“Yes, fiosaiche,” the man named Sèitheach muttered.
She frowned. “I. . there’s something strange about this one. That’s why he caught at me like a wrong note in a song. I’d not have found him otherwise, not if this were just a matter of humankind. Yet I can’t say precisely what. It’s not that he’s a banewreaker himself, I do not think.”
“What should we be doing with him, then?”
“Why, I’m but a fiosaiche,” she said blandly, stepping back. “You being the bow-captain here, it’s your decision, not a matter of brehon law. War’s for a warrior, not a priestess or a foreseer.”
A couple of the archers grinned and Alyssa snickered. Then the fiosaiche started looking at her arm, probing gently along the splint. She hissed slightly and her eyes went blank at the pain.
The witch-woman nodded. “Thin break, right enough. It should heal well, and that’s a good job of splinting. Provided you get some rest and don’t put any strain on it!”
When the bow-captain-
Whatever the hell that is. Some sort of rank, probably. I think this guy’s a platoon sergeant or something like that.
— snapped orders the Clan archers went on grinning, but they obeyed promptly too and without argument. Presumably a fiosaiche was something like a chaplain or a political officer or both. Though she looked a lot nicer than any of the zampolits-what were officially called morale officers-he’d ever met.
“We’ll sweep along the river until dark and lie out tonight, forbye there may be some of this one’s friends about,” the bow-captain said. “Remember how well he was hidden. The next one may be more twitchy with his trigger, so keep an eye out for sign unless you want a bolt in the back. Caillech-”
That was the girl with the wings painted on her face.
“-you and Talyn-”
The guy who’d been covering her and bossing the dogs.
“-take the lady and the prisoner back to camp. You’re up to the walk, Lady? It’s a fair bit of a way and nothing but deer-tracks, and those of an exceeding steepness.”
“That’s Pilot Officer, bow-captain; I’m no lady among Mackenzies. And it’s walk or crawl, isn’t it? War isn’t a hunting trip. I broke my arm, not a leg.”
The man named Talyn nodded to Cole as he took his hands down and got to his feet. It felt strange not to have a sword at his waist or a crossbow in his arms, like being naked in public. The Mackenzie’s voice was not unkindly as he pointed southwest with his longbow.
“That way, Cole Salander of Boise. If the Lady needs assistance, give it, and do it well. Oh, and just so we understand each other about any thoughts of skipping off into the woods with rude unseemly haste like a Jack in the Green-urghabháil dó!”
The two great dogs had been at his feet, heads on paws. They sprang in a blur of speed, and Cole froze again as the gruesome jaws closed on his wrists; they were tall enough at the shoulder that they didn’t have to bend their heads upward to do it. They didn’t clamp down, which he suspected would have cut right through bone and sinew with a single bite, but they weren’t letting him move either. Those growls like millstones grinding came from each deep chest again, and their eyes cocked up at him in warning. Or possibly hopeful anticipation. The feel of the fangs was like the teeth of a waiting saw, and between them they weighed as much as he and half over again.
Alyssa was grinning at him. Which was understandable; turnabout was fair play, and being a helpless prisoner was no fun.
“Urghabháil dó! means ‘grab him,’ pretty much, soldier,” she said. “You don’t really have to worry until he says mharú air! Which means ‘kill.’ Though he’d most likely just shoot you instead.”
“Loose him, Artan, Flan!” the Mackenzie said to the dogs, and they obeyed, backing away but looking at Cole with suspicion anyway. “Now, off we go!”
“You guys are weird,” Cole said resignedly.
“Oh, you have no idea,” Alyssa said cheerfully. “What you’ve seen so far is nothing. Try Dun Juniper sometime. Or even better, Castle Todenangst, I’ve visited there a couple of times with Mom and Dad. That place is weird.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Castle Todenangst, Crown demesne
Portland Protective Association
Willamette Valley near Newburg
High Kingdom of Montival
(formerly western Oregon)
June 15th, Change Year 26/2024 AD
“M om!” the High Queen of Montival said.
Sandra Arminger looked up from where she had been kneeling at her prie-dieu. The padded prayer-stool-rather like a reversed legless chair-stood before a triptych of the Madonna and Child flanked by Saints Edgar and Olaf, the patrons of rulers. The gold leaf of the halos in the icons glowed in the beam of light from an ocular window set high up under the carved plaster of the coffered roof.
She smiled at her daughter, the dark-brown eyes dancing. “Honestly, Matti, you needn’t goggle as if you’d caught me doing something nasty with a pageboy. I was praying.”
Mathilda opened her mouth and closed it as Sandra crossed herself, returned her rosary to the embroidered purse at her belt and stood. That still left her six inches shorter than her tall daughter, a smoothly pretty and slightly plump woman in her fifties, in a cotte-hardie of dove-gray silk elaborately jacquarded with ribbons and swallows and a white silk wimple bound with silver and opals. A Persian cat yawned and padded out from beneath the prie-dieu, its gaze as blandly self-satisfied as that of its mistress.
People who don’t know better underestimate Mother.
Though nowadays you had to go a long way to find someone so utterly uninformed. She’d seen very hard men start to sweat when Sandra Arminger smiled at them in her let’s-share-a-joke way. The joke might be very pointed, or give you indigestion.
Mathilda shook her head. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen her mother pray, of course; it was just the first time she’d seen her doing it strictly in private, where there wasn’t any political benefit to be gained by conventional piety. Previously she’d used this little room off the Regent’s suite for confidential interviews, though it was the sort of place a noblewoman would set up a private shrine. Now, besides the prie-dieu and images it had a big carved rood on one wall and a small shelf of devotional books.
“What. . were you asking?” she said at last.
“I was praying for your father,” her mother said.
“Oh, good!” Mathilda said with a rush. “I mean, for both of you.”
They looked at each other silently for a moment in the incense-scented gloom. She’d told her mother much of what she’d seen in the. .
Visions, Mathilda thought. That’s as close as you can get to a word for things there aren’t words for. What did Father Ignatius say when I made my confession? That some realities make language itself buckle and break when we try to describe them instead of just living them.
. . the visions she’d seen at Lost Lake, when she and Rudi had joined their blood on the blade of the Sword of the Lady and thrust it into the living rock of Montival.
Or perhaps where Artos and I did.
Rudi carried the Sword again now, but in another sense it was still there beside the infinitely blue waters with their hands clasped on the hilt. . and always had been and always would be. She could still feel a little of the curious linking that had started then, the sensation that the whole of Montival was like her own body. Since then her dreams had been odd; not so much fantastic as. . real.