"But the names you give the gods sound sort of weird," Frederick Thurston said.
They were all sprawled around the fire, eating or just resting before dropping off to sleep. Rudi flipped a well-gnawed rib to Garbh before he answered, and the half-mastiff caught it out of the air with a clomp of jaws like tombstones falling together in a quarry on a wet day.
"Well, then, you could call on Them in the forms they took to your ancestors," Rudi said. " Mine called on Brigid and Lugh and Ogma and the Morrigan, or at least a lot of them did, before the White Christ came."
Fred laughed. "I'd be sort of lonely, calling on the gods of the. .." He searched his memory. "Yoruba? Ashanti? In Idaho, at least."
"That's not your only heritage," Rudi answered. "On either the spear or cauldron side. There's the matter of your name, to be sure."
"My name?"
Rudi grinned and leaned back against his saddle. " Thurston means Stone of Thor. English, I'd say-the Norse would have made it Thorstein . Thunor is how the old English said that One's name."
"Dad never said where it came from; we're from Maryland, though, far back. Might have picked it up there."
"And your first name is Anglo-Saxon, too, or German. An Anglo-Saxon being a German who's forgotten he's half Welsh, as the saying goes. It means Peaceful Ruler."
"It does?" Fred said. "Well, I'll be damned. Where could I find out more about that?"
"Larsdalen, for starters," Rudi said, and nodded towards Mary and Ritva, who were combing each other's hair and rebraiding it. "Their mother, Signe Havel, is a priestess of that tradition-a gythja, a god-woman; she studied first with my mother, but took things in a different direction."
"Mom never could stand not being number one," Mary said. Then: "Not that she doesn't mean it, you know."
Edain Aylward Mackenzie had been silent during the talk of gods. Now he spoke:
"Someone's coming," he said.
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder into the night, then licked his fingers and belched slightly. Rudi slid down and pressed an ear to the ground; Ritva and Mary rose, donned their war cloaks, and ghosted into the darkness.
"That's interesting," Fred replied, elaborately casual, and cut another slice off the buffalo hump. To himself he wondered: How did he
… hey, it's the dog. Not fair!
He kept chewing. Bison weren't common in western Idaho, where he'd lived all his life until recently. It was the best meat he'd ever tasted, flavorful, meltingly tender-you could eat it like candy. The contrast with the flat wheat griddlecakes wasn't too great if they were fresh and warm, though.
He finished and stood, making sure his saber was loose in the scabbard. Edain came to his feet as well and strung his longbow. Then he rested his hand soothingly on Garbh's head where she pointed her nose northward into the darkness.
Fred looked over to where Rudi was lounging on his bedroll. The Mackenzie nodded slightly, and the young man from Boise raised his voice:
"You're welcome to share our fire."
There was silence from beyond the reach of the light, but that wasn't very far; the tough greasewood stems had sunk to a low reddish glow in the pit they'd dug through the thick prairie sod. The meat rested on a spit above the embers, with fat making them spit and flare now and then as it dripped from the flesh or out of the spray of fine bones. The smell of it and the wheatcakes and the pot of beans drifted into the prairie summer night, beneath the huge fresh scent of the grasslands. A kettle of chicory stood on three rocks, keeping warm enough for a slight plume of acrid vapor.
There was a moment of intense silence; the wind had died, and the moon was down, and only the stamp of a hobbled horse broke the quiet beneath the great dome of stars. Traveling the plains was a great way of making you realize how big this land was. They'd only covered a quarter of it, and it was more than half a year since he'd left…
Maybe Dad was wrong. Maybe it's just too big to be all one country again. Meanwhile, let's keep our attention on whoever-the-hell this is
…
Fred went on:
"And in case you were wondering, there are two of us in back of you by now. Even if you're moving on, show yourself. And we'd be happier about it if you came in slow. Less chance of someone's fingers slipping off a bowstring that way."
"I'm coming in!" a voice called sharply. "I'm peaceable!"
Fred's eyebrows went up. That was a woman's voice; tight with control, and hoarse with strain and tiredness as well. Rudi sat upright, looking casual and relaxed to anyone who didn't know how fast he could move; he'd been pressing his ear against the ground.
"Only one horse anywhere near," he said quietly. "That's a good trick, Ingolf."
"Only works well when the dirt's dry and hard," Ingolf replied. "I learned it from a Pawnee scout when we were fighting the Sioux."
The slow clop of hoofbeats became audible. Then the slight jingle of spurs; the rider was walking and leading her horse. Fifty yards away the figure became vaguely discernible; the bright starlight was enough to show it was wearing a wide-brimmed hat. And to show the violent start as the twins rose like sections of the grass itself in their war cloaks. Starlight caught on the heads of the arrows ready on their bows.
"I said I'm peaceable-like, dammit!" the stranger said, in a strong range-country accent.
It was stronger and harsher than Fred's own; he'd grown up in Boise, which had never stopped being a city even when it shrank drastically. Out here where the largest settlements were generally a ranch home-place, speech had drifted faster and farther from the old world's standards.
"That's nice," Ritva replied. "A lot of people who might be dreadfully bitchy otherwise are peaceable with an arrow pointed at their briskets."
The stranger peered at her, and apparently found what she saw behind the arrowhead reassuring-which showed she was either overconfident or more perceptive than the usual run. She came on, looking around their camp as she approached. The two mules that pulled the cart were hobbled, dim shapes grazing not too far away; so were a dozen of the horses. The other nine were tethered to a picket line much closer, where they could be saddled quickly in an emergency; a heap of cut grass lay in front of them. Epona was neither hobbled nor tethered; she raised her muzzle from a doze at the scent of the stranger's gelding, snorted, and shut her eyes again.
There wasn't much else, except the sleeping bags and saddles arranged around the firepit, though Fred noticed how the fire underlit everyone's faces, making them look a bit sinister…
And if I were a lone woman coming in out of the dark, I'd be a bit cautious, he thought, and tossed on a few more sticks.
The stranger dropped her reins and the horse stood; that might be good training, or it might just be exhausted.
Both, the young man thought.
It looked like a good horse that had been ridden too far and too fast, and there were silver studs on the bridle and breast-collar and saddle, and on the big tooled leather tapaderos that covered the stirrups. The silver was tarnished, or rubbed with mud, and the rest of the gear-coiled leather lariat, cased recurve bow and small round shield, checked shirt, leather breeches, boots, chaps, a quiver of arrows over her back on a bandolier-also looked good but hard-used. She had a shete and a bowie knife at her broad belt and a pair of soft leather gauntlets tucked through it; the buckle was worked steel, in the shape of a coyote's head.
The woman…
No, it's a girl. She's not thirty, the way I thought at first glance, Fred decided. She's about my age or a little less, just dirty and dusty and falling-down tired.
… looked around the circle of faces; Ignatius was out on watch, and the stranger's glance flicked at the twins and Mathilda for a moment longer. Which was logical; women along and armed made it less likely they were a bandit gang, slavers, or others of dubious character. Not impossible, but less likely.