S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

When they were serious, Mackenzie archery contests started at a hundred yards.

The badges were presented; the Dun Tàirneanach pair got carried around the bleachers shoulder-high, too. Then everyone stood before the Council.

Andrew, called Swift, came forward again. “You have proven to be people of skill and merit, worthy of badges,” he said. “You are worthy to speak with the Last Eagle, our Akela. So will your King be, when he can come here.”

The Montivallans looked at each other. “Well, about that, Andrew of the Council.” Mary said. “We didn’t want to presume before you’d decided, but there is a bit of a hurry. .”

• • •

The glider banked out over the water and turned in towards the shore; the pennant on a tall pole showed the wind to be directly out of the south. The long slender wings on either side of the tadpole shape flexed visibly, and the speed slowed. Suddenly it turned from a bird-sized dot out over the sun-glinting chop of the waters into something of visibly human make. It slowed, slowed, dropped. . and then it was trundling over the grass, stopping, dropping one wing to the ground.

A long ahhhhhhh came from the Morrowlanders. Flying wasn’t something they’d ever seen in their own lives; they didn’t travel much, and the Cutters who were their neighbors regarded balloons and gliders as abomination. But flying was important in their founding myth.

Ingolf and the others walked forward. The transparent upper front of the fuselage tilted to one side; the glider was a two-seater model. Alyssa Larsson hopped out, and a second later Rudi Mackenzie did likewise and stood with the wind from the lake ruffling his plaid and long sunset-colored hair and the spray of raven-feathers in his bonnet.

“Hail, Artos! Artos and Montival! ”

The cry was sincere enough, though Ingolf could see a glint of humor in Rudi’s blue-green eyes. They all saluted, and he walked forward. Mary and Ritva fell in on either side of him, giving him a rapid précis in the Noble Tongue; Ingolf caught about half of it. Behind him he could hear:

“Cole, we’re going to have to stop meeting this way.”

“Well, at least you didn’t crash-land upside down on top of a bear .”

“That was only once . .”

Rudi nodded to his half sisters and looked at Ingolf.

“Yeah, he’s. . strange, the Last Eagle,” the Richlander said. “Not exactly wandered in his wits, but strange. And he’s not a well man. I got the feeling he’s hanging on with his fingernails because he thinks he has to get a job done first.”

Rudi’s smile was crooked; not for the first time Ingolf reflected that he seemed older than his face would indicate, sometimes.

“I suspect I know how he feels, and will the more so as time goes on,” the High King said quietly.

A drum was thuttering in the background as the party paced towards the Council; there were flutes too, and flags. Rudi halted for a moment, went to one knee, and raised a clod of the dirt to his lips before he stood again.

“I greet the Morrowland Pack in the name of the High Kingdom of Montival and all its peoples and the kindreds of earth and sea and sky,” he said, his beautiful almost-bass carrying clearly through the still cool air. “I step upon the Pack’s territory by its leave, obedient to its Law, making no claim without the free consent of its folk.”

The Council formed up on either side of them, and they not-quite-marched into the House of the Council. The big interior room was a little dim, but comfortably warm despite the lingering chill of the night, from the stoves in the corners more than the crackling fire on the big hearth at the north end. The figure in the fur cloak sitting waiting for them struggled to his feet, helped by the anxious hands of a young man and woman on either side of him. They put a staff whose head was carved in the form of a wolf’s head in his hand and he leaned on it, breathing a little harshly.

The Morrowlanders all stopped and called: “Akela!” They added a chillingly realistic collective wolf-howl. The Montivallans saluted in their various fashions, and Rudi Mackenzie inclined his head briefly.

And yeah, this is a man to respect, Ingolf thought.

Ingolf Vogeler had never seen anyone burned so badly who’d lived to heal-heal after a fashion. One blue eye looked out of the ruined face, and it was obvious that the Aklela’s left knee hadn’t bent properly for a very long time.

Twenty-six years, to be precise, Ingolf thought. I’ve seen a lot of people hurt in the Change, but usually they’re not only a little more than my own age. Children mostly either made it or they didn’t.

The High King and the Last Eagle Scout stood for a quiet time, meeting each other’s gaze. Then the single eye closed for an instant, with a long sigh.

“Sit,” he said when he looked up again. “Sit, everyone. . I have waited so long. . ”

They did, and then the Last Eagle spoke to the king, as if they were alone. “Captain Morrow got us down, but he died the next day, he was all broken inside, and burned so bad. I went forward with Scoutmaster Wilks to get him out, it was all burning. . that’s why we’re the Morrowland Pack. When the ground thawed we buried him up on the high place, and every year on that day we go there and sing for him.”

Rudi nodded. “Fitting indeed,” he said quietly. “A great honor, but well earned. There are far worse ways to die.”

“It was so cold, and we got so hungry. . Scoutmaster Wilks was hurt too, but he got us through. We chopped holes in the ice to fish, and we dug pine nuts, and made bread from whitebark, and found animals in their dens, and then we got a buffalo, we were so happy about it. . I could help by then. . And Ms. Delacroix knew so much, she was like our mom. . Mr. Androwski left to get us help in the spring, but he never came back, he went north and I think. . I think he met the Prophet, the first Prophet, in Corwin, and. . and then three years later Scoutmaster Wilks was killed by a bear. And Ms. Delacroix had this cough, it got worse and worse, after a while the herbs didn’t help anymore. She said I’d have to be brave for the little ones, be a real Eagle Scout. We buried her next to Scoutmaster Wilks and the Captain on the high place, that was the year we saw the first tiger.”

A long silence and then: “Sometimes I dream about them, dream they’re back and then I wake up. . ”

The story rambled on. Ingolf had heard much of it yesterday, and it gave him an odd lost feeling anyway, as if he was one of those children alone in the dark as the plane fell and broke open to the cold and the fire. Or the hurt boy ignoring his constant pain, working and teaching, holding himself and them to a dream. Instead he looked at the rack of books on the wall behind the hunched figure: The Boy Scout Handbook, Best of Ernest Thompson Seton, The Jungle Book , books on crafts and ecology and some he didn’t recognize at all. Most of those would have been on the 747, though there were a few modern leather bindings that must have trickled in from the outside world.

“Did I do the right things?” the Last Eagle said finally to the King. “I tried, but sometimes I just had to make things up. . I hated to help the Prophet, I bargained as hard as I could, I never let them send their priests here, said we’d die first, but. .”

“You saved your people,” Rudi said, leaning forward for a moment and putting a hand on the older man’s shoulder. “More than once, you saved them, from perils to body and to soul. You did what you could, and what you knew you must do, and you fought the good fight, Scout.”

He nodded to the books. “What those men dreamed in the ancient times, you have become in truth. Now we will free your people.”