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"You're welcome to share my fire," the man said, making a gesture towards the pot.
His voice rolled deep, cutting through the muted wind-howl. Rudi nodded, swallowing a prickling sensation as he bent and poured himself a cup-thus making himself a guest. Not everyone felt that to be as sacred as Mackenzies did, but most folk would think three times before falling on someone they'd invited to share their food. The liquid was chicory-what most in the far interior called coffee -hot and strong and bitter, but this somehow also tasted of honey and flowers and a little of hot tar.
The dog growled at him a little, one great paw across a meaty elk thigh bone…
No, Rudi thought suddenly. It's a wolf, not a dog.
The gray man nudged the beast, ruffling its ears as he bent to pour himself a cup from the battered pot of enameled metal.
"Quiet, greedyguts," he said. He glanced up; a raven sat on a branch that jutted over the rock, cocking a thoughtful eye at the wolf's meal, and another sat beside it with head beneath wing. "And you two remember what happened the last time, and think twice."
Then he leaned back against the rock again, blowing on his chicory and waiting, relaxed as the wolf at his feet.
"I'm called Rudi Mackenzie," the young clansman said slowly, as he straightened and met the other's eye; strength flowed into him with the hot drink, easing a weakness he hadn't sensed until that moment. "But I'm thinking the now that I know your name… lord."
The older man's features were jut-boned, bold of chin and nose, scored by age but still strong, as were the long-fingered hands that gripped his own cup.
"Call me Wanderer," he said. He smiled a little. "And I know your father."
"Sir Nigel?" Rudi asked.
"Him too. But I was thinking of your blood-father. You might say he bought a ticket to the table I set out; him and many of his kin, from out of deep time."
Rudi finished the cup and set it aside; the last of his discomfort seemed to vanish with it. He raised his head and met the Other's gaze.
The eye speared him. For a moment he seemed to be looking beyond it, as if the pupil were a window; to a place where everything that was, was smaller than that span across the eye. Then a flash, a searing that was more than light or heat, while being itself flexed and shattered and re-formed in a wild tangle of energies; then a wilderness of empty dark where stars lit, like campfires blossoming. .. and then guttering out as they fled apart, until there was another darkness, one where the stuff of his body itself decayed into nothingness. And in that nothingness, a light that looked at him.
Rudi blinked and swallowed, daunted but not glancing aside. The deep voice went on:
"Shall I show you your fate, boy? Shall I tell you if you die untimely or live long?"
"No, my lord Wanderer," Rudi said softly. "My mother is a weaver, and I know that every thread has its place and is part of the whole. All men die. None die untimely, and no man may live a day longer than he lives. So if you've come to lead me away, I am ready."
He dared a smile. "Though I've heard you send your daughters for that job."
And there's a good deal I'd rather do first… he thought.
Suddenly an image came to him, painfully bright; a room with a bed, and Matti's face exhausted and triumphant as she looked up to him from the red crumpled-looking infant cradled in the crook of her arm, and a shadow of his own exultant joy.
The Wanderer laughed, and though it was a soft chuckle there was an overtone to it like the crackle of lights over the mountains in winter. There was approval there, but by something greater than men or their hopes and sorrows.
"Good! Though you won't be meeting Gondul, as your father did. You've pledged yourself to another, and I'm not inclined to quarrel with Her."
Rudi's mouth quirked. "It seems you've something else in mind then, my lord the Wanderer," he said.
The figure nodded. "But unasked, I will tell you this: you won't die in the straw of sickness, nor of an arrow in the back, even a cursed one. Though you will not live to feel your shoulders bend with age, or see your hair grow gray."
"How, then?"
"You will die by the blade, sword in hand. The King's death, the given sacrifice that goes consenting with open eyes, dying that his folk may live."
"As my father did, whose blood renewed the land. Thank you, then, lord Wanderer. Though I've seldom called on You by name."
The Wanderer flicked away the grounds in his tin cup and tossed it to the damp earth beside the fire. "No?" he said. "But your mother has called on Me, in her grove, when you lay wounded and near to death. And you have as well. Come."
He put his hand on Rudi's shoulder. They took three steps to the edge of the trail to look downward, and his poncho flared in the wind, seeming longer now. A dead leaf flickered out of it as it masked Rudi's face for a moment, and then he sucked in his breath.
I know that path! he thought.
It was nightfall on the roadway that ran westward from the waterfall and mill to the gates of Dun Juniper, where the schoolchildren practiced an hour or two shooting at the mark most evenings. The trees beyond and below were Douglas fir, taller and thicker and closer-set than the pine forests of the Tetons, each dark green branch heavy with its load of snow. It was a softer fall than the blizzard about him, of flakes larger and wetter… the snow of a winter in the western foothills of the Cascades, one that would lay a few days at most, not grip the land like cold iron until the end of May.
Close at hand a column of kilted children were walking through the gathering dark, cased bows and capped quivers over their shoulders, with a few adult warriors among them-one had a lamp slung on a spear over her shoulder, a globe of yellow light in the fog white of the snow.
"That's Aoife Barstow," he said slowly. "She and her lover died fighting for me when the Protector's men came, only a little later.. . I offer at their graves every year."
The children started singing. He recognized one clear high ten-year-old's voice. It was his own.
"Upon his shoulder, ravens
His face like stone, engraven
Astride an eight-hoofed stygian beast
He gathers the fruit of the gallows trees!
Driving legions to victory
The Bringer of War walks tonight!"
"By the name you invoked, by the blood she spilled, by the offering made beneath the tree where she died," the man said softly. "By these you called, and I answer at the appointed time."
"She… named others than you, lord Wanderer. As have I, full often."
Images passed before his eyes; he couldn't be sure if they were shapes formed in the swirling snow, or his own imaginings, or as real as the blood he could feel beating in his throat… because that too might be illusion. A tall charioteer's shape edged and crowned with fire, tossing up a spear that was a streak of gold across the sky and kissing it as he rode laughing to battle as to a bridal feast; a woman vast and sooty and bent, wielding a scythe that reaped men; a raven whose wings beat out the life and death of worlds. His hand went to the scar between his brows, where a real raven's beak had touched him in the sacred wood.
"When I hung nine days from the Tree, I became a god of death," the one-eyed figure said. "When I grasped the runes of wisdom I learned many names."
He looked up. One of the great black birds moved in the skeletal branches above them. It cocked its head and gave a harsh cry and launched itself away, gliding down the slope on broad-stretched wings.
"And Raven and I are old friends."
They turned back to the fire. If this isn't the final journey, then I must be dreaming, Rudi thought, as they crouched by the red flickering warmth, across from each other, sitting easily on their hams.