"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 hint!
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 Dunedain 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, arching 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 he 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.