"Bless my vision with the light of wisdom."
To the throat, and:
"Bless my voice, that it may speak truth."
To the heart:
"Bless my heart with perfect love, even for my foes, for each is also Your child."
To the spot below the breastbone:
"Bless my will with strength of purpose, that I may not falter on the red field of war."
To the loins:
"Bless my passions with balance, making even hate serve love."
To the root chakra, at the base of the spine:
"Bless my silent self with clarity, that I may shun error."
To the soles of the feet:
"Bless all my journey in this world, that my path be the path of honor, until my accounting to the Guardians."
Then he held his hands up, palms before his face:
"Bless my hands, that they may do Your work on this Your earth."
Finally pressed together above his head once more:
"Bless me and receive my love, Lord and Lady, for You are mine as I am Yours; you powerful God, you Goddess gentle and strong, hear your child."
Smiling to himself, he took up the sword and sheathed it, a quick flick and a hiss of steel on wood and leather greased with neatsfoot oil, and the ting as the guard met mount at the mouth of the scabbard. Suddenly a shooting star streaked across the dome of heaven, and he chuckled.
"Well, I can't say You don't have a sense of timing!"
Edain was waiting for him at the base of the rock. Garbh sat at his heel and grinned with the tongue-lolling happiness of a dog about to take a country walk with two of her people-pack amid thousands of interesting new scents.
"Did you see the falling star?" the younger Mackenzie said.
They headed off to the northwest, which would be their watch-station.
"I did that," Rudi said, grinning in the dark. "I did that."
"Huh?" Ingolf Vogeler said, startled out of an evil dream.
Someone was close, very close. He pretended to drop back into sleep, but his hand crept to the staghorn hilt of his bowie, beneath the folded blanket he was using as a cover for his saddlebag pillow. The rough horn slipped into his palm, and he prepared to coil up off the ground…
"Well, I'm not here to have a knife fight!" someone whispered.
"Oh," he said; it was a woman's voice.
The face of one of the twins was close to him as she knelt, smiling. "Though I could probably have killed you if I wanted to."
"Oh," he said. "Well, true enough. Ah, Ritva-"
"Mary," she said. "But I sort of like you, actually, Ingolf." A smile. "That was really pretty music."
The smile was expectant; that gradually turned to a slight frown as he shoved the bowie back into its scabbard and sat up, scrubbing at his face. That was a mistake, since the bruises were still fresh enough to make him wince. His wits returned, enough to realize that she was carrying her bedding and dressed only in her shirt… though she had her scabbarded sword in one hand with the belt wound around it, like a sensible person in the circumstances.
It was late; his eyes flicked automatically to the stars, and read them as past midnight. Nobody would be up now except the lookouts.
"Uh…" He flogged himself to full awareness as she sat beside him and put an arm around his waist. "Umm, I sort of like you too, Mary."
I must be older than I thought, ran through his mind. Or more depressed. A beautiful half-naked blonde is propositioning me, and I'm not actually leaping at the chance. Well, part of me is, but the rest isn't.
Her smile returned and got broader-the part that was leaping was sort of obvious through the blanket. He was suddenly aware of the sunny smell of her hair, still slightly damp from bathing in the spring-water, and the way her breast brushed against his arm where she leaned against him.
"If you want me to get specific," she murmured into his ear, "you're brave and smart and you've got a good sense of humor when you're not depressed and you've got a really cute butt. And I've known you for months now, so that's not a snap judgment."
"Well, I was real sick for the first couple of months." Then he realized why he was oddly reluctant, enough that his mind was overriding the hammering of his pulse.
Saba. We'd only just met that night I rode into Sutterdown, and that was the last time I was with a woman.
The curved Cutter knife had been rising above him as he woke beside her. He swallowed as he remembered the way she'd shrieked as the Cutter's knife went in, and the way it had looked and smelled. Far too much like the sound and smell when the hog butcher put his spiked pincers on the beast's nose in the fall… and that lay over the memory of what had gone before.
"Look," he said slowly. "I… last time…"
"Ah," she said sadly, and put a hand on his arm and squeezed the thick bicep. "Saba. I'm sorry to bring it back to mind, but she'd smile at us from the Summerlands, really."
"I don't seem to be good luck for women," he said. "Not since, well, not since Corwin. My luck generally speaking sucks since then. I-" He swallowed. "I don't want to risk anyone else. I like you, Mary. I don't want to see you hurt."
"That's all right," she said sunnily. "My luck's good enough for two. And I'm a Ranger ohtar, a warrior by trade. Got to take my chances."
"Ummm-" Christ, but I seem to be saying that a lot. "Look, Mary. .. we're friends, right? So can I ask you honestly… you're not doing this because you're sorry for me, are you?"
"No, of course not!" she said. Then: "Well, not mostly. Being sad makes you more sexy; women think that way, you know."
"You do?"
"Usually. You know, the brooding thing, and it'll be a big charge to make you happy again. If you're interesting to start with." The grin grew broader. "And happiness is on the program."
She moved suddenly, straddling his lap. His arms went around her involuntarily, and suddenly he could hear her heart pounding as hard as his. The problem with that was that it brought back the memory of the last time really strongly. Mary gave a slight yelp as his hands closed on her, and then she looked down in puzzlement.
"What's wrong?" she said. "Things were fine, and then… look, I did take a bath…"
"Ummm, I'm real flattered." He was; it wasn't often you got an outright offer like this. Of course, both times it had been witches. "As long as you really want…"
"Sure! I won the toss, didn't I?"
"Toss?" he said, jarring to a halt.
"Well, Ritva and I are identical twins. We usually want the same thing. So we tossed for you. Well, then we did paper-scissors-stone. She cheats."
Ingolf felt his jaw drop slightly. Girls back home weren't necessarily shy, or coy about telling a man their mind under the right circumstances, but…
"You won me?" he squeaked.
"It's not as if there's much of a selection." At his gape, she stroked his head and went on: "Ingolf, there's you, there's our brother, there's a celibate Catholic priest, and there's two kids. I mean, Edain? Cradle robbing."
"He's about your age," Ingolf said weakly.
"That makes him younger. And boys that age are even more dicks on legs than men your age. Besides, he's scared of us."
"There's Odard…" And I can't believe I said that!
"Euuu! He's been trying to get into our pants since we were sixteen! Euuu! He'd smirk. And it's Matti he really wants. Besides, he's too… smooth."
"I'm not smooth?"
"No, you're rugged."
"Look, Mary…" he said slowly. Are these words really coming out of my mouth? "I… well, I like you a lot, but I haven't, you know, thought of you that way." Except in passing. "Couldn't we, ummm, get to know each other better-"
That was evidently not the right thing to say; she reared back like an offended cat and moved away from his embrace. Half of him wanted to snatch her back… and he was humiliatingly aware that some of the other half was sheer fear that he couldn't, not after what happened in Sutterdown.
"Eny!" she said, and then a sputter of musical syllables he knew were Sindarin, though he hadn't learned more than the odd word. "Men!"