The Given Sacrifice (2 page)

The king and his ally were both big young men only a year apart in age, with similar
broad-shouldered, long-limbed builds, both with the smooth graceful movements of those
raised to the sword and the tensile wariness of those who’d also lived by it in lands
beyond law. In other ways they differed. The younger son of Boise’s first ruler had
bluntly handsome broad features and skin of a pale toast color, legacy of his sire’s
part-African blood.

“Well, it is to our mutual advantage,” Fred said. “And he does have
some
virtues. He’s smart enough to treat his men well enough that they’ll follow him.
Especially now that he’s leading them in the direction they want to go.”

“That always makes it easier, to be sure,” Rudi said.

The High King’s eyes were a changeable blue-green-gray, brighter by contrast now as
the setting sun turned the big command tent into a cave of umber gloom. He wore the
pleated kilt of a Mackenzie in the Clan’s green-brown tartan, with a plaid pinned
at his shoulder over a loose-sleeved saffron-colored linen shirt cinched at wrists
and throat with drawstrings.

A sword hung at his right side from a broad belt, in shape a knight’s long cut-and-thrust
weapon with a shallow-curved crescent guard and a double-lobed hilt of black staghorn
inlaid with silver knotwork. Its pommel was a globe cradled in a web of antlers, at
first glance a perfect sphere of moon-opal. Then if you looked closer it was like
crystal, and within it curves that drew the vision deeper and deeper—

Fred’s eyes flicked aside from it, though he was a brave man, and not just about physical
danger.

“Was Roberts telling the truth?” he asked.

Rudi’s hand fell to the pommel in a gesture that had become habit. “What do you think?”
he asked.

I try to keep from being too dependent on this, Fred. You should too. The more so
as neither I nor the Sword will be with you whenever you might need them.

“That he was reasonably sincere, and he’ll keep his word—as long as he still thinks
we’re the winning side,” Fred said.

Rudi flipped up his hands in a gesture of agreement. “See, you don’t need the Sword
of the Lady to tell you
that
.”

Fred looked at it again, obviously forcing himself a little.

“That thing is useful. It had better be, after we went through hell and high water
to get it—”

Rudi chuckled; that was uncomfortably close to being literally true.

“But . . . better you than me, Rudi! I can judge men pretty well, I think, but it
would be sort of stressful to
know
what I read was true. And I’d hate to be incapable of half-believing some little
white lie.”

Rudi laughed; he’d been born late in the first Change Year, but there were already
a few faint lines beside his eyes that showed he was a man who laughed often.

“My sentiments exactly and in precise measure, Fred. But I’m stuck with it; worse,
my children after me.”

Fred’s smile died quickly. “Speaking of an inheritance . . . what I really hate about
making deals with Roberts and the others who backed Martin after he killed Dad is
that he gave them
land
, land from the public reserve that should have been kept for division into more family
farms. Dad always said yeomen are the bedrock.”

“More than they deserve, sure and it is,” Rudi said. “Though finding folk to work
it for them . . . that’ll be another matter.”

Land—who held it, and on what terms; who worked it, and how; and for whose benefit
besides their own—was what most of modern politics, and much of modern life for that
matter, were
about
.

“They deserve what Martin got, what you gave him,” Fred said.

Which had been the Sword through the gut. Though at the last that had been a mercy,
freeing his soul even as he died.

Fred’s face hardened as he spoke. Rudi reflected that the younger man normally wasn’t
much of a hater, which was a very good thing in a ruler for more than one reason.
But Fred had hated his elder brother Martin, for parricide and killing their father’s
dream of a restored United States and allying Boise with the malignancy that was the
Church Universal and Triumphant.

Possibly most of all for killing the love they must have felt once,
he thought sympathetically.
I have no brothers, but of my sisters I am most fond.

Fred went on: “And I have some ideas about tax policy on unused land. . . .”

A cough at the entranceway brought their heads around with a caution ground in by
short but extremely eventful lifetimes. Hands relaxed from weapons as they saw who
stood there, a young man of middling height but broad-shouldered and thick-armed,
with a square face and oak-colored brown curls beneath his Scots bonnet.

“Merry meet, Edain,” Rudi said to his guard-captain.

Edain Aylward Mackenzie put down the trays of food he was carrying. They looked a
little incongruous with the outfit of the High King’s Archers anyway. That was the
Mackenzie kilt and plaid and the green brigandine the Clan’s warriors usually wore,
though the outer layer of leather bore the Crowned Mountain of Montival rather than
the Mackenzie crescent moon cradled in antlers. He had shortsword and buckler at his
belt, a dirk, and a sgian-dubh tucked into his knee-hose.

Across his back was a quiver of gray-fletched arrows, with a great yellow yew longbow
thrust through the carrying loops on its side. The Mackenzies were a people of the
bow, and old Sam Aylward their first teacher had been known as Aylward
the
Archer in his time. His son bore that nickname these days, for very good reason.

Right now he prodded a thick callused finger at the food. “Merry meet, and merry part,
Chief; and you, Fred. Now eat, both of you.”

Rudi blinked in surprise. “
Arra
, and is it that time already?”

“It’s sunset,” Edain said.

Then with a show of thought, tapping a thumb on his chin: “It happens nearly every
day in these parts, and then most often it grows dark!”

“And how would I remember such things without you to remind me, blood-brother?” Rudi
grinned.

Edain snorted. “The Lord and Lady may know, but I don’t even ken how I got you to
Nantucket and back alive. I’m here because Fred’s batman came to me near weeping,
Not now they tell me, not now, we’re too busy . . .
and to think a crew of fancy cooks have toiled and moiled all the day to whip up this
feast for you, sure and they did like Lughnasadh come early, what with the well-basted
roast suckling pig with the honey-garlic glaze and the spiced meat pies with their
fragrant flaky crusts and the succulent fresh-picked asparagus and steamed sweet peas
and glazed carrots and stuffed eggplant and four types of bread hot from the oven
and sweet butter and the cakes and ices and whipped cream and all!”

Rudi chuckled; the food consisted of two bowls containing chunks of mutton stewed
with dried beans and desiccated vegetables, a stack of tortillas and a block of ration-issue
cheese the size, shape and consistency of a cake of soap. It was the same food anyone
in the US of Boise contingent would be eating tonight, officer or enlisted.

“Sit, man,” he said to Edain, as he pulled the little knife out of his sock-hose and
shaved rock-hard dry cheese onto the bowls of stew. “There’s work to be done and I’ll
need you to hear and speak. You’ve eaten?”

“Aye, Chief. Asgerd saw to it.”

Fred uncorked a wine bottle and poured three glasses as Edain unhooked his baldric
and hung the longbow and quiver from a peg on one of the tent poles.

“You should have gotten Asgerd pregnant, the way Rudi and I did our wives,” the Boisean
said, then looked at his King.

“And I won’t have to envy you much longer, Rudi. I wouldn’t have your
job
on a bet, but that, yeah. To hold our daughter—”

The longing was naked in his face for an instant, and the remembered joy in Rudi’s
own.

“Son,” Rudi said absently. “For you two it’ll be a son, first.”

All three men looked at his hand on the pommel of the Sword.

“You’re going to name him Lawrence,” Rudi went on. “And Dirk after Virginia’s grandfather.
He’ll go by Dirk, mostly . . . sorry! I should have left you to find that out; it
comes on me unawares, betimes.”

Fred’s face unfroze. “Well, in the old days they had machines . . . x-sounds, did
they call them? To tell you ahead of time.” His smile grew wide. “A son! Our son!”

Then he laughed. There was a silver hammer on a chain around his neck; he touched
his jacket over the spot where it lay.

“Son or daughter, Freya knows it’s the only way I was going to stop Virginia coming
on campaign with me,” he said. “Freya keep her and our kid both safe, too.”

“They’re a fierce lot in the Powder River country,” Rudi acknowledged, drawing the
Invoking pentagram over his bowl of stew.
“Hail and thanks to the Mother-of-All who births the harvest, to the Lord who dies
for the ripened corn, and thanks to the mortals who toiled with Them,”
he went on, before taking up the first spoonful.

The Powder River plains in old Wyoming were where Fred had first met his spouse, when
she stumbled into their camp on the run from the followers of the Church Universal
and Triumphant who’d taken her family’s ranch. She’d ended going to Nantucket and
back with the Quest.

Fred hammer-signed his bowl, murmured: “
Hail, all-giving Earth
,” and went on: “And Mathilda’s meek and retiring, Rudi, yeah, right, she certainly
wouldn’t be here even if she hadn’t gotten knocked up. And I’ve
never
seen her charging over a barricade into a mess of Saloum corsairs right beside you,
shield up, visor down and sword swinging and screaming
Haro, Portland! Holy Mary for Portland!
at the top of her lungs.”

He tasted the stew. “Damn you, Edain, you actually made me hungry as hell with that
description and now I have to eat
this.
”

Rudi chewed and swallowed. It was . . . fuel, slightly enlivened by the chilies some
camp cook had dropped in to disguise the fact that the contributing sheep had probably
died of old age. He’d eaten much worse, and the tortillas were even palatable when
fresh; he rolled one, dipped it in the stew to spoon some up, and took a bite before
he spoke:

“Matti fights from duty and necessity. Virginia actually likes it. The fighting, I
should be saying, not the killing as such, though to be frank she also minds that
less than you or I.”

“Yeah,” Fred acknowledged. “And she’s got a powerful hate on for the Cutters, and
just between me and thee, Rudi, sometimes she doesn’t grasp the difference between
leading a country and owning a ranch, not deep down. At least this way she’s got a
chance to get to know Mom and my sisters better. And Mom will do anything she has
to with a grandchild to protect, even keep Virginia in line.”

“And if Asgerd’s not blessed by the Mother-of-All yet, it’s not for want of trying
on our part,” Edain said cheerfully. “And there’ll be time enough.”

Like Fred he’d met his wife on the Quest. Asgerd Karlsdottir had been born in what
was once northern Maine, and was now the Kingdom of Norrheim. Edain had come away
from their time there with a new wife. Fred had found a faith, one that spoke to his
soul as his family’s nominal Methodism never had.

Rudi used the half-eaten tortilla to gesture. “Look you, we just took . . . what,
a tenth of Boise’s remaining strength this last hour? And without an arrow or swordstroke,
and it was the fraction of it blocking our way at that. Took it from their line of
battle and added it to ours.”

“Yeah,” Fred nodded, soberly. “I’ve got as many men as the junta has now, infantry
at least, and mine
want
to fight. Or at least to get the job done so they can go back to their farms without
worrying about the Cutters threatening their families.”

Rudi nodded, but it wasn’t completely a gesture of agreement. “I want to pick up the
pieces without killing any more of your people. Corwin is the real enemy.”

“Damn right. It’s not
their
fault Martin screwed them over and got them on the CUT’s side.”

“True, but morals aside . . . two things a king can never have enough of: one is money,
and the other is good troops. And good soldiers will get you gold more often than
gold will get you good soldiers, as my foster-father Sir Nigel is fond of saying.
I want those men fighting for
us
.”

“But we have to hammer past Boise as fast as we can,” Fred said; he’d been trained
in Boise’s staff schools, where playing devil’s advocate was a standard technique.
“Before the passes are snowed in again and while there’s still grazing. Otherwise
the League of Des Moines and the Canuks will get to Corwin before we do. And you . . .
we . . . Montival . . . don’t want that.”

“No, though the Lakota will be with them, and they’re part of Montival now, keeping
our spoon in that stewpot across the Rockies. Also our allies may not
get
to Corwin this year, being naturally less eager than we; if they tie down the bulk
of the Prophet’s men on the high plains, I’ll be satisfied. But when Corwin falls,
the war is over bar the mopping up.”

“
When
being the operative word,” Fred observed dryly.

“Exactly. Fighting into next year means fields unplanted or unharvested, and there’s
been too much of that already.”

“So . . .
‘if it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly,’
” Fred quoted.

Rudi nodded, barring his teeth in what was not quite a smile. That was from
Macbeth
, and that tale of ambition and treachery and death seasoned with ill-wreaking magic
was all too apposite.

“The city of Boise itself . . . that may be tricky. Your father built strong walls
and gates.”

“Not if they’re opened from the inside.”

“That would be . . . difficult.”