Wheel around the sacred Stone Hieee! Hieee! Herne! Herne! Herne!?
The witches lining the edge of the firelight swayed together, faces in-humanly rapt or blankly hidden by the masks; their voices answered as the swaying turned to a spiraling dance, stately and slow at first but growing faster as she watched to match the beat of the cry: ?Heerrrnnne! Heerrrrrnnne!?
The call went on, and on; she realized that the voices were taking it up in relays. The sustained rise and fall of the sound had a savagery to it, an elemental need, and somehow it spread -until it began to ring from the stones beneath her and the sky above and the hills to either side, until her own bones and organs buzzed with it. Her skin tightened until she felt she must burst, as if her very life depended on ripping her clothes away and running to join the celebrants; unconsciously her fingers dug into the thin earth and her body ground against it.
Silence, sudden, jarring, leaving her as breathless-winded as a punch in the gut. The High Priestess spread her arms in welcome, and the coven-folk bent the knee, inclining heads bare but for flowers or grotesquely masked. Then a great voice sang the next verse of the hymn from the circling woods-not far from her. A voice she recognized, but altered as if speaking from some deep well of time, growing as it approached: ?Chant the prayers and work your rite
Burn scented sacred candles day and night
You may leap till dawn to the pounding drums
But you best be ready-?
For a moment the song turned to a huge shout from every one of the worshippers, drowning even the crackle of the need-fire: ?-when the Horned God comes!?
It was Rudi who came, naked save for the great stag mask and spreading antlers, the firelight shining upon the long-limbed grace of his body; in his hand was a tall spear tipped by a flame-shaped bronze head. Mathilda shuddered and bit her lip until the pain cut through the haze that seemed to cloud her eyes and fill her brain. Bending, leaping, strutting in rampant maleness, the figure of Herne turned amid the laughter and the dance, feinting with the spear. Its blade touched some of the revelers in the whirling snakelike chains, metal delicate as a kiss. ?You can wake to the sound of the hunting horn
Dance skyclad in the gathering storm
In Solstice time blood runs to the rod!
It?s just the coming-?
Rudi-no, Artos -flung his arms high, the blade of the spear glinting like ruddy flame, and as if the gesture had called it forth the worshippers roared: ?-of the Horned God!?
He sprang onto the altar. ?He will call you out, make you sweat
Give you a blessing that you?ll never forget
So revel in the chase and let your hot blood run?For blessed are we children of the Horned One!
Blessed are we children of the Horned One!?
The Coven answered, swaying forward together, stretching out their hands to the tall shape of the Wild Huntsman: ?We call you forth as we make our way
Waking your power every day
Guide us true in the Hunt this night
And maybe even later-in the Great Rite!?
The masked figure threw back his head and bellowed laughter. ?You can wake to the sound of the hunting horn
Dance skyclad in the gathering storm
So revel in the chase and let your heartbeat run
But you best be ready, pretty-doe one
You best be ready when the Horned God comes!?
The spear lanced out again, as if it were pointing at her. It was impossible, but she knew it was true even if Rudi had no idea she was there; and from the point fire seemed to crinkle every tiny hair on her skin. ?He will call you out, make you sweat
Give you a blessing that you?ll never forget
So revel in the chase and let your heartbeat run ?For blessed are we children of the Horned One!
Blessed are we children of the Horned One!?
Even then she didn?t quite lose control of herself; she eeled backward with a lifetime?s skill before she ran blindly, half sobbing. And when folk about the work of the Sheriff?s steading stared at her she made herself walk into the lamplight, smile and nod.
Odard looked up in alarm as she came into the chamber the travelers had been given as their common room. His questions died as she sat. ?Just… play, would you, Odard? Remind me of home.? ?As your Highness commands.?
He bowed deeply and sat, taking up the lute. The clear notes rang in the night, drowning all the sounds of the wildwood where it rested like a great feral beast, beyond the walls and laws and rules of men. ?I wish we were home,? she said at last.
He kept his fingers moving on the lute, and his face averted. ?The problem is, your Highness… I think things may be going badly at home, too.?
TheSwordoftheLady
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Signe Havel cursed quietly beneath her breath, and spat to clear the alkali dust from her mouth. It was futile; the cold morning wind that snapped the dark brown banner with its snarling crimson bear?s head beside her blew more back into her face, along with a little dry snow from yesterday?s thin fall. The sun was far enough over the horizon now that a squint and the shade of her raised visor did well enough to show the huge rolling landscape that opened out before her. Gray-green sage, a frosting of white snow blown in numberless little crescents against the sides of brown dead bunchgrass, the slightly darker brown of bare soil, aching-blue sky…
She was a tall fair woman a little past forty; the face under the raised visor of her sallet helm was still beautiful, in a fashion now slightly harsh. The sixty pounds of Bearkiller cavalry armor-breastand backplate of articulated steel lames, similar cover for upper arms and thighs, vambraces and greaves-didn?t bother her.
It?s about the only thing about this cock-up that doesn?t bother me very much indeed, she thought. But Mike taught me a long time ago that you have to look positive for the troops.
She?d kept all her skills up, enough that she wasn?t a handicap on a battlefield where command was her primary job, but she hadn?t taken the field for years. Most of the time she ran the civil side of Bearkiller affairs from Larsdalen-the core of which had been her family?s summer home even before the Change-and left active military leadership to her twin brother, Eric Larsson.
But most of the time we?re not scraping the bottom of the barrel and holding on with our fingernails, she thought bleakly.
And then, as she watched the skirmish half a mile away:
I haven?t forgotten how to do this. I also haven?t forgotten how much I dislike watching men die. Even strangers who?ve never done me any personal harm; my friends, even less.
It was a chilly winter?s day here up on the high sagebrush plains east of the Cascades, which introduced yet another of the discomforts of wearing armor-in summertime she?d have been roasting like a pig after a blot in the suit of articulated plate, and now it made her sweat whenever she was active and then let the moisture in the padding beneath turn dank and greasy-chill as soon as she was still for more than a few moments.
Which right now is the least of my worries.
The enemy had thrown up the earthwork fort beside the old road bridge in less than a day; her own field engineers were lost in professional admiration at how swift and thorough it had been.
Damn them all, Signe thought. Hella eat them and spit the bones into Ginnungagap!
The foursquare earth walls appeared as if dug by a race of giant prairie dogs, with four low thick towers of prefabricated timbers at the corners, sheathed in steel plates and a broad abatis covered in angle iron and barbed wire. The United States of Boise?s flag flew over it; since they considered themselves the United-States-of-America-full-stop they used the Stars and Stripes. Which her husband, Mike Havel, had always considered slightly blasphemous for any of the thousand-and-one successor states in the ruins of the world left by the Change.