Sunrise Lands

"Remember what Uncle Will said about her when she's doing that?" Ritva said.

"Yeah." Mary chuckled, and dropped into Texan accented English for a moment. " 'Girls, she ain't lookin' at us that way 'cause she loves us.' "

The other horses fell back into an obedient clump when Epona decided she wasn't going to make trouble, even her daughters Macha Mongruad and Rhia

They had their own mounts and a spare each, dap pled gray five-year olds with a big dash of Arab blood; and besides Epona and her get there were six others, all big warmbloods and battle-trained-what Portlanders called destriers, bred and taught to carry armored lancers in battle.

Destriers weren't much seen this side of the mountains. Folk out here favored quarter horse and other ranch breeds, mostly: agile and tough and suited alike to working range cattle or to the quicksilver eastern style of mounted combat. Destriers of the quality they were bringing cost more than a knight's armor and weren't common anywhere, the Association's territories included. They'd let the coats get rough and shaggy, and the light packsaddles were an additional disguise, but there was only so much you could do to hide their quality from people who knew horses.

Epona wasn't carrying anything, of course. She never did, except to bear Rudi.

It was good to get the fortune-on-hooves they were driving to the paddock of the livery stable the Dunedain used here, a bit outside the walls of Bend, over towards the forested slopes of Pilot Butte. The proprietor was busy when they came up, giving a worm killing herbal drench to a blindfolded horse, a messy but essential task you had to do every couple of months at least, involving fu

The owner himself came over when he'd finished the task, looking muddy and swearing under his breath. Horses didn't like having their mouths held open and things pushed down their throats; despite steel-toed boots he limped a bit where this one had stepped on his foot accidentally-on purpose.

"Mae gova

Then he dropped back into English, since that exhausted his Sindarin: "Pleased to see you ladies again."

"Good to see you again too, Mr. Denks," Ritva said, mentally pushing the lever that switched her thoughts to English likewise. "You don't look too busy."

"Still the quiet time of year," Denks said as she leaned over to shake his hand; he hitched at his suspenders and then ran a hand over his glistening bald scalp. "We get some traffic down from the Columbia in winter, and from out east, but you're early to come over Highway

20."

Then, cocking an eye at the horses and making a tsk sound: "Look rid hard and put away wet, these 'uns."

Epona was doing a circuit of the five-acre field, tail and head high, followed by her progeny. The others headed straight for the water and feed. There wasn't much grazing in the high country this time of year, and anyway horses like these couldn't get by on grass alone.

"Nice-lookin' critters if you like 'em big," Denks went on.

"Well, we'll be here long enough for you to feed them up a bit," Mary said; they'd slung bags of milled oats over each horse's back to get them over the moun tains. "And have them reshod. We'll be needing some more stock-nothing fancy, enough to pull a Conestoga; harness-broke mules would do. And we'll be having a good deal of stuff dropped off here."

The man nodded without asking questions, which was welcome but not unexpected; he'd done business with the Rangers for years. They stored most of their gear with him in a hayloft as well, taking only their swords, some money and documents, and a change of clothes into the city proper.

That involved a half-hour walk through the outskirts-places where suburban tracts had lain, burned over or torn down for their materials. Now they housed everything from truck gardens to warehouses full of raw hides to the tanyards that turned them into leather with a stink of lye and acrid bark juice to plain weeds and sage brush and greasewood and stubs of wreckage. The city walls were the usual type, concrete and rubble around a core of salvaged steel girders; they were thick and strong, but the inhabitants hadn't bothered to smooth the outside as much as some places did, leaving it rough and gray-brown with edges of rock sticking out.

Which was a good metaphor for Bend in general. The clotted knot of would be entrants on the road outside the eastern gate wasn't very big, but it wasn't moving much either, besides yelling and waving their arms and making their horses rear and snort. Being on foot the twins could push forward until they saw the reason; a Rancher and his cowboy-retainers arguing with the gate guard. Ritva smiled to herself as he grumbled and eventually paid over the entrance tax the city charged.

The CORA-the Central Oregon Ranchers' Association-was as much of a government as this area had; its assembly met here in Bend, and its lariat-and branding iron flag flew over the gatehouse. But though the city of Bend had shrunk drastically, there were still fifteen thousand souls living within the circuit of the walls in a bend of the Deschutes River. Its town council was scrap pily independent of the big herding spreads, and so were the small farmers of the irrigated areas north and south of town.

Just to add spice to life in these parts, the ranchers all quarreled with one another regularly too, partly from things like strayed unbranded mavericks ending in the wrong roundup and partly from sheer bullheaded cuss edness. They got the essentials like defense and keeping up the dams and canals done, somehow, but you always wondered how when you saw their usual barroom-brawl notion of governance.

"Not much like Corvallis," Mary observed.

" They're organized down to their bootlaces," Ritva agreed. "I'm glad Bend doesn't do that peace-bonding nonsense on your sword."

Inside the streets were more crowded, as was inevitable in a walled town; empty spaces had been built up, and some of the single story buildings raised a story or two. More people were on horseback than in a town west of the mountains, but by way of compensation there were good if thronged brick or board sidewalks, and squads of dung scoopers.

They walked past cobblers' and harness makers' shops-Bend was famous for its leather goods-and bookstores, furniture makers, stores selling pre-Change and modern cutlery and pottery, clothiers and tailors with a hum of pedal driven sewing machines, a print shop, cookhouses and taverns, and an entertainer strum ming his guitar and singing with a bowl in front of him. They didn't drop any change in it; he used the whining nasal style of singing popular around here, and neither of them liked it.

"Mah horse is gone bad lame, mah dog done died, my woman don't love me no more and I ain't got no money for beeeeeeerrr, " Mary crooned, in the same fashion.

Ritva laughed. It sounded a lot fu

"You've created a new style, sis," she said. "Country and Elvish."

For a moment Mary's face turned sad. "The reason I don't like that type of song is it reminds me of Dad," she said. " He liked it-or something a lot like it, I think."