“I’m glad we’re not so crowded today,” she said. “Portland and Boise are bad enough; you start to itch after a week or so.”
He made a sound of agreement and Heuradys nodded emphatically; they were all countryfolk by raising and preference, which was something they shared with the overwhelming majority of their people. She’d gone far east once years ago, on a diplomatic visit to the Republic of Iowa with her parents, where mighty Des Moines had more than a hundred and fifty thousand folk within its walls. It had been a marvel and she was glad to have seen it, the largest city on this continent in this age but. .
But once was enough, she thought. And to think of towns ten or twenty times that size. . brrr! Aloud she went on:
“Bad for human folk to live as the ancients did, and worse for the land and the other kindreds.”
“Truth,” her father said, then dropped back into English. “Or at least that’s my truth, and yours.”
Órlaith began to nod, then gave her father a sharp glance, suppressing an impulse to scratch under her flat bonnet with its spray of Golden Eagle feathers in the clasp.
“It’s a little disconcerting you can be at times, Da,” she said in the same language; her voice held the musical Mackenzie lilt, though less strongly than her father’s.
“What, and didn’t I just agree with you?” he said blandly, then winked. “Most sincerely, too.”
“Mother says you can be more aggravating by agreeing with her than any other dozen men can by arguing.”
“Sure, and I have no idea what you might be on about. And you’ll note she laughs when she says that.”
Around a corner of the road, and a broad stretch of the renascent wilderness had been cleared save for some scattered valley oaks; winter wheat rippled waist-high across it, only a month or so from harvest and already showing heads. About the field young pencil cypress had been planted in a border. Beyond it southward the settlers were working on getting more land ready for plow and pasture, with a team of six big oxen leaning into their yokes.
A chain ran from them to a pit dug around a vine-root. Half a dozen folk were prying at the stump with long iron bars, and two men in kilts and little else leapt out of the hole, tossing before them the axes they’d used to chop roots halfway through. The teenaged girl in charge of the team yelled shrill encouragement and cracked her long whip, and the beasts leaned forward, pulling until their hooves sank deep and the muscles stood out beneath their red hides like cast bronze. The humans sang a working chant as they strained at their levers, and she could catch a bit of it, a hymn to the Maiden of Spring and Her consort:
“Far down the roots bind
The heart’s joy to summer’s tide-”
Then the oxen staggered forward as the grip of the dead vine parted with thunderous rippling brack-kak-kak sounds. The heavy knotted black form of the stump was dragged to join a windrow of other thigh-thick shapes amid laughter and cheers.
Several dogs had been lying in a patch of shade, of the big shaggy breed Mackenzies kept as companions and guards of hearth, hunt and war. They sprang to their feet and barked as the mounted column came in view, a deep baying that carried through the spring air like a bugle. Several padding along with the travellers answered in kind. The workers threw down their tools and turned towards the nearby spots where their longbows and quivers and sword belts rested, then relaxed as they saw men-at-arms and archers, not a skulking gang of wildmen. Glances turned to smiles and waves as they saw who it was; Órlaith and her father both wore plaids in the Mackenzie tartan pinned across their torsos over their saffron-dyed shirts.
“Oak, you’re looking hale!” the High King called as he drew rein and raised a hand. “Merry meet!”
“Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again, Ard Rí,” Oak Barstow Mackenzie replied. “Your scouts told us you’d be by, but not when.”
“We’re not in any haste. It’s hard you’re working, and that on the holy eve.”
Oak was nearly sixty now, a tall man gone stringy and tanned to the color of his namesake tree’s wood but still knotted with strong muscle moving under the sweat-wet skin. A long queue of graying blond hair hung down his back wrapped with an old bowstring, warrior-fashion; he’d been First Armsman of the Clan Mackenzie for long years before leading a party south to found a new settlement. A grin split his bearded face:
“We set ourselves a goal to be met before the festival, and when it looked like we wouldn’t meet it our High Priestess-”
“That would be your daughter Rowan?” her father the High King said.
“So it is, her own self. She lost her temper, just a wee bit, and made it gess to stop before it was done, feast or no. This was the last stump we were scrambling at, cursing it to a Christian Hell the while, and your coming at its demise a good omen.”
There was a little teasing in his voice as he went on:
“And doubly so since you brought our Golden Princess, and her so grown-up and lovely now, a fair young maiden like a vision of the Maiden of Spring herself!”
Órlaith blushed a little; that was what her name meant, but it sounded a bit embarrassing in common English. Also she hadn’t been a maiden, technically speaking, for some time now; four Beltane Eves to the day, to be precise.
Ah, Diarmuid, she thought reminiscently.
Heuradys caught her eye and winked, obviously reading the thought-natural enough, she’d teased Órlaith about it at the time. Also, she’d renewed the acquaintance as they passed through the McClintock territories and guested with their Chief. His current leman hadn’t minded-though as she’d said bluntly, that was not least because the Royal party was just passing through. In a way it was a pity he’d settled down, she was going to need a consort someday. . no need to think of that right now, though.
It’s a good friend you’ve been, Diarmuid, and a more than pleasant companion. I wish we saw each other more often.
“Merry met, Uncle Oak,” she said, trying for a casual dignity; they weren’t related by blood, but younger Mackenzies usually addressed the older generation that way, unless they were unfriends or the occasion formal. “How does Dun Barstow fare this fine day?”
“We’re doing well, with Her blessing and the Lord’s favor.”
He made the Invoking sign. High King Artos-who was also Rudi Mackenzie-echoed it, and so did Órlaith and the others of the Old Religion behind them; some of the Christians crossed themselves politely.
Some of the clansfolk raised a brow in surprise when Heuradys echoed their gesture. Even apart from the arms of the Ath embroidered in a heraldic shield on the breast of her rust-colored T-tunic with a crescent of cadency, the rest of her garb left no doubt of what she was. She wore a teal-blue chaperon hat on her braided brown-red hair with the liripipe over her shoulder and a golden High Crown livery badge on it, sapphires on the buckle of her sword belt, tight leather breeks and folded thigh-boots, flared gauntlets and the small golden prick spurs of knighthood. Catholicism wasn’t technically required by law among Associates these days-hadn’t been since shortly after Órlaith’s grandfather Lord Protector Norman Arminger died at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, in fact-but it was overwhelmingly the most common faith there, especially among the nobility.