”

“Aoife, I haven't told
anyone
about that poem you wrote about Liath. And it was
really
soppy. I bet everyone would laugh and laugh and laugh when they heard you said her eyes were like two pools of—”

“Poem?” Mathilda said, looking up with interest from the book.

He felt a little guilty about blackmailing Aoife—she'd been using scraps of smooth bark for practice and probably hadn't thought anyone would go to the trouble of picking them out of the Hall's kitchen-kindling box. On the other hand, he was a ten-year-old kid…nearly ten…and she was twenty-one, so it was only fair that he was sneaky now and then. Aoife had been so caught up in composing it, she barely complained when Uncle Chuck—her father—made her and her friend stay here on guard duty rather than ride with the First Levy.

“Poem?” another voice from the other loose-box said, even more breathless. “You wrote a
poem
for me?”

“Hey, I'll tell you about it later, all right, honeybunch?” Silence, and then Aoife rose and came around to the door of the stall, brushing straw out of her dark red hair and off her kilt. “OK, sprout. Just on the meadow, though. It's a couple of hours till dinner, anyway.”

Epona tossed her head as if she knew what was happening, and tossed it again and stamped a foot eagerly as Rudi and Mathilda started to get the tack ready. The big black mare had the loose-box all to herself, and did even when the stables were full; there were three horses in the next, though. The girl's favorite horse was out with the levy, who had first call, but a good solid cob was available from the remains of the common pool kept for Clan business; it crunched a carrot enthusiastically, and then sighed as the saddle blanket was tossed over its back. They led it ambling over to a mounting block so that they could saddle it.

“Lazy old thing!” Mathilda said, shaking a finger at the bay gelding. “See if I give you any more carrots!”

“Well, how would you feel if someone put an iron bar in your mouth and made you run around carrying them on your back?” Rudi said reasonably.

“But that's a horse's
job,
” Mathilda said. “Look at Epona—she'd put on her own tack if she could.”

“That's Epona,” Rudi pointed out.

“Yeah,” Mathilda agreed. “I think she could talk, if she wanted to.”

“She
does
talk, to me. But for most of them, it's just what they have to do 'cause we tell 'em to,” Rudi said. “What they really like is hanging out with their herd, and eating.”

He lifted his own saddle—both the children were using a light pad type—off its rest and carried it over to Epona; she stood patiently while he clambered up on a box and laid it carefully on her back over the saddle blanket. The tall mare seemed to be on the brink of a run even standing still; she was glossy black, her mane combed to a silky fall; she was also sixteen hands, and better than a thousand pounds, for all that she was as agile as the sulky Saladin, now looking down at them resentfully from a cross-timber where he'd jumped when pushed off his equine heating pad. Aoife leaned against a wooden pillar with her arms crossed, chewing on a straw and offering comments as he arranged the straps and buckles.

Epona stood still for it, though, with no more movement than shifting weight from foot to foot, not even swelling her belly out when the girth was buckled on. He didn't use a bit, just a hackamore bridle; Epona needed no compulsion to go the way she should.

Liath appeared a few seconds later, blushing furiously when Rudi made a languishing kissy-face at her behind Aoife's back. The two adults carefully checked the harness on both horses, then nodded before picking out mounts and getting started on their own heavier war-saddles, what the oldsters called a Western type. When the horses were ready they pulled on their own harness; padded jackets with elbow-length mail sleeves and leather-lined mail collars and the brigandines that went over that. The torso armors had a heavy, smooth, liquid motion as the warriors swung them on and buckled the straps on their left flanks, making a subdued chinking sound as the small rectangular plates shifted between the inner and outer layers of green-dyed leather.

“Good job, sprout,” Aoife said, running her fingers over Epona's harness without quite touching it—the tall warm-blood mare still didn't like anyone but Rudi laying a hand on her. “You've got a natural talent for horses. Yours is pretty good too, Matti. You're really picking it up.”

“I'm glad I've learned how to do it for myself,” Matti said. “Now I'll always know how.”

Unexpectedly, shy Liath spoke up with a grin and a joke as she strung her long yew bow: “What
don't
you have a natural talent for, Rudi?”

“Arithmetic,” he said, making his face serious. “I really have to
work
at that.”

The warriors buckled on the broad metal-studded leather belts that held their shortswords and dirks and bucklers, then slung their quivers and longbows over their shoulders; Liath took a battle spear from where she'd leaned it beside the big doors, the edges glinting coldly in the stuffy dimness of the stables.

“Don't forget your plaid, sprout,” Aoife said. “And your jacket, Matti. Still pretty brisk out there.”

“You're worse than Mom,” Rudi said.

“You betcha I am! The Chief lets you get away with anything. Put it on. It's a lot chillier out there.”

Rudi rolled his eyes, shrugged, then wrapped and belted the blanketlike tartan garment, pinning it at his shoulder with a brooch of silver-and-niello knotwork; he didn't feel the cold as much as most people, but Aoife was always at him like a mother duck with one duckling. Aoife's foster-mother Judy had always fussed at her children, and she'd picked it up.

I feel sorry for
her
kids, when she has them,
he thought, then shrugged ruefully.
She just doesn't want me to catch a chill 'cause she likes me.

Mathilda put on her red woolen jacket and buttoned it; that was a gift from her mother in Portland, and a really nice piece of weaving—Juniper Mackenzie said so, and she was an excellent judge, being the best loomster the Clan had. Then she proudly added a belt with a dirk.

They all led their horses out of the warm, dim stables; the dogs followed along with their tongues lolling and tails wagging, glad to be moving too. The way to the gate turned right from there, past the hot clamor of the smith's shop with its open front and bearded mask of Goibniu Lord of Iron done in wrought metal and fixed to the smoke hood over the forge-hearth, flanked by the Hammer and the great twisted horn that held the Mead of Life. Rudi's feet slowed for a moment. The master smith was sitting at a bench with drill and punch and file, putting the finishing touches on a helmet shaped from a sheet of steel plate, keeping an eye on his apprentices at the same time. One pumped her turn at the bellows with weary resignation. Another at the square stone hearth took an odd-looking thing like a cross between a spearhead and a spade out of the white-glowing charcoal in his tongs and held it on the anvil as he shaped the crimson metal with his hammer,
clang!
and a shower of sparks and
clang!
again and then swiftly
clang-clang-clang-clang,
muscle moving under the sweat-slick skin of his thick arms, face sharply intent on the task.

Then he plunged it in the quenching bath with a seething bubble and hiss of oily steam, held it up for the master to see and got a nod of approval before he returned to the finicky task of putting in the hinge for one of the helm's cheek-pieces. Another apprentice was doing farrier-work, shoeing a horse—one of the big Suffolks—and looked up from the hoof to wave her hammer, smiling around a mouthful of long horseshoe nails. A wave of heat and the smell of charcoal and scorched hoof and hot iron came out of the smithy, and soap and boiling water and wet cloth from the laundry behind it.

Gotta go,
Rudi thought reluctantly, though he wouldn't have minded lingering a bit; smithing fascinated him, and the making of weapons in particular.
But someday I'm going to learn that stuff.

He couldn't do it as a living—Mom had other plans, and people would disapprove, and what he really wanted was to be First Armsman of the Clan someday—but there wasn't any reason he couldn't help out the master smith when he was a bit older and big enough to be useful. Everyone said he had clever hands, and he was already good at making little things, harness straps and carvings and pottery.

In the open roadway between the stables and the infirmary the air was sharper, with the cool, damp bite of early spring, though the day was fair. Rudi felt his blood flow faster as he took a deep breath, and when the prickle of sweat on his skin went chill he was glad of the plaid.

Aoife still fusses,
he grumbled to himself.

Under the usual smells was a spicy-sharp one from a two-wheeled cart near the infirmary doors, drawn by a pair of oxen; Aunt Judy was there, wearing a long, stained bib-apron and inspecting bundles of dried herbs and bark, and talking with a man he recognized as a healer from a dun down on the southern border of the Clan's lands.

“Hi, Mom!” Aoife called; the situation was too casual for
merry met
. “How's it going?”

“Hello, Aoife. Hi to you too, Liath—still keeping bad company, I see,” Judy Barstow Mackenzie said. “I'm just checking the willow bark and tansy Frank brought in. If you two don't have anything to do, we'll be chopping and steeping and distilling, the children could watch…”

Aoife grinned. “I'm a warrior on Clan business, Mom, orders from Dad-the-Second-Armsman no less,” she said. “Taking the sprouts out for some exercise counts as part of the job, since they can't go alone.”

“Clan business,” Judy sniffed, and put her hands on her hips. Rudi smiled to see it; his mom used exactly the same gesture. She and Judy had been friends forever. “Meaning you get to laze about snogging with your girlfriend while everyone else works.”

It was strange to think of them as young like him and Matti, running around and playing.

“Snogging?” Mathilda said, sotto voce.

“Snogging. Liplocking,” Rudi answered with an innocent look, and somewhat louder, watching the tips of Liath's ears turn red—she hadn't taken off her flat bonnet and put the helmet on yet. “Smooching.”

Then Aunt Judy grinned, even at Matti. She wasn't what you could call easy with the girl yet, but she was trying.

“I'd like to help you with the herbs again,” Matti said. “Could I do that later?”

“Sure,” Judy said. “I think you've got a talent for the healing arts. Drop by after dinner, and I'll show you how we make the willow-bark extract.”

Rudi gave his mother's best friend a big grin. She
was
trying. She snorted at him, then winked and pushed Epona's head away when the mare came up and nuzzled at the herbs on the cart—or rather began to; that way the horse knew enough not to try a nibble, and she saved her fingers. Then they led their horses out onto the graveled roadway that ran all around the oval interior of Dun Juniper, in front of the log cottages and workshops built up against the inside of the wall, turning right towards the gate and the tall green roof of the Hall. Cold wind ruffled the puddles from yesterday's rain; they were gray with rock-dust from the pavement. They walked through snatches of conversation, the thump of looms and the hammering of a gang doing repairs on one of the heavy ladders that ran up between the cottages to the fighting platform, the
tippty-tap-tap
ching!-
tappy-tap
-tap of a typewriter, through gaggles of younger children running and yelling and playing, and faintly the sound of a work-song from a group kneading bread in the Hall kitchens. A sharp scent of fennel and sausage and garlic meant someone was making pizza.