They can make fire with a drill. They can cook what they eat, more or less, which is to say they hold it over the fire or boil it in a pot. And that?s all that can be said for their food. They can?t make good leather, or any cloth at all, or even the simplest metal tools-what will they do when the last of the salvaged gear is gone? They don?t even know how to make salt from a lick! This is no way for human beings to live.
Impatient as he was, he wished he did have more time; a month here
…
I could do more for them in a month. Or a year. Or ten; there?s no end to it. I?ll do what I can in the days I have, that?s all.
He was wearing only his kilt, to keep respect-the Southsiders might be primitive, but they were certainly hardy men-and also to show his scars, for the same reason. Jake sunna Jake handed him the string of hand-twisted sinew, and Rudi whipped the lower end to the bottom notch of the longbow. Then he slipped the other loop upward, and strung the stave Mackenzie-style-bottom tip over his left boot, right thigh over the center. He pressed down with his leg and pushed up with his right hand at the same instant, smooth and steady. Muscle stood out in long swells under the pale skin of his chest and arms like a slow wave of the sea, and the loop at the end of the cord slid into the upper nock. ?There,? he said, running a finger down the back to make sure no splinters stood proud in sign of a fault that would snap the wood under strain.
I wish I could glue a strip of rawhide here… but if wishes were horses we?d have enough to move those wagons… it will do, so. ?It needs to be well greased against the wet, but it will serve you well enough against anything but a knight in full harness on a barded destrier, and it might do for him as well if you were lucky.? ?Cool!? Jake said.
Odd, Rudi thought. I?ve heard folk in Corvallis use the word that way, or Bearkillers now and then.
They?d ceremoniously given Jake all the bows, and he?d handed them out in turn to his favored followers-there had been cursing and jostling in plenty too. They?d all seen what the Mackenzie weapons could do, in the fight with the Knifers and in hunting since and they were panting-eager to have something like it themselves.
He handed Jake three arrows he?d also made; the little tribe?s notion of fletching was even more sad than their attempts at bowmaking. The heads were ground and crudely hammered from old spoons, but they would do; it had been straight shafts and the delicate, skilled work of fastening the flight feathers that they hadn?t mastered. Jake slipped on his bracer and looked around and spotted a dead chestnut fifty yards away, across the thinner grass growing in drifted soil over the old roadway?s pavement. He drew with an odd motion, pushing the bow away with his left arm as much as drawing with the right.
Snap.
The shaft stood in the hard wood, buzzing like a malignant bee; the sound was distinct even through the quiet white noise of the rainfall.
Ah, well, the bow?s good enough for journeyman work, I?m thinking. There will be more hand shock than I like, a bit of vibration, and quite a surge.
The Southsiders had half a dozen of the pre-Change bows, fiberglass wonders that they couldn?t even dream of replacing, and they handed them around often enough that they were mostly reasonable instinctive shots by the time they were full grown. But the weapons had been made in all truth as what Edain had called them in scorn: children?s toys. Their draws were light, just enough to be useful for hunting rabbits or birds but nearly worthless for war or bigger game. Good pre-Change arrows were so scarce among them that no man carried more than one or two, with even the enduring plastic feathers growing more and more tattered.
Most of the time they relied on javelins for anything beyond arm?s reach. With those they were quite skilled. ?Can you teach us how to make bows like these?? Jake asked.?And arrers??
Arrows, Rudi thought. I?m getting the hang of the way they shift the sounds about, so I am. ?Southsiders need it, Rudi-man. Need it bad.? ?That we can, my friend. It?s a help to your people, it will be.?
Though I can?t know how much of a help.
Jake grinned at him, showing gaps in his teeth. Suddenly for an instant Rudi was elsewhere, a dizziness that left him no time to even stagger. Jake screamed as he pulled against the bonds that held him to an ancient streetlamp. Wood around his feet smoldered, and ragged figures danced triumph Rudi blinked again and shuddered; the Southsider chief was still smiling, so it hadn?t been long. Cold sweat lay dank along his sides and under his chin. He?d been raised by Juniper Mackenzie, a High Priestess who walked with the Otherworld, and he?d been touched by it himself more often than most. More, the Old Religion made fewer distinctions between magic and the works of the gods and the stuff of common day than other faiths.
And still visions like that weren?t easy to bear, and they?d been getting uncomfortably common on this journey. Not to mention the Powers who?d walked the pathways of his dreams.
I think that was a sight of what would happen if I didn?t help these folk, he thought. The which makes me grateful to Whoever guided my steps here. But it gives my skin the crawls too, so. If a man knew every possible twist and turn his actions might bring to the world, would he dare to act at all? Yet it?s also a comfort; I?m not merely using these people for my own needs, urgent as those are.
Edain sang again as he went back to work on his own piece: ?The elfling shrieked and howled and cried
And naught she did would make it bide!
She formed a plan to prove
This elfling child was not her love-?
Several of the Southsider babies were howling and crying now and then, which wasn?t surprising. If Rudi had had to endure this damp chill with nothing but a rough rabbit-skin diaper stuffed with moss or leaves he?d have cried, even in his mother?s arms. When some of the tribe?s women began casting thoughtful glances at their infants, Rudi grew a little worried himself.
Surely they couldn?t take it literally? The fey don?t really do that. Not often, at least.
He wasn?t altogether sure about how the Southsiders would take it, though. If you had an empty place in your soul where such things should be, something would fill it.
We need tales to make sense of the world. ?Tell?s another story, Rudi!? one of the children said, as he took up the next billet of the hickory, spat on a smooth hand-sized rock and began to hone hatchet and knife before he began his work.
The hunters and warriors and women who were gathered around to watch him fashion the longbow murmured agreement. Jake unstrung his new weapon and scooped a little congealed fat out of a dish and began to rub the wood, squatting and looking eager for the tale himself. The Mackenzie had never met folk so poor in story and song and legends, and it moved him to a pity that prickled at his eyes. Without that tapestry of color and words and ritual, what was life but eating and mating, sleeping and moving your bowels? All of them good and necessary things, but not enough; and they themselves needed that framework too, to give them meaning.
It surprised him as well as saddened him. Granted their pamaws had been young, any random group of Mackenzie children today would have known more and handed it down.
Though the Clan?s youngsters have had two generations of loremasters by now, he reminded himself.
He remembered long evenings sitting at his mother?s feet with the others in the great hall at Dun Juniper, listening to her storyteller?s voice weaving music and magic as strong as any she made in the nemed, the Sacred Wood. Her hands shaping images and the light of the fires on the god-faces carved amid the rampant vines on the log walls; flame-crowned Brigid and Lugh Longspear of the clever hands, elk-horned Cernnunos, the triple Morrigan and the Dagda with his club, red-bearded Thor and Sif of the golden locks…