Uncle Alleyne pitched a fit if you weren't careful about accounts.
We might have gotten another five, ten percent off if we'd split up the purchases and gone all over town, Ritva thought. But that wouldn't be worth the time and trouble since we're in a hurry-and Ish is more reliable on quality than anyone else here.
"And you're not going to tell me a word about what this is all in aid of, are you?" he said as he waved the check in the air to dry the oak gall-lampblack ink and slid it through a slot into his strongbox, then made out an invoice.
Ritva cleared her throat and looked at her sister; Mary had stepped over to the door even as one of the apprentices opened it in curiosity. There was a small open park across from the shop; locally it was called Free Speech Corner, and by convention everyone from wandering religious enthusiasts and local politicians to general wingnuts with a new theory about who, Who or what had caused the Change could address whoever would listen there. There were even a couple of conveniently shaped rocks, so that you didn't have to bring a bucket, barrel or chair to stand on.
"What's that?" Ritva called; all she could see from here was people's backs, many of them standing on wagons.
"Some new preacher who's been tearing up the scen ery lately. The ranchers don't like 'im, which means some here in town do."
They caught a few phrases through the rumble of the crowd: "Ascended Master Jesus Christ… wrath of God on us again, like the Change… arrogance of the rich, whom God will surely humble as He exalts His poor… soulless minions…"
"Hey, who you calling a soulless minion?" a cowboy standing on one of the wagons shouted. "You bossless son of a Rover whore!"
Someone in the crowd below grabbed him by the ankle and dragged him down; he yelled twice, once in outrage and once in pain as he thumped against the hard ground. Two of his friends jumped down and started kicking and punching the man who'd grabbed their friend. Someone jumped on the back of one of the cowboys and began punching him…
"Uh oh," Mary said.
"Uh-oh," Ritva agreed.
Then a knife glinted and they heard the distinctive wheep of a sword coming out of a sheath. Normally they would have to help the locals restore order-Rangers were supposed to do that. This time they couldn't.
"Ere!" Mary said. "Rudi will kill us if we get ourselves killed right now."
"Ere," Ritva agreed. Shit seemed appropriate.
"There's one of the pagans!" a scrawny man in well worn clothes screeched, pointing at the tree-and-stars on her jerkin, visible in the doorway. He threw a rock at her.
Crash. The two pound cobblestone went through an irreplaceable pre Change window and knocked over a stand of arrows. A number of people in the crowd-turning-into a-riot started their way.
Ritva and her sister looked at each other and picked up two of the round shields, slipped on their helmets, and each grabbed a yard long ax handle from a bin.
"Isaac! Reuben!" Isherman called.
His two sons were seventeen and eighteen; otherwise they looked almost as much alike as Mary and Ritva, and much like their father, down to the skullcaps. The young men scooped up helmets and shields and clubs. Half a dozen other shopkeepers from up and down the street were coming out as well, carrying everything from sledgehammers to blacksnake whips.
In Bend, most respectable citizens were sworn in as deputy peace officers in advance. You could riot here pretty freely, as long as you accepted that the local taxpayers were just as free to bash your head in for it.
Bang!
Another rock cracked off the two-foot circle of bullhide covered plywood on her arm as she hopped down into the street off the board sidewalk. She took a dozen paces and made a long lunge of the sort she'd have used with her sword and poked the man in the belly with the end of the stick, hard. He went uffff! and folded over. Unlike someone stabbed in the gut with a longsword, he'd be getting up again; Mary rapped him behind the ear with carefully calculated force as they went by to make sure his resurrection didn't happen too soon or too comfortably.
"Adventure," Ritva said, as they moved in well-drilled unison and tried to watch all directions at once.
I really wouldn't like to get stabbed in the back here, or have my brains knocked out with a brick.
"Ere," her sister said, nodding.
The High Cascades, Central Oregon
April 20, CY23/2021 A.D.
"We're not moving fast enough," Ingolf said, hitching his thumbs into the straps of his pack.
His teeth wanted to chatter. It was an effort of will not to be depressed-the sensations of being wet and cold were similar enough that it was easy to let the one slip into the other. And another effort not to snap at Rudi's indecent cheerfulness.
White flakes were falling out of the sky, drifting down silently between the tall dark green firs and hemlocks, muffling sound, making even the smells of sap and wet earth seem faded. The flakes that landed on him were big and fluffy and a little wet, the sort you got at the beginning and end of winter back home as well. So far they were sticking on the branches but not much on the ground, and the rocky dirt of the game path was turning to rocks mixed with cold mud. But the temperature was falling with the sun, somewhere up above the gray ceiling that was coming closer and closer.
The breath of the three men steamed in the cold air, and Garbh was walking along with her head down and a white scruff starting to build up on her black-and-gray fur.
The clouds already hid the mountaintops, and now the thin air was wet at the same time. Luckily the pathway ran along the slope here rather than up and down the forty degree mountainside. You could trust a couple of generations of deer to find the easiest way through.
"At least you two know how to handle cold weather in these mountains," Ingolf said. "Cold winters I'm at home with, but I was born a lowlander and I nearly got killed coming over the Cascades last year."
Something in the way Rudi's shoulders set ahead of him made him go on a little sharply: "You are experi enced at handling winter weather here, right? It's only a couple of days' walk from where you live."
Rudi stopped; behind Ingolf, Edain did as well. "No, I'm not," Rudi said shortly, turning to face him. "No body comes up this high except in summer, usually. Not even bandits."
"No point," Edain said helpfully. "The big game all migrates down to the foothills or the valley in winter-time. And these are wet mountains, here on the western side, as wet as wet can be."
Rudi chimed in: "They get a lot of snow, twenty, thirty feet in a winter, sometimes more. And it can happen right up until June."
"Yeah, I can see that," Ingolf said dryly. "If we really didn't want anyone to notice us, this was the way to come, by God."
He looked up the boulder-strewn slope where the old granulated drifts were still waist deep, the surface rap idly disappearing under the new fall. Off to the right a fair-sized river was rushing unseen in a deep cleft, hard enough with the first of the spring flood that sometimes it shook the rock under his feet. The temperature was dropping faster now, and the snow fell more thickly. But not in straight lines out of the sky; the tips of the tall pointed trees were beginning to move a little, and the snow slanted as it picked up speed.
A low moaning began as the wind strengthened, at first the sort of teasing almost sound that you couldn't swear to, then louder and louder.