Although I doubt he'd do well at Mt. Angel, she thought whimsically. Abbot Dmowski is a good enough man, but sadly lacking in a sense of humor, I think. There's a good deal of quiet humor in this man, when he isn't sad.
Alleyne Loring was on the other side of the wagon, also armed and unobtrusively alert. Near him were Astrid Lars-son and Eilir, both looking as if they were trying to crowd next to him without making it too obvious.
Not obvious to anyone who's blind, perhaps, she thought, and suppressed a grin. It wasn't that she didn't sympathize with both girls, but: The Foam-Born will have their little jokes, and oh, how the young suffer! What storms and stress and follies! And how they hate it when anyone laughs!
John Hordle was not far away, whistling the old tune softly in the mild summer night. He didn't have the same air of hidden tension as the others; more one of alert patience, if she read him aright-and she had some confidence in her skill at that. They bid farewell to the Dun Fairfax folk at their own gate and turned north through the winding track that climbed the densely wooded hillside. Within it light vanished save for a few lanterns hooked over spearheads, casting flickering illumination upward into the branches, and once glinting suddenly from eyes beside the trail-a fox or coyote, from their green flash and the swift flight.
Then they came through onto the benchland that held Dun Juniper; stars and moon were almost painfully bright for an instant, silvering the waterfall to her right and the tall white walls of the Mackenzie citadel. The wind blew in her face, cooler now and fir-scented. The horses snorted, knowing their stalls were close; a sentry hailed them quietly, out among the stock in the fenced paddocks. The gates swung open with a groan, and suddenly there was light from the windows of homes and Hall, and hands to help.
Mom? Eilir signed.
Juniper started from a reverie. My heart?
Astrid and I thought we might take some of the Dunedain: and Alleyne and his friend: up through the woods after Lughnassadh, she said, and nodded eastward and north. These are some boar that have been sniffing around the gardens, and: well, just in case anyone was nosing around who shouldn't. Her eyes flicked to Mathilda Arminger.
Good idea, Juniper said. The crew working on Dun Laurel could use some feeding, if Cernunnos favors you.
Then on impulse, looking down at her son: "Nigel, give me a hand with these two, would you?" Not even the rocking passage through the woods had woken the two nine-year-olds.
"My pleasure," he said, and seemed to mean it.
"It seems a shame to wake them at all," Juniper said softly.
"Then don't," Nigel replied unexpectedly. "They grow so quickly, and very soon they'll be too old to be carried to bed anymore."
They lifted carefully; Mathilda was considerable weight in her arms, but the Englishman bore her son's solid sixty pounds without evidence of strain. The big loft room was dark but welcoming, warm from the heat soaked into the brick chimney that ran through it from the hearth below, scented with flower sachet, wool and wood and wax; neither child did more than stir and mutter as they were undressed and tucked into the blankets on their futon beds. Nigel Loring paused for a moment, looking down at Rudi Mackenzie. His sword-callused fingers brushed back a lock of tousled hair the color of raw gold.
"I envy you," he murmured softly. At her look he went on: "Alleyne has grown to be a man any father would be proud of, but sometimes I still miss the boy he was. There was so little time, and I was often away, as a soldier had to be then. Maude and I wanted more children, but-ah, well, forgive an old man's foolishness."
He looked up and smiled at her, blinking in the darkness. Suddenly the thought rammed home in her: I want this man.
Less a thought than knowledge, felt with heart and belly and loins as much as brain, but that too. I have been too long alone; and this man is the one I want-the one She sent to me. Fierce and tender, terrible and gentle. And I will bring out that quiet laughter, and make him whole again.
He rose and bowed slightly. After his footsteps had faded on the treads of the stairs, her smile remained.
I will have him. So mote it be!
Chapter Twenty
Mithrilwood, Willamette Valley, Oregon
August 10th, 2007 AD-Change Year Nine
These foothills the Dunedain Rangers had christened Mithrilwood were a day's journey north and a little east of Dun Juniper; the area was a mix of tall Douglas fir and overgrown fields and abandoned clear-cuts, ideal for game; more steep rugged hills than true mountains and surrounded by empty ex-farmland on three sides. Outside this canyon you could see the snow peaks eastward-Mount Washington best of all, and sometimes Mount Hood tiny to the north-but down here where the stream had cut its way into walls of basalt the world closed in, with rock walls, falling water, and dense growth. The light filtered through conifer needles and big-leaf maple into a thick umbrous green shadow, like being underwater; moss dripped from tree limbs, and mushrooms grew thick beneath them. Behind him the stream chuckled over polished water-rounded rocks and poured down a basalt ledge in a torrent of spray.
Alleyne Loring waited, alert, the boar spear gripped in his hands. The scrub ahead of him shook, amid an enraged squealing. He smelled a new scent under the green sappi-ness of bruised vegetation; something hard and rank with musk. They hadn't seen anyone in a week save one pair of Mackenzie hunters. Nothing human, at least:
Astrid's weapon came up to his right; the head was broader than a war spear's blade, and had a steel crossbar welded to the base. Dogs barked farther into the brush that crowded from the cliff face up to the edge of the old trail, and the beaters made noise of their own; the wind was from the north, in his face. Fairly soon those pigs would discover they'd been tricked: There was a series of deep snuffling grunts, then an enraged squeal, loud and shrill.
"Jesus!" he shouted as he saw what came out of the woods, on the heels of Hordle's "Bugger me!"
Wild boar were increasingly common in England; they'd been reintroduced just before the Change in game parks, and enough had hidden successfully from the clumsy attentions of urban refugees. The survivors bred fast afterward, spreading through the burgeoning wilderness. He knew from experience they could be dangerous, but most of the people here had talked about feral swine, and he'd been expecting something more like a barnyard pig gone wrong.
This one was five hundred pounds if it was an ounce, a black low-slung torpedo of muscle and bone and little clever hating eyes, tusks like daggers on either side of its bristling snout, heavy shoulders and hump armoring its vitals. Someone had brought the real wild-boar article from Europe in days long past, and those genes had been doing very well indeed.
The boar hesitated when it saw the line of humans, its hindquarters switching from side to side in a rush of fallen leaves and duff while its heavier forequarters pivoted in place. Other shapes were moving beneath the trees, but he ignored them as he crouched and flourished the spear, drawing the beast's attention. He could see it taking him in as it turned its head to get a view from either eye as slobber drooled from its champing jaws and every coarse needlelike hair bristled erect; then the hindquarters hunched and it sprang. For an instant he could swear it was off the earth, and then all four split hooves were churning the forest floor like tank treads, throwing twigs and leaves head-high as it hurtled at him as fast as a good horse.
The boar's shoulders were sheathed in gristle, and it held its massive dished head low to protect its neck and set itself for the upward rip with its tusks. Alleyne skipped a half pace to the side just before it struck, going down on one knee and ramming the butt of the spear into the earth. The broad sharp head knifed in, and then there was a shock like being thrown headfirst into a stone wall. He skidded backward as the spear butt dug a trough through the earth, and the crossbar below the blade fulfilled its ancient function: keeping the self-impaled boar from shoving itself up the shaft of the spear to savage him in a dying frenzy.