"One thing that's bothering me," Ingolf said hesitantly. Then he went on: "Look, that… Voice… told me to go find the Sword of the Lady. But it showed me a sword. That's sort of…"
"Contradictory," Mary or Ritva said helpfully."Is Rudi the Sword of the Lady, or is the sword the sword?"
Rudi nodded. "That had occurred to me. Well, it's an oracle-they're usually gnarly and hard to figure out. But it doesn't change what we have to do, the which is get to Nantucket, sure."
"Get you to Nantucket, like a bolt at a target," Ingolf said. Somberly: "I've already been there, and I wish to God I didn't have to go again. Even without the weirdness, it's not exactly a merry outing like sugaring-off in the spring."
"Let's break it down," Rudi said. "We need to make the preparations; then we need to go, and preferably we need to do it quietly so this Prophet doesn't get wind of it."
"How many people?" Mary or Ritva said. "Nine is traditional."
Rudi looked at them, unable to decide for an instant if they were putting him on. It was a very Rangerish thing to say, but… he decided they were; the bland butter-wouldn't-melt was the giveaway.
"As few as possible," he said in a quelling tone. "We have to sneak there and back-we couldn't take enough to cut our way through, not if we turned out all the troops of the Meeting."
"Right enough," Ingolf said, sounding a little reas sured. "But not too small. Most of the country we'll be crossing isn't what you'd call easy. We'll want enough to discourage bandits and look out for one another. Nine sounds good-in fact, I'd be happier with a dozen or so."
"We've got one asset already," Rudi said thoughtfully. He pointed at the twins. "You two."
"That's true, but you're not usually so perceptive, Rudi."
He snorted and went on: "You're Dunedain ohtar. Rangers go all sorts of places and deal with all sorts of people; I mean, yeah, you're my sisters and your dad was Bear Lord, but by now people are used to you show ing up wherever without a lot of fuss. And the Prophet's men won't be looking for you specifically yet."
"And you're gir… women," Ingolf said. At their in quiring look: "The Cutters don't hold with women doing much besides keeping house and raising kids, or working the churn and loom," he said.
"Canuidhollin," Mary or Ritva replied crisply. Which meant roughly: What complete idiots.
"Yeah, but they'll be less likely to notice you."
"Notice us do what?"
"Here's my plan…" Rudi went on.
Dun Fairfax,
Willamette Valley, Oregon
April 16, CY23/2021 A.D.
Edain Aylward Mackenzie stopped and took a deep breath at the entrance to his home. This part of it had been a two car garage in the old days; someone had it told him what that meant once, but he'd forgotten. He told him what that meant once, but he'd forgotten. He was nineteen… well, nearly nineteen. All his life it had been the place where his father made bows and fletched arrows, and his mother wove at the big loom, when they weren't out about the chores of house and farm.
Umm, Dad… he began mentally, rehearsing what he'd say, then wrung the flat Scots bonnet in his hands. Oh, Wild Hunt take it, I could never fool him!
If he stood here eventually someone would ask him what he was doing; the Aylward house was only one of twenty inside the log palisade that enclosed Dun Fair fax. He took a deep breath, said, "Stay, Garbh!" to the shaggy half-mastiff bitch at his heel, then opened the door and plunged in, blinking as he went from light to shadow.
There he stopped in alarm; his father was seated at his workbench, bent over with a hand pressed to his side.
"Are you all right, then, Dad?" he blurted sharply, his own burden forgotten.
His father grinned back at his seriousness and straightened. "No, I'm not all right," he said. "I'm old, boy, and there's no cure for it. Some bones I had broken on me when I was about your age caught up with me for a bit there."
Edain was worried still. He was young enough for his gut to think that his father and mother went on like the rocks and trees while he changed. Some of his first mem ories were of sitting like this, watching his father at his bowyers' craft. Often while his mother made the loom thump at the other end of the big room, amid the smell of glue and varnish, sawdust and linseed oil and wax, with his elder half sister helping her and the youngsters in the cradle or crawling about with Grip and Garm, his father's hounds.
But I'm old enough to know different. Even trees don't live forever, he thought with a chill. Grip and Garm are dead.
And his younger brother, Dick, was fifteen and insuf ferable now, and his youngest sister, Fand, was twelve and worse.
Even rocks don't go on forever.
And his father was old; in his sixties. His hair was still thick and curly, but the brown had turned mostly gray or white, and the flesh had fallen in a bit on his strong square-jawed face. He still got about well enough and did most of a man's work, but he'd retired as first armsman some years ago now.
"So, spit it out," the elder Aylward went on, leaning back with his elbow on the table with its clamps and vise.
"Ah…"
Edain shuffled his brogues on the well-swept con crete of the floor. But for the age he looked much like his father, only a finger above average height but broad chested and stocky-strong, with muscled arms and the thick wrists of a plowman or archer-both of which he was. His eyes were the same gray as the older man's; his hair was a little lighter, with a touch of yellow in the earth-brown, and he wore it shorter than most male Mac kenzies of his generation, though longer than the short-back-and sides his father had always kept to.
"Ah, it's a trip, Dad, one that Rudi was talking about," he said, feeling sweat breaking out on his forehead. "Talking about us doing it together."
He was too old now for a swat on the backside, but he'd learned early never to lie to his father. No mat ter what scrape he got into, honesty was the best policy with Samuel Aylward, late of the Special Air Service Regiment.
"A hunting trip?" his father prodded. "Or a jaunt for the sake of the thing, like that trip to Tillamook?"
The beads of sweat grew and he suppressed an impulse to wipe them away.
"Quite a bit of a trip, a long 'un," he said. "Weeks or more. We'd be going off right away."
Horned Lord and Mother-of-All, do you have to ask so many bloody questions? he thought desperately. And then: Oh, bugger, I let it slip.
Normally he spoke with nearly the same accent as any other Mackenzie his age, except that it was a bit stronger since he lived close to Dun Juniper. That musical lilt and its rolled R sounds were natural to him, though he'd heard that it had started right after the Change when people tried to imitate Lady Juniper's manner of speech. His father always found it irritating or amusing, depending on his mood.
When he was in the irritated phase, Sam Aylward called it life imprisonment among the stage Irish, whatever that meant.
But when he was under a strain more of his father's own voice came out in his, and Sam Aylward had been born in England-on a farm near Tilford in Hampshire, to be precise-and the soft burr clung to his tongue despite more than twenty years here in the Willamette.
Edain could see his father relent; he laughed then, and the younger man flushed.
"It's all right," Sam Aylward said. "Just that you're about as good at keeping something off your face as I was at your age. Still, you're a better than good shot and useful otherwise for a long trip."
"You know?" Edain blurted.