Odard's instrument had a spruce sounding board with a carving of vines over the sound hole, and touches of mother-of-pearl and rose-wood along the edges of the swelling body. It was actually his second-best lute, of course; you didn't take the finest on a trip like this. Ingolf began strumming.
"You don't have fireflies out here, do you?" he asked. "Not that I've seen, anyway."
"No," one of the twins said. "We've heard of them… bugs that glow?"
"Glowing bugs? Like the stars are little lights in the sky," he said, and his fingers began coaxing out a tune from the six-course instrument, plaintive and sad. "It's a pity you've never seen 'em. There's nothing prettier than fireflies on the edge of a field in a summertime night, with that sweet smell off the corn, and a little mist coming up from the river. Like stars come to earth, winking at you…
"Like the lights I shall never see again
The fireflies come and sing to me
Of trains and towns and friends long gone-"
He had a deep voice, a little hoarse but true; the twins began to sing along after a while, and then some of the Mormons joined in. Most people were happy to learn a new tune, since it was about the only way to increase your stock of music.
"Alice made that one; she surely did love the fireflies, and it was a pleasure to hear her singing while she watched them from the veranda. We kids caught some in a jar once and gave them to her, but she cried until we let them go. She was a bit touched, like I said, but good-hearted."
He passed the lute back to Odard, who gave him a considering look and played another tune. Rudi rested his chin on Mathilda's head while they listened. Yawns signaled the end of the impromptu sing-along.
"Did you bother to take a bath?" he said teasingly, sniffing loudly.
"And on that note!" she replied, and headed off for her bedroll.
Rudi yawned himself and stretched, looking up. The stars grew as his fire-dazzled sight adjusted, even more thickly frosted across the sky than they would be at home; the air of this high desert was thin and dry, and the Belt of the Goddess shone in red and yellow and azure blue. A little away from the fire Ingolf sat looking at the embers, rubbing his hands across his face occasionally. The relaxed pleasure that had shown while he sang was gone.
There's a man who's afraid to sleep, Rudi thought with concern. And he isn't a man to be governed by his fears, usually. I wish I were better at mind healing, or that Mother or Aunt Judy were here!
Father Ignatius came back from an inconspicuous tour around the outer perimeter of the camp, left hand on the hilt of his sword and the right telling his beads. He bent to speak softly to the man; Ingolf shook his head with a moment's crooked smile, and the priest went to his own sleeping place. A little way from that, something flashed in the dying light of the fire. Rudi turned his head and saw Mary snatch a gold coin out of the air; Ritva looked a little put out, and watched carefully as her twin slapped the little ten-dollar piece on the back of her left hand and uncovered it.
Rudi wouldn't have been entirely satisfied with letting that stand. Both the sisters were cat-quick, and they practiced sleight of hand for amusement and use as well, and while both were honorable neither had much in the way of scruples-you had to know them well to know how they saw the difference. Evidently Ritva felt the same way. The two young women spoke a moment more, then faced off and did scissors-paper-rock instead. Ritva lost two out of three, shrugged and rolled herself in her blankets.
I wonder what that was about, Rudi thought. He looked up; they'd take the third watch together, when that star was there. So they couldn't be settling that.
His own would start in three quarters of an hour, which was not enough time to be worth sleeping. Instead he pinned his plaid, picked up his sword and walked a little out of camp, then climbed the rock under which they'd camped. The steep crumbling surface required careful attention in starlight, particularly as he went quietly, but in a few minutes he was atop it, six or seven hundred feet above the rolling plain.
It stretched on every side, dark beneath the stars, pale where the green of sage or the bleached straw of the summer-dried grass caught a little light, the shapes of the conical hills curiously regular, and there a glitter on a stretch of obsidian. He controlled his breathing, deep and steady, and opened himself to the land, to the smell of dust and rock and the coolness of night.
"Well, perhaps they were wiser than I thought, the old Americans, to make this a monument," he murmured.
No light showed in the circuit of the horizon, and he could see for many miles from here. A few minutes, and an owl went by beneath the steep northern edge of the rock, a silent hunter's rush through the night that ignored him as if he was part of the landscape. Far and far a lobo howled, a sobbing sound deeper and more mournful than a song-dog. Its pack echoed the call, and Rudi nodded; he'd amused himself by counterfeiting that sound many a night when he was out in the woods and wilds, hunting or traveling, and having the fur-brothers answer him as if he were one of theirs.
What are our wars and our kingdoms to them? It makes you realize our littleness, and how everything has its own concerns, he thought. But the Lord and Lady have given us power to mar or mend the world beyond what the four-foot brethren have. So it's for the world and all Their children that the Powers are concerned with humankind's doings, as well as for our own sake.
He knelt and drew his sword, laying it on the sheath and sitting back on his heels, with his hands on his thighs and his vision centered on it. The forge marks in the damascened steel were like ripples in watered silk, dim and sinuous in the starlight; Mathilda had given this blade to him for his birthday when he turned eighteen and had his full height, though it had been a touch heavy for him then. The blade proper was just long enough to reach his hip bone with the point on the ground, tapering gradually from three fingers' width to a long point, and the cross-guard had been forged of a piece with it, something that took a master smith. The hilt was long enough for both single- and double-handed grips, wrapped with breyed leather cord and brass wire, and it had a plain fishtail pommel; you had to look closely to see the Triple Moon inlaid there, rose gold in silver.
Rudi Mackenzie had grasped the Sword of Art in his infant fingers, when Juniper had held him over the altar in the Nemed at his Wiccanning. Something, Someone had spoken through her then, and she'd made prophecy. He'd been but a babe, of course, but he'd heard the words often enough since. Now he spoke them softly to himself:
"Sad Winter's child, in this leafless shaw Yet be Son, and Lover, and Horned Lord!
Guardian of My sacred Wood, and Law His people's strength-and the Lady's sword!"
A sword isn't like a spear or an ax or a knife. It's the tool that humankind make only for the slaying of our own breed, Rudi thought. So You have chosen me for the warrior's path. And as husband to the land, father to the folk, I must walk in the guise of the God, the strong One who wards Your people. But You know my mind. I don't fear death; when it's my time to walk with You, Dread Lord, and know rest and rebirth, I am ready. I don't fear battle, though I do not delight in it. It's… that others depend on me and look to me that harrows my heart; my friends, my kin, those I love, those whose need I must serve. I fear to fail them.
He'd made the usual evening devotion, but a sudden sharp need seized him; he wasn't one to be always bothering the Powers, like an importunate child tugging at his mother's kilt and whining for attention, but…
Rudi raised his hands above his head, palm pressed to palm:
"Bless me with your love, Lord and Lady, for I am Your child."
The hands moved to his forehead, thumbs on the center where the Third Eye rested: