A tall woman who'd been sitting with her legs crossed and her hands resting on her thighs opened her eyes and swung her legs down from their lotus position. Her head came up, crowned with white-blond hair in a tight-woven fighting braid, and she met Murdoch's eyes. The Association spy shivered a little in that pale gaze, the hyacinth-blue pupils rimmed and shot with silver threads. She stared silently for a few seconds, and the man who Pendleton knew as an importer squirmed.
BD sympathized; people meeting the Hiril Dunedain for the first few times often had that reaction. She'd known the girl… woman. .. since she was fourteen, and still felt that way sometimes herself.
"We aren't expected at the Bossman's feast," Astrid Larsson said. "But I do think we'll drop in anyway."
Alleyne smiled. " Crashing the party, rather like thirteen dwarves coming by unexpectedly for tea."
"But even less welcome and more troublesome," his wife said. "And if there are emissaries from our ultimate enemies there… so much the better. We'll spend tomorrow going over the details, but with luck and a little effort we can skip the war and go straight to the victory, which is always the best part anyway."
Hordle rapped his knuckles on the wooden table. Murdoch muttered and retreated, banging the door behind him.
Alleyne made a tsk sound and dropped back into the Elven-tongue. "You shouldn't spook him, my love, just because he works for Sandra Arminger. He's on our side now. The whole Portland Protective Association is. And he's been quite cooperative."
"We're fighting the same enemy at the moment, bar melindo," she said. "That isn't exactly the same thing as being friends, darling."
A dozen of the Rangers filed past and trotted up the stairs to fetch the gear. BD stepped aside as they left and nodded to the four leaders, then stepped over to look at the documents on the table. One was the blueprints of the Bossman's house. The other was a map that showed Pendleton, the modern town, in considerable detail. Across it-underneath it-lay a network of dotted red lines…
"Well, that's imaginative at least," she said, as the details of the plan leapt out at her. "It's going to be tricky, though. Particularly the 'getting away alive' part."
And I'm glad I sent my people out of town!
Eilir nodded and replied in Sign: Don't worry. Murdoch has really done a very creditable job with these tunnels since the end of the war. The last war, I should say.
"Just like Sandra Arminger to have a literal mole here, burrowing away for the past twelve years," Astrid said dryly, and they chuckled. "She isn't called the Spider for nothing."
A clatter of footsteps, and the Dunedain returned with boxes and crates and barrels carried on their shoulders, or slung between them by the rope handles. A little brisk hammering opened them, and men and women crowded around.
"Ah!" John Hordle said, seizing his four-foot bastard longsword and running his hand along the double-lobed grip. "Felt naked without this, I did. A big bloke's not worth buggery without 'is bastard."
Which sentence sounds absolutely indescribable said in Sindarin with a Hampshire yokel burr, BD thought with a mental groan.
Meditatively, glancing at Astrid, Hordle went on: "Aren't we supposed to be generals? Sitting around map tables looking important, while the younger generation do the work? This is too 'ands-on for my taste, now I'm past forty and a dad and sensible."
Astrid smiled and spread her long-fingered hands. "Are there any among our people better suited to lead this endeavor, my brother?"
"No, I suppose not," Hordle grumbled, shrugging into a mail-coat covered in dark green leather and cinching it with a broad belt.
BD stretched her own back with a silent groan. Her mail-vest was light, but she'd worn real armor now and then, and detested every minute of it. Hordle was probably so accustomed to it that he didn't even notice. It was like the sword; he didn't feel natural without it.
"But I thought we came here to fight a battle?" he went on plaintively, turning his head slightly so that he could wink at Eilir unobserved; she giggled silently. "There's a murdering great army out there west of town, thousands of them sitting on their arses with nothing better to do than eat and scratch themselves, and here we are doing their work."
"The best battle is the one you win without fighting," Astrid said serenely.
Hordle rolled his eyes and spoke to Alleyne Loring. "I hate it when she gets all profound like that!" Then to Astrid: "And you put Tiphaine d'Ath in to look after the troops."
Astrid's smile was slightly cruel now. "That was her punishment. Do you imagine there's anywhere in the world she'd rather be than here, right now, John? And when the bards make their song, they'll sing of us, while Tiphaine gets three lines saying she looked after the troops well enough while we were gone."
The smile grew broader, and unexpectedly she giggled like a school-girl. "She'll be snarling about that when she's ninety."
"Let's hope the song doesn't say she gallantly avenged our 'eroic deaths instead," he replied.
"I intend to die heroically of extreme old age and general debility, in bed, with my great-grandchildren gathered around weeping," Alleyne said crisply. "BD, you should have something to eat and get some sleep. It's going to be a busy day tomorrow."
BD did, with John Hordle pitching in beside her; there was cold roast beef and pungent kielbasa and fried chicken, bread and butter and hot pickles, tortillas and beans, tomatoes and radishes, with sharp cheese and apple tarts to follow. She'd been too worried to be hungry up until that point, despite the eight hours since lunch; suddenly she was ravenous, and constructed several sandwiches as massive as her dentures could handle. Anyone who didn't think wrangling wagons all day was hard physical labor had never done it. Hordle ate enormously but neatly as he joined in the planning session.
When BD finished she tapped the small keg by the door for a mug of the beer. So did John Hordle, but apparently it didn't make him feel sleepy; of course, he was a generation younger, in superb condition, and had a hundred and sixty extra pounds of mass to sop it up. There was bedding down in the other end of the chamber; she wrapped herself in blankets and sheepskins, and felt herself fading swiftly. As she did she overheard Astrid:
"Besides, it is not by force of arms alone that we will prevail in this war. We keep the enemy's attention on us and that helps Fr… ah, Rudi and the others."
"Inspiration's one thing. Plagiarism is something else again," Alleyne said in a severe tone, and the four laughed.
BD sighed and prayed: Oh, Apollo, guard your priestess! Artemis of the Hunt, let me not be the prey! And look out for Rudi and the others too. They're going to need it.
TheScourgeofGod
CHAPTER EIGHT
Curse and ill-wishing have no power
Save that the heart lets them in
Hard the lesson learned by the undefeated
That strength and right may end in ill From: The Song of Bear and Raven
Attributed to Fiorbhinn Mackenzie, 1st century CY
Rancher Jed Smith yawned and turned over in his bedroll, conscious of the growing light in the east and the frosty air on his face.
That was a good dream, he thought sleepily. It's good luck to dream of home.
He'd been there, out where the horizon went on forever. Where the grama and wheatgrass brushed against your stirrups and ran in rippling waves beneath the biggest sky in the world, cloud shadows racing the wind across prairie green with spring and thick with blue lupine and white pennycress and golden gromwell, so beautiful it made the breath catch in your throat… and the air was fresh enough to hit like a shot of whiskey. Riding his own range and his herds had been around him, red-coated, white-faced cattle up to their hocks in the good grazing, sheep fat with the grass of a year with no drought, a promise that all his folk on Rippling Waters would be full-fed and warm come the blizzard season.