The nine comrades had remained respectfully silent during the Mormon ceremony; now they took their bowls, said their own forms of grace and fell to with the healthy voracity of hard-worked youth. The stew was thick and filling, fuel more than food, the sort of thing you ate without noticing the ingredients. The refugee-guerillas devoured theirs with careful speed; one or two gobbled, but the rest swallowed every spoonful as if it were a sacrament. Rudi hadn't met many Latter-day Saints before, apart from the ones who bought Rancher Brown's horses-Mormons were thin on the ground in the Willamette country-but they seemed to be a mannerly folk; and these ones were very hungry.
Rudi took his bowl and a bannock and sat beside Frederick, who was prodding at his food with a spoon and looking out over the dusk-darkened plain to the north and the distant purple line of the mountains.
"All a bit of a burden, isn't it?" he said kindly.
" Tell me!" Frederick replied. Then, lowering his voice: "You know, I wonder if I should be the one to fight Martin, eventually."
"Why?" Rudi asked, surprised. There was no luck in turning aside from a fate the Powers had laid on you.
"Well… the whole reason he quarreled with Dad-turned traitor, eventually-was that he thought being Dad's son gave him some sort of special right. He wanted to be a king. I don't."
Rudi nodded. "Well, you've a point there. But think on this; if not you, who? Isn't it better you than him? And it isn't you who'd pay the price of a noble renunciation; it would be your people, who need someone they know to lead them."
"Urrr."
"And also, what Martin wants is to be a tyrant, someone who takes power by lies and force and rules for himself alone, or his own kin alone."
Although… he looked at Matti. That's a precise description of your father, and you will rule well. Many a kingdom starts with a pirate, or a lucky soldier. Of course, he didn't have the raising of you all to himself, Matti. Nor did Sandra. My own mother's fine hand is in the making, there, too.
He went on: "A tyrant's not the same thing as a king, sure and it isn't. A good king… a good king is father to the land. What his people are together, their living past and the line of their blood for ages yet to come, their land that they've fought and died for and the sweat they've shed on it every day, and the way their songs and stories and being are woven into it, all that… he stands for it in the flesh. And he leads them not just in war and lawmaking, but in the rites that give meaning to life, that make them a people. My folk hailed me as my mother's tanist of their own will; who am I to tell them no? Perhaps yours will hail you. Perhaps not. But if they do, isn't it your duty to answer their call and serve their need?"
"Yeah, I can see what… I'll have to think about that." A grin. "And since I'm going East with you guys, I have a long time to think about it."
Rudi chuckled. "And you're not the only one who'll be thinking. From the old stories, a vanished prince who's fated to return and make things right again may be more powerful than one who's there in the flesh. My mother always said that it's by the thoughts and dreams within their heads that men are governed, as much as by laws or even swords from without."
"Dad said something like that too. The moral is to the physical as three is to one. "
Rudi nodded. "Also she says that no man can harvest a field before it's ripe."
"I'd like to meet your mother. She sounds like a cool lady," Frederick said shyly.
"She is that, and a great lady for all that she hasn't so many airs as some, and fun too."
Mathilda came to sit by Rudi when Nystrup drew the younger Thurston aside; she had a small bunch of yellow wildflowers tucked over her right ear.
"Giving him a pep talk?" she said dryly, not whispering but leaving her voice soft; the tune Odard was playing helped cover it.
Rudi nodded; they were both the children of rulers, and knew the demands of the trade.
"It's a little worried he is, over whether it's good for him to contest with his brother for power. As his father didn't want the succession settled by blood-right, you see."
Matti leaned against his shoulder. "Well, at least he gets a choice! I'm stuck with it. I get to be Protector… and then wonder when Count Stavarov is going to launch a coup and stick a knife in my back, or the House of Jones is going to flounce off in a snit and haul up the draw-bridges on their castles. Or whether the Stavarovs are going to launch a coup and"-she shuddered theatrically-"make me marry Piotr. You wouldn't think that even Alexi Stavarov could have produced a son who's more of a pig than he was, but-"
They both chuckled. "If you can call what he's got a real choice, and not just wittering," Rudi went on. "After all, Matti, you have a choice too. You could run off and be a sailor in Newport, or a nun in Mt. Angel. Or to the Mackenzie lands and take up a croft!" he added slyly.
She thumped his shoulder. "I can just see myself putting out milk for the house-hob… and leaping naked over a bonfire on Beltane!"
"There are Christians in the Clan," he said righteously. And that latter is a rather attractive image, sure.
"Yeah, both of them," Mathilda said in a pawky tone. "But anyway, that's not a real choice. Portland's my home, I can't run out on it. .. Things would go to hell… And what sort of an example would it be, shirking my duties? God called me to a task when He made me heir to the Protectorate."
"That's what I said to young Fred, more or less. Struck him with the force of a sledgehammer, so it did."
"I'm worried enough about coming on this trip. And there's a lot better reason for doing it than just because I don't want to sit around in a cotte-hardi listening to petitions and arguments over who gets seizin of what or whose vassal stole whose sheep."
She put an arm around his waist and leaned her face against his upper arm. Rudi looked down and batted his eyes.
"And here I was thinking it was the sweet charm of me and my beautiful eyelashes that brought you on the journey… yeak! Those bruises still hurt!"
It was getting a bit chilly; he unpinned his plaid and stretched it over their shoulders, blanket-style, and they sat in companionable silence. They'd been doing that since they were little kids… although the weight and warmth and fragrance of her made him a little conscious that they weren't children anymore.
Admittedly a bit of a gamy fragrance, but we have been on the road for weeks, and it's exceedingly female.
Odard had launched into another song; Mary and Ritva sang it, in two-part harmony:
"I hear the horse-hoof thunder in the valley below;
I'm waiting for the angels of Avalon-"
He looked up at Rudi and Mathilda as he finished, then aside to the twins with a charming smile:
"And I'd like to thank whichever of you beautiful ladies was considerate enough to bring along my lute. Perhaps it's not quite so essential as the dried beans, but I'm fond of it."
"It was her idea," Mary and Ritva said in perfect unison, each pointing at the other.
Odard's smile grew a little strained. "All right; thank you to whichever evil, teasing bitch preserved my lute. I'm fond of it."
"She's evil teasing bitch Number One," one of them said, pointing to the other. "And I'm evil teasing bitch Number Two."
"You are not! I'm evil teasing bitch Number Two!"
Ingolf laughed, which did Rudi's heart good to see. The big Easterner extended a hand.
"That's a pretty instrument," he said. "Could I see it for a moment?"
"It's not a guitar," Odard said in warning as he handed it over.
The man from Wisconsin touched his strong battered fingers to the strings with a tender delicacy.
"I know. My mother's sister was a luthier. Aunt Alice loved the oldtimey music. She was a bit touched after the Change-she was in Racine on the day of it, showed up nearly dead at our door in Readstown six months later, never talked about how she came through-but she could make ones almost as fine as this, and play them too. Taught quite a few people."