For a while they'd been the only ones with weapons that worked, and who knew how to use them. In a world where you had to fight to take food and fight to keep it, a desperate man with hauberk and helm and shield, a sword and some faint beginning idea of what to do with it, had a big advantage over desperate suburbanites with kitchen knives and shovels. Mathilda went on:
"… and after they'd talked about what was happen ing, and Dad had convinced them things weren't going to Change back and they had to do what he wanted or they'd all die, he said: 'What if a man were to take it upon himself to be king?' "
Odard grinned, catching the reference; or maybe he'd heard the story before. Even when Rudi was visiting in Association territory, people tended to avoid certain subjects-after all, his blood father, Mike Havel, and Norman Arminger had fought like bulldogs with a grip for ten years and then killed each other in a spectacular duel between the two armies they led, and his mother, Juniper, hadn't exactly been friendly with the Armingers either, to put it mildly.
He racked his brains; he'd read a lot of history, particularly of periods well back before the twentieth century-it was fun, and useful, and his teachers had encouraged him, starting with Juniper. Then the fact jiggled into place, along with a memory of his mother and himself curled up on a couch reading a heavy book with a leather cover.
Ah. That was what Oliver Cromwell said, when he was thinking of taking the throne of England, after he'd killed Charles the First. He never did, though. He just called himself the Lord Prot… well, Annwyn take it, was that where that bastard Arminger got the idea?
Matti went on: "And Count Conrad… well, he wasn't a count then, of course… said, 'Oh, hell, Norman, we'll just call you the Lord Protector. You can enter an in sanity plea if the lights come back on, and we'll blame everything on you.'
"And Dad laughed and said: 'Lord Protector? I like it. We'll call ourselves the Portland Protective Associa tion; it'll sound more familiar to the non Society people I want to bring in. And if the lights come back on, Conrad, I promise to take the fall.' "
"Odd to think of important things starting by chance, like that," Odard said meditatively. "Though… when you're reading history, have you noticed how the older stuff seems more real, somehow? The people and the things they say and do, I mean. The closer you get to the Change, the more… weird… things seem. Except things like the Society; my mother's always on about that and how her father was king of some territory by right of combat. That sounds more like real life. It's all the stuff around it that doesn't. Opinion polls, and computers, and Star Trek…"
"The RenFaires, where my mother sang as a bard, they seem to have been pretty normal," Rudi agreed. "She'll be talking about them, and it's perfectly sensible, and then all of a sudden it's… the other stuff around it, like you said. Thinking about it is like trying to grab a live fish with your fingers; it's not impossible, exactly, but it's not worth the effort most of the time. And she sees it on my face, and calls me a Changeling."
They both gave chuckles of agreement as they followed the sledge through the four-towered gatehouse; they were Changelings, which was the slang term for people born after the world was remade.
The gates were wide open-it was the middle of the afternoon and peacetime-but Rudi made a reverence with steepled hands and thumbs on chin to the posts on either side; Lugh with his spear, Brigid with her sheaf and flame. There was a pleasant smell of woodsmoke, cooking, animals, infinitely familiar and welcoming.
Inside the walls didn't look as tall, since the bottom twelve feet were built into what had been the sides of the plateau, leaving the inner surface level. The ramparts were lined with small log houses, carved and painted with themes from myth or simple fancy, and in the central area were the buildings that served the dwellers here and the Clan at large: bathhouse, smithy, stables, workshops where every craft from glassblowing to hand printing was practiced and taught, granary, infirmary, bad-weather Covenstead, library and schools and more, divided by graveled lanes.
Just right, he thought affectionately. Not too big like Sutterdown or, Mother-of All help us, Corvallis; but big enough to be interesting, and the woods and fields right there outside.
A crowd gathered around the sled with the big fir; most of the households had their own Yule Tree, but this was one for the whole dun and all Mackenzies too. Rudi waved to them all and swung down from Epona's sad dle; half a dozen youngsters sprang forward to take the bridle, and he picked one the mare had shown some liking-or at least tolerance-for. Another proudly bore off his sword belt and quiver and cased longbow.
The hall itself was the largest building, its shingled roof rearing over the rest like a dragon's scaly back, green in patches with moss beneath the thickening coat of snow. The foundation had been that hunting lodge, a big log box on knee high fieldstone. Late in the first Change Year the early Mackenzies had doubled its size by the simple expedient of taking off the roof, adding more squared logs, and then putting the roof back, to give two tall stories and a big loft. A veranda and bal cony ran around three sides, supported by pillars made from whole tree trunks.
Of course, there had been other modifications… The pillars were carved in running knotwork and elongated stylized animals, then stained and painted with browns and golds and greens-anyone these days would recog nize it as Mackenzie work; this was the original that other duns had copied. At either end the roof rafters crossed one another and rose to face inward in gilded spirals, sunwise and widdershins to balance the energies.
Where the horizontal beams of the balcony jutted out through the pillars they were carved in the shapes of the Clan's sept totems, the heads of Wolf and Coyote, Raven and Bear and Tiger; the grinning jaws held chains that supported big lanterns wrought of glass and brass and iron. The wicks within were already lit against winter's gloom, though it was only a little past noon, and they cast pools of warm yellow across painted wood and trampled snow. There was a reason these were called the Black Months.
The crowd was already freeing the tree from the sledge; they waited for Rudi, though, as he stepped forward to shoulder the heaviest load at the base.
"The Holly King grows old!" he shouted gaily. "Soon he will fall to the Oak King, and the Sun will be reborn!"
One of the twins was back at the other end-it had to be a woman there, of course, and an Initiate.
"The Crone is carrying Winter's child," she called. "But He will be born to marry the Maiden!"
A dozen shoulders took up the tree between them. Someone swung open the big double doors and they dashed up the stairs and into the hall itself. Inside was a great open space the length and breadth of the build ing, the walls carved and painted into a fantasy of leaf and flower and faces out of tales. A tub of water waited at the western end, with a screw and collar arrange ment for holding the Yule Tree upright. He knelt with a grunt-the sapling was as thick as his thigh at the base, and this was going to be tricky. He guided the cut end into the circle with casual strength, then called, "Now!"
All the hands on the trunk and the forked poles laid ready for the moment were teenaged at least; it was a privilege to help with this. He put his shoulder to it, boughs scraping past his face, buried in softly aromatic green needles, and pushed, taking the strain carefully as he felt the weight come onto the muscles of his back and belly-that you were very strong didn't mean you couldn't put your back out; he'd seen it happen. Rudi had been around heavy weights and their handling all his life; he could sense when it began to tilt as the others pushed…