He bared his teeth for an instant. That committed him…but leaving your reserve too far back was as much a mistake as throwing it into the fray at the beginning.
The cryptographer’s fingers danced, and the paper was finished, copied and sealed. The message itself was a solid mass of letters and numbers; decoding it by sheer brute-force mathematics wasn’t impossible…but you needed big calculating machines, and even so it would take time, by which time it would be stale news.
For that matter, the Church Universal and Triumphant hated such machinery with a bitter passion; their official theology called the Change the judgment of the Ascended Masters on humankind for using too much of it. Boise had been more liberal in the old General’s day, but his son was the Prophet’s puppet now. Or the puppet of the force that controlled them both…
“Surface courier to the High Queen’s field HQ at Goldendale via Maryhill,” Rudi said.
No need to risk the heliograph net or a glider that might not make it that far.
“And another: Dúnedain code. To: Lord Alleyne, hîr Dúnedain. I direct high-priority reconnaissance for-”
This went a little more slowly; the message was not only to be encoded, but in Sindarin to begin with, which meant he had to spell it rather than speaking. The enemy probably had at least a few who could puzzle the language out with a set of the Histories to hand, but equally probably didn’t have anyone who could really speak it, particularly the way the tongue had developed among the Rangers over the past generation. Combining that difficulty with the randomizing code ought to make it unbreakable in any time that mattered.
“Or perhaps Sethaz or his High Seekers could read it,” Ignatius murmured, as the team cleared and packed their equipment.
Rudi nodded; if you’d spent two years of travel and battle and sickness and wounds and the death of friends and final triumph with a man, and him keen-witted, it was no great surprise when he followed your thought. The enemy was strong, strong, and they both knew it.
“Or perhaps not,” he said. “The raw power is there, yes, but-” he touched the hilt of the Sword “-not the…the affinity, would you say? The Powers behind the CUT hate the very touch of us, including the ones they use and possess, because they hate the universe of matter itself. Contact with us is like wading in a sewer to them, or cramming yourself into the mind and body of a maggot. You’ve seen how their touch destroys. Those Ones who gave me the Sword tried very hard indeed not to tear asunder the fabric of things by doing so; my fabric in particular, for which I’m grateful. The others don’t have that, mmmm, subtlety of touch.”
Ignatius nodded. “A point indeed. Diabolism is its own infinite punishment.”
The leather-clad couriers on their fast light horses took the messages and sprang into motion. They galloped along the edge of the now crowded road. A battalion from the confederation called Degania Dalet was coming up it now, ranked pikes alternating with recurve bows, singing something in a guttural minor key to flutes and some stringed instrument.
And before the Sword came to me, I’d have just said it had a fine stormy roll for a marching song to make the miles go by, he thought. Now…
…as drops of blood in our veins
Flow with heart’s beat
Upon the graves of our fathers
Dewdrops still fall…
He could not only understand the words; he could feel the ache of millennial sadness in them and the fierce determination beneath. He bowed his head a little with fist to chest in salute as the blue-and-white banner in the lead dipped to him, and called:
“Am Yisrael Hai!”
They broke off to give a baying cheer of Artos! Artos! to the counterpart of the ram’s-horn shofars in reply, then took up the song again as they passed; that league of villages was tightly organized for war and peace both, but not a large nation, even by today’s standards. Then came more supply wagons, big Conestoga-style vehicles loaded with tinned meat and dried beans and hard-tack, and then…
“And I recognize that, sure and I do,” he said, grinning.
The droning squeal of bagpipes came first, and then the rattling boom of Lambeg drums. Then a chorus of voices, thousands strong, a deep rhythmic male chorus with women’s higher notes weaving a descant through it. The complex measure was carried effortlessly, the mark of a people for whom music was part of who they were and every gathering a choir:
As the sun bleeds through the murk
‘tis the last day we shall work
For the Veil is thin and the spirit wild
And the Crone is carrying Harvest’s child!
“Your compatriots, Your Majesty,” Ignatius said, smiling. “And a song of the season.”
He’d spent a good deal of time in the Clan’s territories before the Quest, and made friends there despite his faith. And despite not being of the Old Religion…
Despite being cowan, as most of us would say, Rudi thought.
…Ignatius didn’t find their ways alarming. Rudi had rarely met a cowan who didn’t find that this particular tune made them uneasy, but the monk was apparently one of them.
Samhain!
Turn away
Run ye back to the light of day
Samhain!
Hope and pray
All ye meet are the gentle fae.
The bagpipers marched with the drones of the instruments bristling over their shoulders. The archers behind were all pushing their bicycles up the slope-modern models, with solid tires of salvaged rubber. Their bows and quivers and knocked-down swine-feathers showed over their backs, fastened to the rings and loops in the green leather surface of the brigantine jacks; most had their bonnets on and the helmets hung from their sword belts as well, and a swinging rattle went by beneath the music. More gear was slung around the cycles, which was part of the reason for using them, that and the fact that you could cover about four times as much ground per day as on foot and keep it up longer than a horse could.
The slope was easy enough to let the Clan’s warriors sing, a tune with a haunting dying fall in it:
Samhain!
Samhain!
Riding at the front of the Mackenzie host was its First Armsman, Oak Barstow Mackenzie, a big man in his thirties with his yellow hair in a queue down his back, wrapped in an old bowstring in the Clan fashion. He raised a hand in salute, touching the tuft of wolf-fur in the clasp of his bonnet. Spears jutted up from here and there in the ranks, bearing the sigils of Duns and the outlines of the sept totems-wolf and bear, raven and elk, dragon and fox and more.