"Go in peace to the Summerlands and hunt beneath the forever trees, brave warriors," he said quietly. "We honor the fight you made; speak well of us to the Guard ians, and be reborn through the Cauldron of She who is Mother to us all."
Then to the woods: "Lord Cernunnos, Horned Master of the Beasts, witness that we kill from need and not from wantonness, to protect our farms and our folk; knowing that for us also the hour of the Hunter comes at last. And to Your black wing host, Lady Morrigu, I dedicate the harvest of this field."
A few of the Protectorate nobles crossed themselves or touched their crucifixes in alarm as he invoked the Powers-though this time not, he noted, Mathilda or Odard. Rudi suspected some of them were giving thanks that Matti hadn't been hurt for reasons other than love of their princess; he wouldn't have liked to have to ac count for an injury to the Lady Regent himself. Then ev eryone was smiling and exclaiming over the size of the tigers and the rareness of finding a streak -a group-of young males together. Usually one would drive all others out of his territory, even his siblings.
"They might as well be our nobles," Matti said dryly.
Everyone laughed at that. Chaka unstoppered a chased silver flask and they all took a sip of the brandy as the foresters and varlets came up to skin the kills. Odard took out a tape measure and sized them both.
"Nine feet six inches and nine feet eleven inches, nose-tip to base of the spine," he said, and stood back to let the servants do their work.
"Not a record, but close," Chaka added. "That's a day not wasted!"
One of the foresters grinned up at Rudi as they turned the animals on their backs to begin the flaying; he was an older man in his thirties, a little gray in the close-cropped yellow hair.
"I've never seen a man move so fast, my lord," he said. "That was a good piece of work, keeping the tabby in play with the spear. You saved yourself a bad mauling there, maybe your life, and perhaps saved a couple of others as well."
Rudi nodded thanks and handed him the flask; he'd never liked being called lord or having people wait on him hand and foot-Juniper Mackenzie had always done her share of the chores, and seen that he was raised the same way. The forester looked surprised, then took a quick swallow and handed it back, with a gasp of thanks; it was good brandy. Rudi drank again and returned the flask to Chaka, then puffed out a cloud of white breath.
"I was just barely fast enough, " he said.
"That tiger had reflexes like a cat!" Odard said.
Rudi groaned. "Too close for comfort!"
"Let's get back to the lodge," Mathilda said. "It looks like more snow, to me."
Rudi cocked an eye skyward. It had been cold all day; now the temperature was falling again, and the wind was from the north. The tall firs swayed with it, send ing showers of fine white crystals from the last day's fall down, and whipping up a ground mist. Snow rarely lay more than a few days in the valley flats, but this was a little higher; it might stick as long as a week here, in a cold winter. He swung into the saddle with the others and they headed back along their own trail; everyone started an old hunting song with a fierce bouncy tune, "The Eye of the Tiger."
"A good hunt," Chaka said again when they'd finished. "Nothing like it on a winter's day."
Rudi nodded agreement. "It is one way to liven up the Black Months, and it needs doing. Though it's more fun still if you stalk them alone or with one or two oth ers. The best way is to use a blind over a water hole or a game trail."
Mathilda smiled quietly; a couple of the others probably thought he was putting it on.
"Oh, come on." One of Odard's friends, a knight named Drogo de Gaston. "I know you Mackenzies are supposed to be hardy and all that, but that's going a bit far, isn't it?"
Rudi grinned. "Well, we don't have as many tigers down in our part of the valley," he said. "Also all our crofters have longbows, and know how to use them."
That brought more good-natured chaffing, for all that some of these young men had lost fathers under the Mackenzie arrowstorm in the War of the Eye.
Soon the hills swung back, and they were at the lodge. The Flying M had been a place for country pleasures long before the Change, and it was built in rustic style of notched logs. Smoke whipped almost horizontally from fieldstone chimneys as they pulled up before the veranda of a long low main building; there were some detached cabins for the staff, plus stables and paddocks, and an airstrip with a ramp and catapult arrangement that was used to launch gliders in the summertime. Rudi found it homelike, and flying was one of life's great pleasures, right up there with sex-his blood father had been a pilot by trade, and had been aloft on the day the engines stopped.
Dinner was roast venison they'd killed two days earlier, and a lot of fun-though he suspected it would have been a good deal rowdier if Matti weren't present, and the making of assignations with the servant girls was reasonably discreet under her eye. Rudi refrained entirely.
Though why she minds when she doesn't want to sleep with me herself, I don't understand, he thought. Strange folk, Christians.
When the cake had been demolished, they had the luxury of real coffee. That was still rare and very expensive, since it had to be shipped in from Hawaii or South America, through seas that were often stormy and which held more pirates every year-his mother refused to serve it, except at feasts where everyone could have some. He was cautious about it, because he wanted to be able to sleep tonight. The same trade had brought in the oranges and dates and figs that went around with the sweet dessert wine. The liqueur was from the valley's own vineyards but also an import to the Protectorate, from Mount Angel and done Trockenbeerenauslese style.
When he and Mathilda were alone by the fire she sipped from the golden-colored stuff in her glass and looked at him levelly before she said, "All right, Rudi, spill it."
He shrugged. " 'All my secrets I will share,' " he quoted, from the anamchara oath they'd sworn as chil dren. "But these aren't all my secrets. They're the Clan's secrets. And you're the one who has to tell your mother no when she asks… which isn't something I'd want to have to do."
She winced slightly, then sighed. "I've done it before and I'll do it this time. Now spill it."
"OK, you remember that guy from the east, Ingolf Vogeler?"
"Yeah," she said dryly. "Seeing as we all nearly got killed saving him. You and he and Juniper were spending an awful lot of time talking."
"It was a story worth hearing," he said, and told it.
"What?" she said when he was finished, sitting up and putting her empty glass down, impatiently waving away one of the servants who came up to refill it. When they were alone: "Are you bullshitting me again, Rudi?" Her eyes narrowed. "Because if you are, this is no time for one of your jokes-"
"No, no, I swear it by Brigid and Ogma, may they curse me with stutters all my life if I lie, and that's how we had it from him."
Mathilda's mouth dropped open slightly. "And you all believed it? Juniper believed it?"
"We had reason," he said, going a little grim; and he noted that she thought he was more likely to be credulous than his mother.
Well, fair enough… Juniper had once told him there was nobody more skeptical of charlatans than those who'd been genuinely touched by the Divine. And I've seen a few try to fool her over the years. Anyone stupid enough to try came away sorry and sore; nobody tried twice.
"I'm not all that happy about it, you know, Matti. Things are.. . awkward. Mother went to the nemed."
"The sacred wood? Why, what happened?" Mathilda said, startled and alarmed.