S. Stirling - The Scourge of God

Saba. We'd only just met that night I rode into Sutterdown, and that was the last time I was with a woman.

The curved Cutter knife had been rising above him as he woke beside her. He swallowed as he remembered the way she'd shrieked as the Cutter's knife went in, and the way it had looked and smelled. Far too much like the sound and smell when the hog butcher put his spiked pincers on the beast's nose in the fall… and that lay over the memory of what had gone before.

"Look," he said slowly. "I… last time…"

"Ah," she said sadly, and put a hand on his arm and squeezed the thick bicep. "Saba. I'm sorry to bring it back to mind, but she'd smile at us from the Summerlands, really."

"I don't seem to be good luck for women," he said. "Not since, well, not since Corwin. My luck generally speaking sucks since then. I-" He swallowed. "I don't want to risk anyone else. I like you, Mary. I don't want to see you hurt."

"That's all right," she said sunnily. "My luck's good enough for two. And I'm a Ranger ohtar, a warrior by trade. Got to take my chances."

"Ummm-" Christ, but I seem to be saying that a lot. "Look, Mary.. we're friends, right? So can I ask you honestly… you're not doing this because you're sorry for me, are you?"

"No, of course not!" she said. Then: "Well, not mostly. Being sad makes you more sexy; women think that way, you know."

"You do?"

"Usually. You know, the brooding thing, and it'll be a big charge to make you happy again. If you're interesting to start with." The grin grew broader. "And happiness is on the program."

She moved suddenly, straddling his lap. His arms went around her involuntarily, and suddenly he could hear her heart pounding as hard as his. The problem with that was that it brought back the memory of the last time really strongly. Mary gave a slight yelp as his hands closed on her, and then she looked down in puzzlement.

"What's wrong?" she said. "Things were fine, and then… look, I did take a bath…"

"Ummm, I'm real flattered." He was; it wasn't often you got an outright offer like this. Of course, both times it had been witches. "As long as you really want…"

"Sure! I won the toss, didn't I?"

"Toss?" he said, jarring to a halt.

"Well, Ritva and I are identical twins. We usually want the same thing. So we tossed for you. Well, then we did paper-scissors-stone. She cheats."

Ingolf felt his jaw drop slightly. Girls back home weren't necessarily shy, or coy about telling a man their mind under the right circumstances, but…

"You won me?" he squeaked.

"It's not as if there's much of a selection." At his gape, she stroked his head and went on: "Ingolf, there's you, there's our brother, there's a celibate Catholic priest, and there's two kids. I mean, Edain? Cradle robbing."

"He's about your age," Ingolf said weakly.

"That makes him younger. And boys that age are even more dicks on legs than men your age. Besides, he's scared of us."

"There's Odard…" And I can't believe I said that!

"Euuu! He's been trying to get into our pants since we were sixteen! Euuu! He'd smirk. And it's Matti he really wants. Besides, he's too… smooth."

"I'm not smooth?"

"No, you're rugged."

"Look, Mary…" he said slowly. Are these words really coming out of my mouth? "I… well, I like you a lot, but I haven't, you know, thought of you that way." Except in passing. "Couldn't we, ummm, get to know each other better-"

That was evidently not the right thing to say; she reared back like an offended cat and moved away from his embrace. Half of him wanted to snatch her back… and he was humiliatingly aware that some of the other half was sheer fear that he couldn't, not after what happened in Sutterdown.

"Eny!" she said, and then a sputter of musical syllables he knew were Sindarin, though he hadn't learned more than the odd word. "Men!"

Actually, that let's-get-to-know-each-other-first is usually the girl's line, he thought, bemused, as she flounced back to where her sister lay.

Slowly a smile spread over his face as he lay back and pulled up his blankets. His body was giving a sharp protest at what he'd done, and a big part of his mind was agreeing, yearning for the sheer comfort of closeness. The rest of him…

Maybe she didn't just set out to make me feel better, but for some reason I do!

CASTLE TODENANGST, PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION

WILLAMETTE VALLEY NEAR NEWBERG, OREGON

SEPTEMBER 10, CY 23/2021 AD

Astrid Larsson, Hiril Dunedain, frowned upward at the curiously graceful bulk of Castle Todenangst. The great fortress-palace of the Arminger dynasty had been built around the slopes of Grouse Butte in the first Change Years, a little east of the town of Newberg. Built by thousands glad to haul concrete on their backs and claw away earth and rock for a regular bowl of gruel from Portland's commandeered grain elevators and a taste of the whip from the overseers. In those days of the great dying it had been a good bargain.

Still a symbol of tyranny, I suppose, she thought. Complete with dark tower. But…

Now it looked as if it had been there forever, a great circuit of crenellated concrete wall and tower covered in shining white stucco, the gates like castles in themselves and the broad moat bright with water lilies in coral pink and white and purple. The high mass of the inner donjon loomed over it all where the builders had carved away the central butte and cased it in ferroconcrete, covered with pale granite salvaged from abandoned banks and rearing hundreds of feet higher than the surrounding plain of dark forest and green pasture and yellow stubble-field, vineyard and orchard and village.

Towers higher yet studded the oval wall, the greatest of all on the southern height nearest them, sheathed in black stone with glittering crystal inclusions that made it sparkle in the bright sunlight of a September dawn. Its roof was conical and tapered to a spike, but not green copper like the others. It was covered in gold leaf, and it blazed like a flame as the sun cleared the forested Parrett Mountains to the eastward, a monument to the dark and ruthless will of the man who'd reared it amid the death-agony of a world.

He's been dead twelve years. Does his spirit still linger here?

Proud banners flew from the towers, and lords and ladies in bright finery stood on the battlements to look down on the assembled armies of the Meeting. Several thousand peasants and townsmen crowded around the lowered drawbridge in their best Sunday-go-to-Church dress of jerkin and hose and cap or double tunic and wimple, ready to wave the little Lidless Eye flags they carried. A rank of soldiers stood on either side to keep them back, facing outward with their spears held horizontally.

"I have to admit, though, it's almost… like something out of Gondor, isn't it?" she said with grudging admiration in her silver-veined blue eyes.

That she used Sindarin kept the conversation private from outsiders. It was even more so because only she and her husband, Alleyne, and her anamchara, Eilir Mackenzie, and her man, John Hordle, stood near her. The rest of her Rangers were in a solid mass behind her two hundred strong, each standing at their horse's head, clad in light armor and spired helmets. The White Tree with its surround of seven stars and crown flew from a tall banner a proud ohtar held beside her own dappled Arab.

"Possibly like Minas Tirith," Alleyne said, smoothing a finger along his neat blond mustache. "Or possibly more like the offspring off a fleeting romantic encounter between Carcassonne and San Simeon. I'm certainly glad we never had to try and storm it."

Eilir nodded, and Hordle grunted agreement around the last mouthful of a massive smoked-venison-and-pickled-onion sandwich.