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:
"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-"