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Which sentence sounds absolutely indescribable said in Sindarin with a Hampshire yokel burr, BD thought with a mental groan.
Meditatively, glancing at Astrid, Hordle went on: "Aren't we supposed to be generals? Sitting around map tables looking important, while the younger generation do the work? This is too 'ands-on for my taste, now I'm past forty and a dad and sensible."
Astrid smiled and spread her long-fingered hands. "Are there any among our people better suited to lead this endeavor, my brother?"
"No, I suppose not," Hordle grumbled, shrugging into a mail-coat covered in dark green leather and cinching it with a broad belt.
BD stretched her own back with a silent groan. Her mail-vest was light, but she'd worn real armor now and then, and detested every minute of it. Hordle was probably so accustomed to it that he didn't even notice. It was like the sword; he didn't feel natural without it.
"But I thought we came here to fight a battle?" he went on plaintively, turning his head slightly so that he could wink at Eilir unobserved; she giggled silently. "There's a murdering great army out there west of town, thousands of them sitting on their arses with nothing better to do than eat and scratch themselves, and here we are doing their work."
"The best battle is the one you win without fighting," Astrid said serenely.
Hordle rolled his eyes and spoke to Alleyne Loring. "I hate it when she gets all profound like that!" Then to Astrid: "And you put Tiphaine d'Ath in to look after the troops."
Astrid's smile was slightly cruel now. "That was her punishment. Do you imagine there's anywhere in the world she'd rather be than here, right now, John? And when the bards make their song, they'll sing of us, while Tiphaine gets three lines saying she looked after the troops well enough while we were gone."
The smile grew broader, and unexpectedly she giggled like a school-girl. "She'll be snarling about that when she's ninety."
"Let's hope the song doesn't say she gallantly avenged our 'eroic deaths instead," he replied.
"I intend to die heroically of extreme old age and general debility, in bed, with my great-grandchildren gathered around weeping," Alleyne said crisply. "BD, you should have something to eat and get some sleep. It's going to be a busy day tomorrow."
BD did, with John Hordle pitching in beside her; there was cold roast beef and pungent kielbasa and fried chicken, bread and butter and hot pickles, tortillas and beans, tomatoes and radishes, with sharp cheese and apple tarts to follow. She'd been too worried to be hungry up until that point, despite the eight hours since lunch; suddenly she was ravenous, and constructed several sandwiches as massive as her dentures could handle. Anyone who didn't think wrangling wagons all day was hard physical labor had never done it. Hordle ate enormously but neatly as he joined in the pla
When BD finished she tapped the small keg by the door for a mug of the beer. So did John Hordle, but apparently it didn't make him feel sleepy; of course, he was a generation younger, in superb condition, and had a hundred and sixty extra pounds of mass to sop it up. There was bedding down in the other end of the chamber; she wrapped herself in blankets and sheepskins, and felt herself fading swiftly. As she did she overheard Astrid:
"Besides, it is not by force of arms alone that we will prevail in this war. We keep the enemy's attention on us and that helps Fr… ah, Rudi and the others."
"Inspiration's one thing. Plagiarism is something else again," Alleyne said in a severe tone, and the four laughed.
BD sighed and prayed: Oh, Apollo, guard your priestess! Artemis of the Hunt, let me not be the prey! And look out for Rudi and the others too. They're going to need it.
TheScourgeofGod
CHAPTER EIGHT
Curse and ill-wishing have no power
Save that the heart lets them in
Hard the lesson learned by the undefeated
That strength and right may end in ill From: The Song of Bear and Raven
Attributed to Fiorbhi
Rancher Jed Smith yawned and turned over in his bedroll, conscious of the growing light in the east and the frosty air on his face.
That was a good dream, he thought sleepily. It's good luck to dream of home.
He'd been there, out where the horizon went on forever. Where the grama and wheatgrass brushed against your stirrups and ran in rippling waves beneath the biggest sky in the world, cloud shadows racing the wind across prairie green with spring and thick with blue lupine and white pe
Dry mild wind on his face, a good horse beneath him, his sons Ted and Andy and Mark riding by his side, grown to tall men and talking horses and hunting, grass and cattle. The land at peace again, not even a feud on his borders. Then somehow he was at the head of his table, forking steaks from the serving platter onto plates, while Katy spooned out beans and Lorrie came in with a basket of biscuits in each hand and the kids were young again as they bowed their heads for the grace from the Book of Dzur…
He yawned again and shook the last of it off; it wasn't quite dawn, and he could go back to sleep for another half hour. One of the perks of being the Rancher was that you didn't have to stand a guard-watch yourself, but he always got up and did the rounds himself at least once a night, in enemy territory. And at unpredictable intervals.
Dad taught me that. But he forgot, that once.
And he and Gramps and that whole party had been left stripped and butchered by a gang of road people who crept past a sleeping sentry. Jed had been only twenty then, but he'd held the Rippling Waters spread together and led them into the embrace of the Dictations.
It was pleasantly warm inside the glazed leather sleeping bag; it was made of sheepskins with the fleece turned in, and the girl who shared it with him now was as good as a campfire. She'd been much less sullen last night, and the thought and the feel of her and the scent tempted him to have another go while he had the chance-women generally didn't like it in the morning, and a sensible man didn't push his wives that way too often. It wouldn't be the same even with the bought gals they kept, when they got back to Rippling Waters.
Whatever the priests said should be, a man's wives did object if he diddled the slave girls openly in his own house, in the morning or otherwise. And Church law might say a man could correct his wives with a quirt if they scolded or back talked, but a man who tried that too often was asking for trouble with them and maybe with their kin, and it didn't make for a happy home life either. The only worse thing than having your women quarreling was having them gang up on you.
He was a man who liked tranquillity and smiles under his own roof-tree, not sulks. Everyone on the ranch had to pull together for things to go well-though an occasional quick one behind a haystack did no harm.
And I'm not nineteen no more, he thought. C'mon, Jed, get up, take a leak, lead the morning prayers, get some breakfast and chicory inside you and git this outfit on the road. Those Newcastle men'll be splittin' off today; good riddance. Long way to home, so up an' at 'em! Sooner we're back, the sooner we can start getting the place back ru