S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

“My thought exactly,” Alyssa said. “Nice to watch, but I’ve never wanted to try it. It’s one of those things the Mackenzies do because they enjoy freaking out the cowan , too.”

“Cowan?”

“Ignorant, benighted infidels like you and me.”

“You’re not, ah-”

“Of the Old Religion? No. Quite a few of us Bearkillers are, say one in every two or three, we and the Mackenzies have always been neighbors and allies. My branch of the family’s Catholic-”

She pulled on a fine chain around her neck, showing her crucifix and kissing it before she replaced it.

“-but I wouldn’t claim to be a very good Catholic. My aunt Signe and her kids are pagan, though. She’s Asatruar, to be technical, which is sort of different from the Clan’s version. I don’t think Mike Havel. . the first Bear Lord. . was religious at all, from what people say.”

“I know what you mean,” Cole said, and nodded

That sort of thing had been more common in the old days. He didn’t know anyone at home who didn’t go to church at least occasionally, though. The world had been a strange place before the Change.

“We Bearkillers let people make up their minds about that sort of stuff pretty much as they please. What really matters to us is doing your duty to the Outfit. Mackenzies. . well, they’re tolerant as all get-out, but if you were cowan it wouldn’t be a really comfortable place to live in the long run, you’d feel left out. A lot. Left out of pretty nearly everything.”

“So that’s a religious sword dance?” Cole said, watching with interest.

He’d stopped expecting a scream and blood to interrupt, and he could see that this would be useful training in situational awareness and swift movement. Probably more fun than drill, too, but it still put his teeth on edge a bit. Mackenzies seemed nice enough folk from what he’d seen, nothing like the propaganda apart from being on the other side, but they certainly weren’t what you could call timid. At all.

“ Everything is religion, over there in the Mackenzie stamping grounds. Even peeling an apple. Even sex. In fact, especially sex. . how does it go. . All acts of love and pleasure are My rituals .”

“What’s that?”

“From the Charge of the Goddess. They take it pretty seriously, too. Which can be dangerous to anyone who doesn’t abide by their rules.”

“How?”

“Well, let’s just say their dùthchas is about the safest place in the whole world to be a woman on her own, even at a Beltane feast when everyone’s drinking hard and running around buck-naked except for wreaths or masks or antlers on their heads and yelling Evoe! Io, Io, Bacchios! and believe me they totally know how to let their hair down at a party. Oh, my, yes. But they don’t take any excuses at all for someone who doesn’t understand the word ‘no.’”

“Head-chopping for offenders?”

“More likely burial at a crossroads with a spear in you. Possibly burial alive with the spear in the dirt if they’re really angry or afraid the Goddess is going to smite the vicinity, or both. You ask me, they pick the right things to be completely intolerant about.”

“Gurk! And I though the dance was scary.”

She grinned, then winced a bit as a scab on her lip pulled.

“If you think the Gillie Chalium is scary, you should see the Dannsadh Bhiodaig. ”

“What’s that when it’s got its pants. . or kilt. . on?”

“The dirk dance; a dirk is what they call those long daggers they wear. Sort of like a knife-fight set to music. Actually it’s as much a training kata as a dance, but the Clan loves mixing stuff up like that. Real experts do it with live steel and fast .”

The dance ended with a leap and shout; there was a bit of shuffling around, and then the pipes started up again.

“Hey, I know that tune!” Cole said happily as the pipes sounded through the humming rattle of the bodhran drums. “That’s Lord of -”

The music faltered a little, and heads turned. Cole did too.

A tall man stood on the jut of rock near the fire, in kilt, saffron-dyed loose-sleeved shirt and a plaid pinned with a broach of silver and turquoise knotwork. His bonnet had Raven feathers in its clasp. A long sword whose pommel shone and glittered hung at his right hip; the firelight gleamed on the bright red-gold hair that fell to his shoulders and the dense short-cropped beard on his sharp-cut regular features. A grin lit his face, and the blue-green-gray eyes sparkled. A ripple and murmur went through the crowd, a chant-

“Ard Rí! Ard Rí! ”

“Holy crap, could that really be-”

“Yeah,” Alyssa said. “My cousin Rudi! Or His Majesty Artos the First, High King of Montival, to you lowly peasants.”

“Here?” Cole blurted.

Alyssa grinned. “He shows up everywhere. It’s. . notorious!”

The chant changed: “Artos! Artos! ”

Cole shivered a little despite himself; Rudi Mackenzie’s name had become a thing of fear to Boise’s survivors. And here he was, like something out of an old old story, like one of his great-grandfather’s illustrated books: Tales of the Round Table and those. There had been a great big tin box the family had discovered when they fled back to the old ranch house after the Change, and he’d read them after chores all his childhood. Good stories, and a lot more realistic than most pre-Change stuff.

Then the newcomer threw back his head and sang, in a strong deep tenor that wasn’t quite a bass, and the musicians took the tune up again:

“Dance, dance wherever you may be! — ”

“Well, whoever he is, like I said, I know the song. Something familiar at last!”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Alyssa said, and uncorked another jug. “Here.”

He took a swig and hugged his knees as she sat beside him, using his shoulder to lower herself with her good hand. He sighed inwardly at that. Cole Salander wasn’t quite twenty-three yet, but he was old enough to tell when a woman was interested in him. Maybe fighting off that bear that’d been about to eat her had something to do with it. It had been a large and very determined bear, or very hungry, or both.

Unfortunately, it’s an interested woman on the other side of the war, and a banged-up woman with a cracked arm who I’m probably not going to see again after a couple of days from now. Dang, I really have the luck, don’t I? Maybe I should hunt up a dice game, I’ve got to start beating the odds on something soon or lightning will hit me out of a clear blue sky.

The dancers began to move, left hand on hip, the right above their heads; the beat started slow, but every time their feet brought them to the edge of a blade there was a lightning-quick step.

The man called Rudi Mackenzie sang on in a slow rhythm, voice carrying effortlessly through the music and the crackle of the fires:

“I danced at a Beltane with the pole standing tall,

And ribbons flowing ’round the dancers all.

I danced in the morning of the Midsummer Feast

As the day dawned pink with the Sun Lord’s heat!”

“OK, maybe I don’t know this one,” Cole muttered to himself. “But, what the hell, it’s the same tune.”

He joined in the clapping and the chorus:

“Dance, dance-”

The tall man went on, quickening just a little:

“As Lughnasadh came and the corn shone gold,

Moonlight brought the kiss of Samhain cold.

I danced about the balefire, late at night,

And turned the Wheel against all fright!”