"How long ago?"
"Half an hour or a bit less. The trails there are good. They could be ten miles away by now if they headed west into the Valley."
Devorgill touched the blood and smeared it between the fingers of her left hand, sniffing it and then offering him the evidence. "Twenty minutes or a little more," she said.
Laegh's sister was the one who'd ridden out to find what was delaying the children and their escorts; right now she was gripping her horse's reins right under the bit to control its rolling-eyed fear as it pivoted its rear end about that fixed point with nervous side steps, and she was looking pretty spooked herself. Dennis glanced up at the sky and cursed to himself; the sun was already on the western horizon, and it was a wonder even a tracker of Laegh's skill had been able to see anything with the gloom growing beneath the trees.
"Laegh, can you follow them in the dark?"
"Not quickly, Uncle," he said, using the usual term to address someone a generation older. "My dogs can follow the trail if they don't break it in water, though. Worth trying, they'd get too far ahead if we just wait for dawn. And they might split up."
"Devorgill," he told the man's sister. "Get back to Dun Juniper, fast. Get the hounds, get four or five people, you pick them, the gear, weapons, spare horses and get back here fast. You-" He picked out another. "Get down to Dun Fairfax and tell them what's up and that we need another six who're good in the woods, and some more horses."
The woman vaulted into the saddle, reined her restive, snorting horse around, and switched its rump with the long end of the reins. It neighed and reared and broke into a gallop; the messenger ran in its wake, his bow pumping back and forth in his left hand. Dennis grinned mirthlessly at Laegh's unspoken protest at waiting for a war party.
"Not much use finding them if you can't fight 'em when you do, eh?" he said.
The young man hesitated. "And don't worry; I know I'm about as much use on a hunt as a hog at a handfasting. You're in charge. I've gotta stay here and see to things and figure out what to tell Juney."
There was a rustle through the watchers, and Dennis felt his stomach clench again. And I'm really not looking forward to that. Poor little kid… no, Rudi won't be scared, not Rudi. But he should be.
Someone else was coming down the trail, someone on a bicycle. Dennis swore again under his breath, feeling harassed; there were still five hundred people in Dun Juniper, and he didn't want any of them here right now. Then the bicycle came to a halt, and Judy Barstow let it fall and ran forward.
Oh, shit. Sanjay last year, Aoife this time. The dice are being really hard on her and Chuck Thank Everyone that all my kids are still too young to fight.
She halted when she saw her foster-daughter's body. For a moment her strong-featured face was blank, and then she sank to her knees. There was no sound save the soughing of the evening wind in the trees, and the rustling flicker of the lantern flame.
"My little girl," she whispered, touching the dead face, and then holding the eyelids closed and doing the same for her child's lover; tears dripped from her own eyes, runnels along the weathered olive skin of her cheeks. "My little red-haired girl. You were so brave and so scared that day on the bus when we found you, and I loved you then. You grew so fast-"
Her hand shook as she touched fingers to the blood and marked her cheeks and forehead, and then fumbled with the knot that held her hair. It fell loose around her face and shoulders, grizzled and black, as she raised her hands northward.
"I am the mother and I call the Mother's curse on you who did this, by the power of the blood of my child spilled on Her earth! I curse you with cold heart and hearth and loins and colder death! Curse you-"
Her voice broke into a low moan, then rose into a keening shriek-literally keening. Then it sank again, then rose; she rocked back and forth on knees and heels, her hands tearing at her hair as the wailing scream sounded long and lonely in the darkened woods. Dennis stood back from it, shivering slightly under the thick wool of his plaid; so did Laegh, looking more frightened still as his hand moved in a protective gesture-a High Priestess so lost to herself was frightening. Curses tended to spill over and bounce back.
Then the young hunter's sister rode up, a dozen others with her and each leading a spare horse; four big flop-eared hunting hounds trotted along with them, curious and alert but too well trained to break free. One of the riders tossed a spear to Laegh. He caught it with a smack of palm on ashwood, whistled the dogs in sharply, dipped spearhead and head and knee to Judy, and led his hunting-party into the darkness. Before the hooves had faded from hearing the belling of the hounds sounded, echoing through the nighted hills, a hunter's salute to the rising moon.
Others came up the pathway with a cart, and torches trailing sparks. Hands lifted the bodies of the Clan's warriors and laid them on the straw in the cart's bed, folding their hands over their breasts and pulling their plaids across their faces. Others helped Judy to her feet, supporting her as she stumbled blind with tears behind the slow pace of the oxen. Dennis sighed, shouldered his ax and fell in with the rest of the party. Her kin and friends would spend the night at the wake, talking of the dead and keening them: but he intended to break into his own brewer's stock-in-trade more privately, with his family, and then sleep as long as he could.
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:
"We all come from the Mother
And to Her we shall return
Like a stalk of grain,
Falling to the reaper's scythe
We all come from the Wise One,
And to Her we shall return
Like a waning moon,
Shining on the winter's snow
We all come from the Maiden-"
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-"