A Meeting at Corvallis (50 page)

As he walked, a voice began to sing; one at first, haltingly, and then with more and more joining in to the hypnotic rhythm of the chant:

Near Appletree, Willamette Valley, Oregon
March 6th, 2008/Change Year 9

Tiphaine Rutherton looked at her watch. It was a sign of Lady Sandra's favor, a self-winding Swiss beauty made forty years ago, just before electrics became common, with a heavy tempered-glass cover and secondary dials showing the day and month. The glider pilot's timepiece was probably a good deal less fancy, but it would be functional.

In which case, where
is
the moron?
she thought impatiently, scanning the sky above.

They were in the shelter of a patch of Garry oak, not far from a ruined farmstead whose chimney poked up among vegetation gone wild, and well beyond the settled part of the Mackenzie territories, just south of a height called Famine Hill. They were still well within the notional border, and hunters and traders used these lands—they'd seen a small shrine to Cernnunos not far back, an elk's skull and antlers fastened to a tree with the hooves below and signs of small parties camping repeatedly not far away. That made signal fires far too dangerous, or any fires at all for that matter. The men were caring for the horses, feeding them rolled oat pellets from the saddlebags because they couldn't let them out in the open to graze.

She looked over to where the children were seated side by side beneath a tree. The Mackenzie brat had a light chain hobble on, and gave her a steady, defiant glare when he felt her gaze. Princess Mathilda Arminger looked almost as hostile; if Tiphaine had dared, she'd have handcuffed them together. The glare grew narrow as she walked over and went down on one knee.

“Young lord,” she said. “I'm truly sorry about chaining your legs, but unless you give me your oath not to try to escape—”

“No,” he said shortly.

“And I can't have my men shoot at you if you
do
try to run away,” Tiphaine went on. “Not with the princess so…loyal a friend.”

Actually I will, and keep the princess sedated until we get back if I have to,
she thought.
Once I hand her over to Lady Sandra alive,
my
job's done. But I can't
say
that where she's listening. Mary Mother, what a situation!

Aloud she said: “So I have to be very sure you don't try to escape. Please forgive me, but this is war, and I am the faithful vassal of Lady Sandra—the princess' mother. I did what was necessary.”

The chiseled features softened very slightly, and the big blue-green eyes grew a little less chilly.

“I understand that, my lady,” he said, with self-possession beyond his years, a voice like a well-tuned harpstring, giving promise of a chest-filling resonance when he came to a man's years.

Mathilda looked at him in surprise as he went on: “I don't hate you. You're a warrior doing your duty to your folk and chief, like Liath and Aoife did. I know people die in wars. But…remember it's
my
duty to stop you doing yours.”

He smiled then, and shook back his mane of curling Titian hair, glorious even in the forest's shadow and tangled with twigs and leaves.

Mary Mother,
she thought, slightly dazed.
What's he going to be like when he grows up? No wonder the little princess was taken with him!

Normally she just wasn't affected by male looks one way or another, adult or child, but she had to grant Rudi Mackenzie was beautiful by any standard, like a cougar or an otter; and she could see the thoughts moving behind the blue-green eyes. He wasn't exactly precocious, but he was disconcertingly sharp for someone his age.

And at nine years old he gave Ruffin all he could handle with a knife right after being thrown from a horse…Well, he's half the Witch Queen, and half Lord Bear…I wish we could have kept that horse. It was beautiful too, and it would be a hold on him.

The wounded man came up with the rations—waybread, cheese, smoked dried salmon, raisins—and handed the children theirs with a smile, despite the pain he must be feeling from the cut arm and the dozen hasty stitches they'd had to put in at the first stop to keep him from leaking all over the backtrail. He said something to the boy; Rudi laughed and made a gesture as if holding a knife, and Ruffin grinned and slapped the hilt of his sword with his good hand.

I hope to hell Lady Sandra knows what to do with him, if she doesn't just have him thrown back at the kilties out of a catapult. Though it'll probably be a lot more subtle than that.

The raisins were lousy, particularly if you could remember what Sun-Maid tasted like, sticky and a little mushy; Oregon didn't have the right sort of climate for drying grapes, and she swallowed them as quickly as she could. The double-baked waybread looked like crackers, and had the consistency and taste of salty, sun-dried wooden slats from a fruit crate; she gnawed at hers cautiously as she ate the perfectly acceptable crumbly yellow cheese and deep pink salmon.

“The kilties are probably still on our trail,” Joris observed.

“I think we shook them—” she began. Then: “There it is!”

Bird-tiny, the shape of the glider showed against a cloud. Tiphaine pulled the wigwags out of her saddlebags and stood in the open, signaling Girl-Scout fashion. She'd met Katrina in the Scouts, just before the Change….

After a frustratingly long wait the glider turned and banked lower. Tiphaine repeated the signals patiently, amusing herself thinking how the so-called Lady of the Dúnedain was going to react when she heard about Mathilda's rescue—and the capture of Rudi Mackenzie, and that Tiphaine Rutherton had done both, and brought the children through what the murderous bitch called
her
territory.

And I did it, Katrina,
she thought.
No,
we
did it, together.

The glider circled three times as she repeated the message; she could imagine the pilot with one hand on the control yoke and the other holding his binoculars. Then he waggled his wings and banked again, turning north. The glider mounted skyward in a smooth, arcing rush as it hit the updraft on Famine Hill, turning on one wingtip in a narrow circle as the sheet of rising air flung it skyward. When it was insect-tiny it banked again, heading north. The Willamette Valley was good sailplaning country, and it ought to have no trouble making the thirty miles to the launching field near the castle at Gervais.

She was grinning to herself at the thought when one of the men started up with a curse.

“It's those fucking dogs again!” he said. “Hell, don't the kilties ever get tired?”

“Get mounted, everyone!” she snapped, cocking an ear.

Sure enough, a faint belling sound was coming from the southeast, harsh and musical at the same time. It took only moments to get the tack back on the horses; the beasts were looking weary, but with remounts they hadn't come anywhere close to foundering them. Ivo unshackled the Mackenzie boy and then cuffed his ankles to the stirrups, and passed a chain on his wrists through the loop on the saddlebow. That was mildly dangerous, but the knight would be taking his horse on a leading-rein as well, so it was unlikely to bolt, and the boy rode as if he'd grown out of the horse's spine anyway. Mathilda had been good in the saddle before she was kidnapped and was even better now; evidently the Clan hadn't been neglecting her education in the equestrian arts over the past year. She'd pitched in with the camp chores without complaint as well, which was a bit surprising.

The sprayer was a simple thing like an old-time Flit gun. Tiphaine checked the direction of the wind—out of the north—and began methodically pumping a mixture of gasoline and skunk oil over their campsite in a fine mist. Rudi wrinkled his face, and so did Mathilda; it smelled awful to a human, but it would stun the sensitive nose of a tracking hound for hours.

“Out of the way, Ruffin, unless you want to smell so bad your leman sends you to sleep in the outhouse when we get back. What are you looking at, anyway?”

The young knight chuckled as he moved aside to avoid getting any of it on his clothes, and held up a ring. “The kid tried to drop this!” he said. “I like the little bastard, dip me in shit if I don't.”

Tiphaine nodded; Rudi grinned impudently back at her. She checked the ground; sure enough, he'd moved leaves aside, drawn an arrow with his heel and then covered it again without anyone noticing. She looked back at him impassively as she scrubbed it out with her foot. Mathilda looked unhappy again; she must be feeling very torn.

“We'll go up the old railroad line until we hit Apple Creek,” she said to the others as she swung into the saddle. “Then we'll wade up the creekbed half a mile.”

“Then?” Joris said. “We should know, in case we're separated.”

Tiphaine met his heavy-lidded eyes. He was a vassal of Lady Sandra's Household like her, and he'd obey whoever the Lady told him to, even an untitled woman. That didn't prevent him from resenting it, and needling her subtly.

“No we shouldn't, Joris, in case the kilties catch one of us,” she replied.
So you don't have to know we'll head for Sucker Slough, cross the North Santiam there and make for Miller Butte, where there ought to be a couple of troops of men-at-arms to escort us home.

“Yeah,” Ivo said. “That might be the Witch Queen after us.” He crossed himself. “Maybe that's
how
they're following us—magic.”

“Sounds awful like a bunch of plain old hound dogs to me,” Tiphaine said dryly, and reined her horse around. “Let's go!”

Missouri Ridge, Willamette Valley, Oregon
March 5th, 2008/Change Year 9

Juniper Mackenzie felt slightly guilty that she wasn't pushing one of the mountain bikes as she leaned into the welcome warmth of her horse's flank. It was cold and wet here in the foothills near Trout Creek, and the old gravel cutting was chilly under a slow morning drizzle and a low, gray sky; fifteen hundred feet was high enough up to be a bit colder than the Valley proper, and they were a thousand feet higher than Dun Juniper as well as sixty miles north and east. Fog drifted over the hills about them, hiding the tops of the trees and drifting down the slopes in tatters and streamers, dull gray against the second-growth Douglas fir; everything smelled of wet; the wet wool of her jacket and plaid, wet leather and horse from her mount, wet earth and brush from the ground. There was little sound, save for the slow sough of wind, the occasional stamp of a horse's foot, and the
gruk-gruk-gruk
of ravens that were the first birds she'd seen in hours.

Her thoughts went homeward, and she imagined Rudi and Mathilda reading by the hearth with old Cuchulain wheezing in sleep on the rag rug, cider mulling in thick mugs…

And oh, Mother-of-All witness, I'd rather be there than here!
she thought ruefully, taking another bite from a dried, salted sausage.

It wasn't exactly eating in the usual sense: more like worrying a bit off an old tire, and then chewing until your jaws were tired and you gave up and swallowed the whole barely touched lump the way a snake did a dead rat. She gave journeybread to her horse, and the animal gratefully crunched the hard biscuit in sideways-moving jaws.

“And you don't have to worry about the sorry state of our dentistry, sure,” she said. Then when it lipped at her fingers for more, smearing them with slobber:
“Niorbh a fhiú a dhath ariamh a bhfuarthas in aisgidh!”

A hundred or so of the First Levy were in the cutting too; most were squatting by their bicycles, eating or looking to their gear or just patiently waiting despite the general, damp misery. Two near her were even chuckling softly about something. Ten times that number were scattered through the woods within a quarter mile of her, but they made little noise and gave less sight of their location. That and the wretched weather ought to hide them from the Protector's aerial scouts, even though they were far north, near his bases.

A clop of hooves brought her head up. Sam Aylward was riding towards her from the path to the east, his horse's hooves throwing up spatters of mud as it came. That coated his boots and stockings and kilt with gray-brown muck. The man with him had started out that way, clothed in leather pants and jacket of similar hue, his round helmet and steel breastplate painted dull brown, and his face and hair and eyes were all shades of the same color as well; he wore a long, hooded duster over the armor and carried a short pre-Change compound bow in a case at his left knee, with a long, slightly curved saber at his waist. Juniper grinned and moved away from her horse, extending a hand as the two men pulled up and swung down from the saddle; two young Mackenzies took their mounts.