The mark of the CUT’s assassin-priest-mages.
Two more figures were hurtling downward even as he shambled erect, lurching away from her towards the tables with one leg turned at an impossible angle.
Now she could feel them. As an emptiness, a lack of presence, a hole in her link with the land.
“Órlaith!” she shouted.
Mathilda snatched up the silver tea tray, the pot and cups flying over the edge of the balcony unheeded. She gripped it by the edge, twisting and flinging it with a snap that sent the disk skimming through the air. It struck the assassin in the back of the neck with a heavy chunk that would have been instantly fatal to any normal man. The cultist staggered, fell. . then twitched and began to rise again.
A fourth figure fell, and a fifth. Her heart froze, though these were in armor. One was just dead; the other managed to draw his sword and push it towards her before his head fell slack.
“Guard Órlaith!” she called, snatching up the heavy blade as she ran, taking it in the two-handed grip.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Seven Devils Mountains
(Formerly western Idaho)
High Kingdom of Montival
(Formerly western North America)
June 15th, Change Year 26/2024 AD
By the time the lingering summer sun was well down behind the peaks, Cole Salander had had a chance to wash and get outside a satisfactory amount of cowboy beans, some sort of griddle biscuit and a couple of pounds of strong-tasting pork with a very satisfactory BBQ sauce. Someone opened a sack of nuts and dried fruit that was quite tasty too, and there was wine though nobody was drinking very much.
“Sip, man, sip! Don’t swill it! That’s a Larsdalen red!” Talyn said as a small straw-covered jug went around the group by the little fire not far from the tent-flap. “It’s not beer!”
There were only the two Mackenzies, the Bearkiller pilot and him; the Clan used a nine-man squad, but the rest of Talyn and Caillech’s outfit were still off on their scout. Evidently they and Alyssa were old friends.
“Alyssa gets treats from her parents, and it makes up for the sharpness of her personality, so to say,” Talyn said.
Caillech threw a dried apricot at him, which he caught and ate, and Alyssa made a rude noise with her lips.
Cole sighed. He missed his friends and buddies, too, although he hadn’t been in the special-ops unit enough to make really close ones. Still, sitting round the fire eating BBQ ribs and drinking wine after a ten-mile hike on mountain tracks was a hell of a lot better than some of the other things that could happen to a prisoner. He hadn’t ended up full of arrows this morning, for example, which was also a definite plus, and he wasn’t sitting in a cage in chains.
And it was good wine, or at least a lot smoother than Army-ration issue or what you got in the bars around base camps. Cole had grown up on water and milk, with beer once he was past his mid-teens and diluted whiskey on special occasions, but there were vineyards closer to Boise City.
“Good ribs,” he said.
He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and tossed the stripped bone to Talyn’s dogs. They’d looked towards their master for permission to take the treat the first time. It made him slightly homesick; he’d had a dog before he reported for duty, one he’d had since they’d both been pups and hand-trained up himself and let sleep on the foot of his bed despite his mother’s scolding. They’d been inseparable until poor creaky smelly half-blind old Bob ran into a catamount that had been sniffing around the sheep-pen and died doing his valiant best. He’d hunted the cougar down with his crossbow, blind with rage, and its hide was now gracing the floor in front of the fireplace back home, but even at a heedless eighteen he’d known a milestone in his life when it happened.
“Not bad, but the sauce is a bit mild,” Alyssa said, wiping her face with a cloth-eating them one-handed was messier than the usual way. “Mackenzie cooking is pretty good but they go lighter on the peppers than most Bearkillers like.”
It had been about as hot as Cole liked. When he raised his eyebrows at her she went on:
“My grandmother. . on my mother’s side, Angelica Hutton. . was the Bearkiller quartermaster while Mike Havel led the first of us back to Larsdalen. She’s Tejano. We got a war-cry from Finland from the Bear Lord’s family, and Tex-Mex cooking from her. From what the books say about Finnish food it was a hell of a good bargain.”
A hair-raising squeal brought Cole’s head and attention whipping around. Talyn laughed and tilted back the flask.
“The pipes!” he said, toasting the harsh droning sound as it modulated into something resembling music.
“They’re not torturing a pig or biting a cat’s tail, honest,” Alyssa said. “Mackenzies are a tuneful bunch, always playing something. Including bagpipes, if you can call that a musical instrument. Especially the Píob Mhór, the war-pipes.”
“And a war-camp is the place for war-pipes,” Talyn said. “But it’s true, we’re a musical lot, having Brigid’s blessing.”
Cole nodded, a little puzzled. Everyone but the very rich made their own music or did without most of the time; he’d heard a wind-up phonograph once at a county fair, but hadn’t been impressed and anyway they and the records to play on them cost the earth. His parents had complained all his life about how you couldn’t just snap your fingers and have first-class music in the modern world, which was even more annoying than the rest of the stories about the old times.
He understood more of what Alyssa meant when half a dozen flutes and stringed instruments and little hand-held drums played with a stick came in faultlessly, weaving around the hoarse wild song of the drones.
Cole could pick out “All You Need Is Love” or “Old MacDonald” or “Riders on the Storm” with a six-string guitar and one of his uncles was pretty fair with a lute and he had an aunt who played a mean fiddle at barn dances, but everyone he could hear was better than that. As good as the professionals you heard at county fairs or parades, and better than the neighborhood favorites who played weddings and funerals.
“Sure, and wasn’t the Chief, the Mackenzie herself, herself a bard by trade before the Change?” Caillech said. “I’ve often heard the oldsters saying how her music kept their hearts up, in the terrible years. And the songs taught us all the ways of the Lord and Lady, of course.”
“Gillie Chalium!” someone shouted. “Let’s dance the blades!”
Which apparently meant something. Talyn whooped, and Caillech grinned as she got up and hitched at her plaid.
“Sword dance,” Alyssa explained.
More of the clansfolk put out circles of swords in the open spaces between the campfires-eight blades each, set with one edge down in the dirt and the other up, points-in. Talyn and Caillech faced each other in one circle, bowing and then standing with hands on hips. Another pair joined them. .
“Pretty,” Cole said, as the dance began. Then: “Gurk!”
It started slow, and seemed to involve keeping the upper body fairly straight; the hands switched up from hips to over the head from time to time. The feet, though, were moving quicker and quicker-and it involved skipping and stepping over those swordblades, while keeping the eyes locked on the other dancer, and all four taking a leap to the left at intervals combined with a high kick so that the whole ensemble moved in a circle counterclockwise.
All done in the dark by flickering firelight.
“Care to give it a try, Private First Class?” Alyssa asked slyly.
“Christ no!” Cole blurted.
He was quick and agile and liked a barn dance or a waltz, but the thought of maybe stamping his foot down on the business edge of a solidly grounded swordblade made his toes curl in reflex. Those were fully functional swords, too; good steel salvaged from leaf-springs, and sharp.