Motion drew his eyes. There was a meadow ahead, hints of color and greenness amid a sunlight whose brightness was almost painful. Two figures came out of it, shadows at first, and then a woman and a wolf-the great beast was chest-high on her, and she walked with a hand resting on its ruff. The animal cocked head and ears and dangled a tongue like a red flag across bone-white fangs, its amber eyes amused.
The woman was Judy; as he remembered her from that first meeting, solid in her festival robe and three-colored belt, and beautiful. His own eyes went wide with alarm.
"No," she said, smiling at him, that smile that had made him feel like a boy on his first date for thirty years of marriage. "Time's different here. You came first, but I've been waiting."
He nodded. Somehow that made sense. The wolf made an impatient wurrrff sound and jerked its nose towards the meadow where light shimmered on flowers of gold. Judy extended her hand.
"Breakfast's ready," she said, and grinned as his stomach rumbled. "And Aoife's eager to see you again-you wouldn't believe the argument we had over who got to meet you first. Fortunately Liath talked some sense into her."
He took the infinitely familiar hand and grinned back at her. "Will there be gardens?" he said.
She nodded as she turned to lead him into the brightness.
"There's everything."
LARSDALEN, BEARKILLER HQ, HALL OF REMEMBRANCE OCTOBER 31, CY
The great rectangular room fell silent as the food was cleared away from the long tables and the ceremonial drinking-horns set out, rimmed and tipped with gold and carved with running interlaced animal patterns. The central hearth beneath its copper smoke-hood flickered and boomed, for the night outside was cold and hissing with winter's rain. Light from that shone on the oak wainscoting between the tall windows, wrought in similar sinuous forms and hung with weapons and shields-round concave ones marked with the Bear, backswords and lances and recurve bows, and captured trophies and banners.
The fire scented the air, and the wax of candles from the wrought-iron chandeliers overhead, and the memory of the feast's fresh hot bread and the roast pigs and a dozen other dishes. Now military apprentices went their rounds with jugs of the wine from the Larsdalen vineyards and from elsewhere in the Outfit's territories, that the dead might be hailed in the drink grown on the land their blood had defended.
There had been a memorial mass in the Larsdalen church, and a blot in the Hoff that Signe had built years ago, and private rites in each family, but this was a ceremony they all had in common; both faiths accepted the arval, the grave-ale.
The feast hadn't been too somber despite the mourning; the Bearkillers remembered how their founder Mike Havel had joked with his comrades and his wife as he lay dying on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, scorning death. Most of those present believed that the spirit outlived the body, in Heaven or the halls of the High One or Hella's domain or by rebirth; and they and the minority of unbelievers all shared a faith that a man lived not one day longer than he lived, and that what mattered was how he met his end… or hers.
Strong bearded faces waited, and women no less fierce, many of them also with the brand of the A-list between their brows. Youngsters newly blooded were there, and the solid landholders of the A-list steadings, and representatives from the others of the Outfit; merchants of Rickreal, Larsdalen's craftsmen and engineers, and the commons from the Strategic Hamlets. The A-list's pride was that they were the first to fight, but they kept Mike Havel's law, that every member of the Outfit would defend the others at need, and to the death. The toasts ran up the tables; it was the custom for close kin to make them. Finally they reached the head table, the one that stood crossways to the others and centered about an empty chair.
No human sat in it tonight, but a sheathed backsword rested across the arms. The high back was draped with a bearskin cloak clasped with a gold broach, and above it was a helmet-the simple bowl with nasal-bar and mail aventail the Outfit had used in its earliest days, but with a snarling bear's head mounted on it so that the snout projected like a visor, and a fall of hide behind.
On either side were the seats for the war-leader Eric Larsson, and his sister Signe Havel who held the Bear Lord's power until his children were grown. They both stood, ending the toasts to the fallen with a collective tribute.
"I drink to our glorious dead!" Eric Larsson said, taking up his horn from its stand, and signing it with the Cross. "In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost; may the blessed Virgin intercede for them, and my patron, St. Michael, and all warrior saints welcome them to everlasting glory, they who fell fearlessly for home and kindred; in Jesus' holy name, amen!"
There was a long murmur of amen from those who followed his faith. Signe took up her horn in turn and used her right fist to sign it with the Hammer; it was one of the set her grandfather had commissioned in a fit of youthful ethnic self-rediscovery eighty years ago, much copied since the Change by the Outfit's makers. With innocent eclecticism the craftsmen of the 1930s had included Northwest Indian symbols along with the Norse, but that was appropriate-she had a little of that blood too, after all.
Her voice rang out:
"I drink to our glorious dead. May they feast with the High One this night. May His daughters bear them the mead of heroes, and greet the new-come einherjar thus at the gates of Vallhoclass="underline"
"Hail to thee Day, hail, ye Day's sons;
Hail Night and daughter of Night,
With blithe eyes look on all of us,
And grant to those sitting here victory!
Hail, Aesir, hail Asynjur!
Hail Earth, that gives to all!
Goodly spells and speech bespeak we from you,
And healing hands in this life!"
Then together the siblings raised the horns high and shouted: " To our glorious dead! And to all the Brothers and Sisters of the A-list, always first to fight! Drink hail! "
A hundred and fifty voices roared reply:
"Wassail!"
Signe looked at her twin brother with critical appraisal as they sat again; the stump of his left wrist was neatly bandaged, and he looked gaunt and pale but strong in black boots and pants and high-collared jacket; the doctors said it had been healing well, and he'd certainly been bugging the craftsmen for a whole range of hooks, blades, gripping devices and even a steel fist for when it was ready to hold a prosthetic.
The military apprentices moved along the tables, refilling for those who'd drunk deep. She was pacing herself, and had taken only a long sip, but it glowed in her stomach after the feast. Just enough to give the great room a glow as well. Her mouth quirked as she thought what the ancestress who'd had it built as a ballroom back in Edwardian days with a splendor of white silk hangings and chandeliers would have thought of it now.
Probably great-great-grandfather Sven would like it better, the old pirate!
That had been the man who came from a bitter little farm in Smaland to the Pacific Northwest in the days when men like wolves snarling around an elk tore fortunes from the land with fangs of steel and steam. He'd started in a lumber camp and married the half-Tlingit woman who cooked for his bunkhouse; worked his way up to pay clerk, quit, made a minor silver strike in the Idaho mountains, parlayed that into a fortune, bought this country estate to complement his town mansion in Portland…