The doe walked a little away from the fawns, her tail quivering, her reddish brown coat fading to darkness as the light failed. Closer
…
Lutra dropped her father's hand and reached out. A fawn sniffed her fingers, began to dodge, then stopped as she gently ran her hand down its neck. It tilted its head and looked at her oddly as if wondering what she was. Laere tried to do the same with the other, but he moved a little too sharply. It shied, and a stick crackled beneath its hooves; the doe brought her head up and made a sharp bleating sound.
Juniper chuckled a little then as the deer bounded away, in arcs that made them seem like weightless shadows that vanished under the trees. The two children stood waving and calling farewells for a moment, then came back to their blankets.
"That's her saying- Great Goddess, foolish child, it's a human!" Juniper said, and the others laughed as her singer's voice made it sound very like the doe's bleat. " They'll eat you! Will you be friends with a wolf next?"
"Grandma!" Laere said, and charged past Juniper to hug Judy around the waist and be lifted up on her hip and given a smacking kiss.
"Merry met," Juniper said to Devorgill and her children and her man.
That was a little formal for people who lived in Dun Juniper year-round, but Oak was off to war tomorrow. It would have been inconceivable for the son of the Clan's Chief Armsman not to march with the war-band, and Oak was bow-captain for Dun Juniper's own contingent.
"Merry met, Lady Juniper," they replied.
Lutra had hair as seal brown as her mother's and eyes the dark green of fir needles; she made a solemn reverence, bowing her head with hands pressed together and thumbs beneath her chin. That was a little too formal for the occasion, but the girl was obviously feeling very adult and knowledgeable today.
"Dad says I can go hunting with him next year," Laere said proudly, trotting back to stand by the man.
"To help with the camp chores," Oak said firmly; his hand ruffled the boy's head in a rough caress. "With your sister. Neither of you is old enough to hunt yet, not for years, not until you can make a kill quick and sure."
Lutra nodded. "You know the song of the law, Laere," she said.
Laere looked like he'd rather stick his tongue out at his sister once more for playing at old-and-wise again, or possibly pull her hair this time, but had too much in the way of manners to do so in front of the two awesome old women with their staffs. Juniper smiled at him and sang softly, just a snatch of it:
"Let the death be clean as life's release
So we show our honor to the beast
For your own death you will understand
When you hold life's blood within your hand-"
The boy smiled back and continued in a pure treble:
"Though we draw the bow an' we w-w… uh…"
His father and mother came in to help him as he wobbled:
"-and we wield the blade
We respect the Law the Gods have made;
For we know not when the shadows fall,
And the Huntsman comes to claim us all."
"And the shadows have fallen, and now we'd best go back to the camp, before it gets too dark and you two take a chill," Devorgill said, burping her youngest and wiping up the results with a cloth. "Merry part till later, mother Judy, Lady Juniper."
They walked off. As they passed, Juniper could hear Laere talking to his father:
"I wish I was old enough to go with you and Granddad to the war! I'd take a hundred heads, like the Hound did when Maeve invaded Ulster! Chop-chop-chop!"
His sister's outraged tones faded through the forest: " Laere! You blood-thirsty little brute of a boy! That's just in the stories! It's geasa now!"
Juniper looked up, and saw the first stars hovering over the snowpeaks of the Cascades.
"And we must go back to the castle, and smile and look brave at the feast," she said. "What a fraud I feel!"
Nigel faced her as she turned. "My dear," he said, putting a hand beneath her chin and kissing her. "You are without doubt the bravest of us all."
"He is?" BD said, her weathered, wrinkled face blank for an instant. " Murdoch is a spy for Lady Sandra?"
Astrid Larsson leaned back in the chair and nodded-not smugly, she hoped. The little chamber was very private, with only one narrow slit window high up on the curving outer wall; Castle Todenangst was full of places like that, nooks and crannies you could get to without anyone being the wiser and leave unnoticed.
Unless someone's watching from a secret passage, of course. I think Sandra did a lot of the detail work on the plans for this castle.
The light was good, gas-lamps with incandescent mantles, unaccustomed brilliance for an hour this late and reflecting off wainscoting of blond oak. There was a table of fine polished mahogany, a few chairs, a rug, and a bottle of wine and glasses by a bowl of raisins and walnuts and hazelnuts. Despite the charming little fireplace with its tiled surround of hummingbirds and meadowlarks it was a bit oppressive after a life spent mostly in the wilds or on the open roads, or at most in Stardell Hall with its loose scatter of homes through forest.
She could feel the uncounted tons of steel and concrete above, almost smell them under the odors of wine and burning fir-wood. And imagine the dungeons below, and the great foundations where the Fortress of Death-Anguish gripped the soil of the land.
But there are advantages, she thought. Privacy seems easier to come by amid many people. Odd.
She sipped at her glass of wine and watched the older woman think.
"He's good, then," BD said. "I've dealt with Murdoch and Sons every time I swung out that far East, and I'd never suspected he was her man in Pendleton."
BD was from the Kyklos, a scatter of independent villages around Silverton, not far north of the main Dunedain holding in Mithrilwood. Besides being a High Priestess of the Old Religion she ran the Plodding Pony service, which delivered high-value freight over much of Oregon, and which had employed Rangers as escorts almost as long as there had been Rangers in this Age of the world. That sort of business led to the collection of information as naturally as breathing. It also made you a shrewd judge of character.
Astrid went on: "Murdoch has been working for Sandra since before the War of the Eye. She planted him in Pendleton when we made the Protectorate withdraw from the area, after her husband was killed. And he's got… connections there. Sort of an underground."
BD looked down at the map and her eyebrows shot up. " I'll say! But how are you going to use them?"
Astrid shrugged. "I'm not altogether sure," she said. "But I'm a little uneasy about just marching up to Pendleton's walls and telling them to surrender so we can guard them against Boise and the CUT whether they like it or not. We can't even prove that either power is planning to move on them."
"You don't think you can beat the Pendleton Round-Up?"
"I don't want to beat them in a stand-up battle and I certainly don't want to burn down the city or lay the countryside waste. We Rangers generally don't go in for mass head butting. It's… crude. And Pendleton's just badly governed, not evil like the CUT and its Dark… Prophet. Every man we kill will be one who isn't on our side later, in the real war, when Rudi returns with the Sword. We ought to be able to make something of an asset like this Murdoch and his… connections."
She leaned forward. "You've been there in person. Tell me about the Pendleton Bossman, Carl Peters. The things that don't get into written reports."