S. Stirling - The Scourge of God

Rudi's had two long raven feathers tucked in. "Sure, and the Raven is the bird of my sept," he said.

The girl doing his hair nodded. "And she's the bird of the battle-fields. These are for the two coups you counted yesterday. And this"-she added an eagle feather-"is for saving my brother's life."

He stood to buckle his sword belt, and the girl-she was about fourteen-glanced up at him with an unconscious sigh, clasping her hands together. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Mathilda looking at him with a pawky raised eyebrow. She mouthed peacock at him, and he replied with a silent you're another!

"My, my, don't you all look fine," Red Leaf said, when the work was done.

He poked a finger at Rudi: "You know, you're a dead ringer for a guy on the cover of one of those Sweet Savage Romance books I saw before the Change. There was this Swedish… woman… who used to haunt the powwows, she read 'em by the cartload; thought she was the reincarnation of an Indian Princess. We called her Princess Yumping Yimminy-"

Rick Three Bears grunted; probably because the massive bruise along his flank and the left side of his face made talking painful. He rolled his eyes and made the effort anyway:

"Dad, nobody's interested in what happened before the Change-at least, not right before. Let's go eat. Mom got up before dawn to start breakfast and she'll have a cow if anything spoils."

The visitors kept their faces polite, as was fitting for guests; Rudi suspected it was with a bit of effort.

Because each of us has thought exactly the same thing about our own oldsters, haven't we now?

From the wry smile, Red Leaf knew what they were thinking; he led the way to his own extended family's quarters, located in the place of honor near the hocoka 's entrance. His household had a set of five of the round platform-tents, with the sides rolled up to the roofline for better ventilation on the fine early-summer morning. The itancan introduced his wife, Sungila Win-a matronly lady a little younger than he, presumably named Fox Woman for her hair, with pleasant green eyes-and their four children, from one barely walking, stumping around in a moss-stuffed hide diaper, to Rick Three Bears' early twenties; his wife, his two children, his widowed sister and her three children and their spouses and infants, four young cousins and a brace of servant girls (who ate with the rest), and a couple of guests.

Evidently an itancan — chief was expected to keep open house.

Fair reminds me of home and the Hall, it does, Rudi thought, accepting a plate from Three Bears' mother. What does Aunt Judy call it? A mispocha?

"Sure, and it's a delight this hospitality is," he said, as they settled cross-legged around a low folding table that made a complete circle of the biggest tent. "I thank you for the trouble."

"You saved my boy Rick," Fox Woman said flatly.

Rudi blushed a little, made the Invocation, and applied himself to the food. The women had been busy with three portable stoves, and not in vain; there was frybread, lamb sausages redolent of garlic and sage, grilled walleye fillets fresh from the river, done with butter and pecans and steaming white and flaky on the fork, and plates of buffalo-hump hash and scrambled eggs savory with herbs and wild onion. While they ate, and drank the chicory and rose-hip tea and talked, Rudi leaned closer to Ingolf.

"You seem a little reserved, my friend," he said.

Everyone else is happy as crickets; Nobody's trying to kill us, for starters, which is a pleasant change from yesterday and too many days this past year. Edain saved two lives with a close shot, which is something he needed to do… but you are a bit grim.

Ingolf chuckled. "Yah. Thing is, back when I was your age or a bit younger I spent years when the worst nightmare I had started with waking up in a Sioux camp. I nearly crapped myself this morning for a second, before I remembered the circumstances."

Rudi's brows went up. "Well, I suppose these folk can be bad enemies. Though they think there's nothing too good for a friend, I'd say, from how they've treated us, the which makes me think well of them."

"Yah… you know how the Anishinabe called the Sioux the rattlesnakes?"

"I'm not likely to forget," he said, wincing a little with remembered embarrassment. "I should have noticed you were signaling me to shut up…"

"Well, that's not the only name the neighbors had for them."

"Oh, so?"

"Yah. The torturers was a favorite too."

"Ingolf!"

He looked up as Mary called. "Come on, let's have a walk. The girls say there's going to be some all-female do later."

The party broke up. Three Bears and some other younger men captured Edain and demanded that he show them his longbow in operation, with Odard and Frederick in tow and Virginia following, elaborately casual. A collection of grave older men and women took Father Ignatius away to spend the day administering sacraments; there were evidently a fair number of Catholic Christians in the hocoka, but a shortage of clergy.

Red Leaf looked a little surprised when Mathilda automatically joined him and Rudi.

I don't think women are much put upon here, Rudi thought. Certainly his host's wife and daughters hadn't been shy about offering opinions-they'd been strongly in favor of the men hunting down and killing all the lions, for instance. But I get the impression war and politics are men's business, at least formally.

"Ah…" Rudi said. "We didn't have time for formal introductions beyond the basics. This is Princess Mathilda Arminger, heir to the throne of the Portland Protective Association. Which is-"

"Yeah, I've heard of them," Red Leaf said. "Knights in armor… which after yesterday sounds a lot more credible. I've also heard that they're at war with the Cutters now; that all you Westerners are. Them and Boise."

Rudi nodded gravely, and Mathilda made a gesture of stately politeness, like the beginning of a curtsey.

"OK, I see your point. C'mon, I'll show you both around the place."

They strolled around the great circuit. Children and dogs followed them, but the people were mannerly; there seemed to be a code of conventions about when and how you could step within a family's section of the encampment, and for that matter who could speak to, or even notice, whom. Red Leaf pointed out the public facilities-the school-tents (in recess right now), the armories, the big tipis that were used for meetings of the warrior societies starting with his own Kit Foxes, the women's societies like the Tanners and Virtuous Women "Or so they claim," Red Leaf observed sardonically.

"Oh, Mathilda's as virtuous as you'd care to see," Rudi said blandly, and suppressed a yelp as she prodded him cruelly in one of the bruises on his ribs.

Some of the dwellers were setting out goods-weapons, tools, household gear, a vast array of leatherwork-including a few traders from towns like Newcastle that had coal mines to fire their foundries. There were craftsmen at work as well: women spinning and weaving, a blacksmith with a portable forge, carpenters making the latticework frame of a tent, a saddler tooling intricate designs into the flaps of a silver-studded masterpiece.

"Fewer than I'd have expected, though," Rudi said. "From the abundance of well-made things."

"Ah, you noticed," Red Leaf said. "Yeah, we spend a lot of time in winter making things, when we're split up in our cold-season camps."

He nodded at two men a few years younger than himself. "Those guys are talking a big livestock deal."

Farther out from the hocoka men and a few younger women were practicing with arms; shooting at marks on the ground, and from the saddle at targets or at hoops of rawhide thrown to bounce and skip. Others picked pegs out of the ground with light lances, or speared hide rings held on the ends of poles, or cut and parried with shetes and used lariats.