S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

Aha, they do use horses, at least sometimes, she thought. Those horse apples are about a day old. This run is a test, too.

The interior of the shelter was interesting, when they spread their bedrolls; neatly folded robes of tanned wolverine fur tied to the bottom of the bunks, mattresses of fresh spruce boughs, clean polished wood table and benches, and a puncheon floor. The stove was an ingenious little affair of stone and metal sheets at the rear with a water heater of salvaged aluminum around the flue, and the food-store was built into the wall where the natural temperature-control of the earth would help it, lined with more aluminum to keep the vermin out.

There was also an arrangement for a block of ice to be inserted above and a water-drain below, and within Ian found a dozen two-foot cutthroat trout, neatly gutted, and bundles of greens and roots. He looked at the contents, at what in the way of herbs and ground roots was racked beside the stove in the usual miscellany of salvaged glass and some rather attractive glazed modern pottery, and rubbed his hands.

“Nothing like running all day to work up an appetite,” he said. “Anyone else volunteering for dinner detail?”

“Caillech is a monstrous fine hand with trout,” Talyn said helpfully, peering over his shoulder and smacking his lips.

“Volunteer yourself , man!” she said, taking his bonnet off for a moment and whapping him with it playfully.

“Well, if it were duck or grouse, I would,” he replied reasonably, adjusting the headgear. “I’m better at those. It’s respectful to make the most of the Mother’s bounty, isn’t it, now? If it’s my part to enjoy eating it, then that I’ll do, as my duty.”

“I hereby volunteer you to go fetch the wood, I do,” she said, then went with him.

“Nobody else?” Ian said, stripping off his jacket, rolling up his sleeves and beginning to scrub his hands. “All right , then.”

“I’ll take first watch,” Ingolf added.

Mary had seen any number of small groups stranded in the wilds by the Change, though most had headed in to more civilized climes as soon as they could; apart from the Eater bands of the death zones, of course. But. .

“A Scout apparently knows what the hell they’re doing,” Ingolf said to her as she sat beside him on a rock. “I’ve seen plenty of wild men but not many who knew their way around the woods as well. Old Pete’s folks, yeah, though they weren’t as. . as tidy. Remember the Southsiders that Rudi picked up east of the Mississippi, Jake sunna Jake’s crew? They didn’t know anything .”

“You took the words out of my mouth; they barely knew what made babies. Or the London Bunch, north of the lakes? They were pathetic . At a guess, the Morrowlanders have a lot of these little places as bases for hunters and people working the woods for foods and medicinals and whatnot,” she said. “We have something similar in the Ranger staths , though the climate’s a lot nicer in the Willamette.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t like to go through February here in a flet . This dugout thing would be comfy enough even in winter. . even in the winters they’re supposed to get around here. . but you’d go crazy after a while if you couldn’t get out. Notice the ski-racks, and the second entrance up on the roof section? Back in Richland we do a lot of our heavy hauling in winter-frozen rivers are best of all. Maybe that’s how they keep from going crazy, spend all their spare time studying for Badges and such.”

She nodded. He’d picked a good spot to overlook the little way station; from the tracks he wasn’t the first to do so.

“You took the words out of my mouth again, lover,” she said. “When he was chasing us for the Cutters, George called the Tracker. .”

“Followed us over ground where you’d swear an eight-hitch yoke of plow oxen wouldn’t leave a trace,” Ingolf agreed.

“They’d make valuable allies,” Mary said, her enthusiasm growing. “Not just getting out of our way, I mean.”

Her husband nodded, but frowned as well. “Hmmm. There’s a drawback there.”

“What?”

“We’re supposed to be impressing them . I think these folks make knowing how to do stuff a real big part of their opinion of someone.”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“Yah, but they’re more. . more formal about it.”

The three Council members were at least impressed with Ian’s pinion-nut crusted trout, accompanied by twice-boiled burdock and roasted arrowroot and bannocks of sweet camas flour studded with dried huckleberries, with a side of Miner’s Lettuce salad with wild onions. The representative of the House of Girls shooed the men out after the meal; evidently a Scout was clean , too, and women got first crack at the hot water and essence of soaproot.

Much later, Mary murmured to Ingolf in the darkness:

“And a Scout likes privacy . Or at least this Ranger does.”

He sighed.

• • •

Ingolf looked down on the Scout headquarters not long after dawn; the air was still chill and a little damp.

“Well, that explains how they got here,” he said.

It was on the shores of a great lake, so broad that the water stretched north almost beyond sight even from this elevation, with occasional small islands and a few sails visible on fishing boats and a landing-stage for big birch-bark canoes. There had been some buildings on the rocky edge before the Change, but it was obvious they’d burned that very night. Mostly because the midsection and tail of the great flying machine still stood, with the scorched and crumpled ruins of the nose stuck into the green scrub that covered the ruins. Bits and snags stood up, and most of a stone chimney. Parts of the aircraft were skeletal where the sheathing had been torn off; aluminum was easy to work and had dozens of uses.

Ian frowned. “That’s a. . 747,” he said. “I think. You can still see the sort of hump thing at the front, it’s not all burned.”

“What?” Talyn said. “Those numbers would mean what, precisely?”

“A type of big flying machine. They could carry hundreds of people.”

They all looked at him; it wasn’t the sort of remark you expected of a Changeling like themselves.

“We had a recognition course for recruits to the Force,” he said, a little defensively. “I don’t know why. Nobody ever thought to change it, eh?”

Talyn snapped his fingers. “Yes, in the ‘Song of Fire and Grief.’ The Chief, the Mackenzie Herself, she saw one such fall and burn in Corvallis on the night of the Change! And made the song about it later.”

Cole whistled softly. “Alyssa goes on about what a great pilot the Bear Lord was, to get a little plane with six people in it down safely. And he landed in a river. Whoever was flying that thing must have been. . something. I’d have expected it to fall like a brick.”

They all nodded somberly. They all knew that the ancients had been able to make huge things fly, but suddenly seeing this-as big as a northern baron’s hall-made you feel it all of a sudden.

The modern buildings became clearer as they approached. From a few remarks their close-mouthed hosts had made Ingolf had gathered that there just weren’t all that many Morrowlanders, less than a thousand and possibly much less, and that this was their winter HQ. Certainly there was plenty of space in the building they were shown to; a room for each couple and one for Cole, and a big dining chamber with only a few other people to share the camas griddle cakes with spicy caramel-tasting birch syrup and-what seemed to be a special treat for guests-French fries, followed by wild blueberries and-another treat-cream. They were courteously shown to a bathhouse afterwards too, before strong hints brought them out again.