"No offense, Chief, but…" Edain said, and shuddered theatrically.
"You two done much traveling together?" Ingolf asked. In other words, "Why did you pick this kid?"
"Just a wee bit, you might say," Rudi said. "And he was with me up at Tillamook last year, when the Haida hit us."
"So was Garbh," Edain said, and thumped the dog's ribs.
"Yeah, but she wasn't so useful," Rudi said. "Tell the man about it, Edain-we're all going to be together a long time, and we need to know one another."
"Chief-"
Modesty, Ingolf decided, listening to the protest in the tone. Who'd'a thunk it?
"Wait a minute," he said. "Wasn't that the fight where Saba's husband got killed?"
"Sure and it was," Rudi said. "He was on a trading trip; the Brannigans and their kin are all good at that. Myself and Edain and a few friends had been travel ing up north, seeing the sights, you might say, and went along with Raen and his wagons for the last bit when they headed to Tillamook. I know the baron there, and could introduce them. Then…"
Edain stayed silent. Rudi snorted. "You tell him or I will, boyo!"
"Everything was fine until we got to the coast," Edain said at last, starting slowly, as if dragging things out of the well of memory that wanted to stay submerged. "This was… by the Wise Lord, more than a year ago now. Fall of the year before last. We were riding along and singing-"
County Tillamook,
Portland Protective Association
Coastal Oregon
October 1, CY21/2019 A.D.
It was upon a Lammas night
When corn rigs are bonny
Beneath the Moon's unclouded light
I lay awhile with Molly…
The song died away, muffled in the clinging mist, and they rode on in silence; though usually you couldn't get four young Mackenzie clansfolk to shut up, riding abroad for adventure and strange sights. The air was too thick, and the way it drank sound made the song forlorn.
I feel like a ghost, Edain Aylward Mackenzie thought, peering through the fog.
Then he shivered a little at the thought, spitting leftward to avert the omen and signing the Horns. Thick morning mist off the sea puffed and billowed about them, and moisture dripped from the boughs of the roadside trees. Drifts wandered over the graveled way; the fetlocks of the horses stirred it like a man's breath in smoke. Slow wet wind soughed through the Coast Range firs behind him, louder than the sounds of the little caravan's hooves and wheels; the Association baron and Rudi Mackenzie rode directly ahead.
"These clansfolk have come all the way from Sutter down to see about your cheeses and smoked salmon," Rudi said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder towards the wagons. "Not to mention that attar of roses stuff you wrote about. If trade's not below your notice, Juhel."
"Men with wheatfields and vineyards in their demesne and Portland on their doorstep can afford to get picky about derogeance, " the young baron growled. "What I've got is trees, grass, cows, potatoes and fish. God has given this land and these people into my charge-and now that I'm Anne's guardian, the whole of goddamned County Tillamook's on my plate till she's come of age, not just Barony Netarts. It's up to me to see to it the people prosper. I'm sick of courtiers making jokes about Tillamookers in wooden shoes."
Edain listened and snorted quietly to himself. He'd seen enough in this visit to know that any Association aristo would say that sort of thing, and a lot of them were right bastards all the same. Evidently Rudi thought this one meant it, though-he'd gotten to know the man while he was up north in Protectorate territory on his yearly visits.
That was why Juniper Mackenzie's son and tanist had agreed to speak for the wagon train's owners. Edain and his three friends had come along for the fun of the thing, this being after Mabon and slack time on their parents' crofts. There were casks of Brannigan's Spe cial and carved horn cups from Bend and raw turquoise and such packed in the wagons, and blankets and cloaks woven on Mackenzie looms-his own mother's and sister's among them.
He let the conversation blur into the background noise of hooves and wheels on gravel and looked around instead; he'd come along on this trip with Rudi to see new things.
That I have! he thought.
The ruins of Salem, the steel gates of Larsdalen, great empty-eyed skyscrapers in Portland staring like lost spir its of the past at the present-day pomp of tournament and court, the majesty of the Columbia gorge and hang gliders dancing through it like autumn leaves, Astoria and its tall ships and crews from as far away as Chile and Hawaii, Tasmania and New Singapore and Hinduraj…
And the sea, the Mother's sea. And whales! And sea lions!
His eyes went left, towards the ocean about a mile away. The great gray vastness of the Pacific was out of sight now-fog still clung in drifts and banks over the flat green fields of the Tillamook plain.
It gave them glimpses as if curtains were drawn aside for an instant and then dropped back. They rode past drainage ditches and levees and rows of poplars with leaves gone brown-gold and the skeletal shape of a windmill that pumped water to dry out the soggy land. Cows with red and yellow and brown coats grazed between rose hedges, mostly on the rich grass of the common pastures; now and then there were fields that looked like reaped oats, and potatoes; others bore ranks of rosebushes, an odd looking thing to be grown like a crop, and he wished he could see them in summer's glory.
He could smell the sea, though, the wild deep salt of it, and the rich silty scent of the vast salt marshes on the seaward edge of the plain. They were full of wildfowl at this time of year too, and the gobbling and honking and thrashing of their wings came clear.
A village passed, stirring to the morning's work and giving off a mouthwatering scent of cooking and baking; there was a roadside calvary; then a manor's sprawling outbuildings, and ahead the gray concrete of a castle's tower on a hill, with the town walls of Tillamook glimpsed at the edge of sight when a gust parted the fog for a mo ment. A fisherman had told them there would likely be an onshore breeze most mornings. The view would be better from the castle where they'd be guesting…
And I'm sharp set for breakfast.
They did an excellently good veal and potato pie here, and fine things with seafood you couldn't get in the Clan's home territory.
The baron's young son dropped his pony back from where the talk had turned boringly to trade. His father's men at-arms and crossbowmen rode on the left side of the road, and the four Mackenzies who'd come with Rudi on the right, and behind it all the wagons and the clansfolk from Sutterdown who were wrangling them. He angled back towards the fascinating strangers and gave a would-be regal nod.
"The best of the morning to you, young sir," Edain said.
That was polite enough, and Mackenzies didn't call anyone lord -even the Chief herself herself, the Mac kenzie, much less some foreign kid in strange clothes.
The boy was dressed in a miniature version of his father's green leather and wool hunting garb, down to the arms in the heraldic shield on the chest of his jerkin-a round cheese one-half sinister, with a Holstein head dexter, a crossed sword and crossbow below. He also had a real if boy sized sword; otherwise he looked like any tow-haired and freckled seven-year-old.
"You guys sure talk funny," the lad said seriously.
"And sure, we think you northerners are the ones who talk funny," Edain replied, exaggerating his lilt and winking.
The youngster laughed, but Edain did think that; the Portlanders' accent was flat and a little grating to an ear accustomed to the musical rise and fall the younger clansfolk put into English, and the nobles here sprinkled their talk with words from some foreign language in an absurd, affected fashion.