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Rudi shook his head and poured a dipperful of water over it, enjoying the cool shock. ?Not just luck; it?s little we?ve found on this journey of either good or bad that?s mere chance in the way most use the term. And we?re moving as quickly as we can while doing what we?re supposed to be doing, of which collecting the Sword is an essential part, but only a part. What did Tsewang Dorje say to me, back at Chenrezi Monastery.. .?
He thought, and the wise wrinkled face appeared in his mind?s eye, amid the pleasant austerity of his chamber: ?Can light exist without shadow?? he quoted.?So, I tell you that when you seek to do the will of the gods, and help men rise through the cycles, your very inmost thoughts awaken hosts of enemies that otherwise had slept. As sound awakens echoes, so the pursuit of Wisdom awakens the devil?s guard.? ?I would not put it in just those words, my son, yet the good Abbot is a very wise man, in his way,? Ignatius said thoughtfully. ?But I would guess that he told you more.? ?That he did. This: But I do say that if you are in league with Gods to learn life and to live it you shall not only find enemies. You shall find help unexpectedly, from strangers who, it may be, know not why.? ?A very wise man indeed,? Ignatius said, swinging his feet down and sitting upright on the bench, his whipcord body dim in the gloom. ?And a holy man, I think. I learned things of great value in the Valley of the Sun; we all did.? ?Even though his is the Way of the Buddha?? Rudi said, his voice slightly teasing.
The priest spoke with a chuckle in his voice, his narrow dark eyes ironic and a finger tapping the air in mild reproof: ?You know the answer to that, my son; you rolled in enough logic at Mt. Angel for some to rub off. When men differ from the magisterium of Holy Mother Church, they are in error. But when they agree with it
… why, that simply shows that all truth proceeds from God. We of the Church have it in fullness by revelation in Scripture and from the holy Saints and the Fathers, as well as by reason and moral intuition. But all men can discover some of it, if they truly seek virtue and wisdom, wherever they start the journey. How not? These things come from only one source and it speaks to every heart that listens. So yes, the Rimpoche is a holy man, and so, in my view, was the Buddha-or Plato, for that matter. But how much better would they have been, if only they had the fullness of the Divine Logos to guide them!? ?Well, now, there?s a circular argument, if I ever heard one!?
The priest laughed aloud.?You can?t win this one, you know… your Majesty. Though I?ll have it with you as often as you please.? ?It?s you Christians who think you can argue your way to truth,? Rudi said, with a grin.?Right now, to be sure, I?d rather eat. Let?s go sluice off!?
TheSwordoftheLady
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Next afternoon Rudi gri
Sure, and there?s a wisdom of hand and eye, too, he thought.
There was plenty of room for play in the big enclosure that Eriksgarth made-the hall and house of the godhi, smaller dwellings for his carles and their families and the youngsters fostered here to learn, barns and sheds and workshops, all around a court paved with river-smoothed cobbles mostly hidden beneath hard-packed snow. The sky was bright, with traces of high cloud like a white mare?s tail. The air was no more than cold, without the frigid cutting blast that made your face ache; the fresh drifts sparkled like soft-curved masses of diamond dust in the light.
And Epona is looking better, he thought happily. Still a bit of that dry wheeze, but her eyes aren?t as dull. Some quiet and rest and she?ll be fine.
For shooting with the bow they used the bank of a distant potato barn as a target, a curious structure like a long rectangle three-quarters sunken in the ground and with earth berms heaped up against its walls. There were clear fields beyond that, for a quarter-mile of open fenced pastureland until a holy shaw?s trees stood bare-branched around the steep roof-on-roof height of a stave-hof, a temple. A bright glitter caught his eye there, paint on one of the riot of carvings.
The locals were good enough archers in their way, but not up to Mackenzie standards, and certainly not to be set against a champion of the Lughnasadh Games like Edain. The young men he?d defeated laughed and slapped him on the back; then three of them looked at each other, nodded, and each picked up one of the plate-sized wooden targets.
With a shout they threw them high, in a spread that opened like the spines of a fan. Edain?s movements seemed steady, almost leisurely, but the flat snap of the bow sounded three times so quickly that the sound was lost in the hard crack-crack-crack of the points striking home in wood. The last of the targets was still man-height above the ground when the arrow punched it away. ?Fetch, Garbh!? the younger Mackenzie said.
The big shaggy half mastiff had been sitting in aristocratic indifference, ignoring the stiff-legged wariness of the local beasts as they stalked closer. Now she trotted off, to return and lay the disks at her master?s feet. ?Did you miss?? one of the Bjornings said; no arrows stood in the wooden circles.?I thought I heard the strike!?
Edain tossed him one of the disks, skimming it through the air; they were like flat miniature shields a foot across, made from two layers of birch strips glued crossways and rimmed in iron. The Norrheim man held his up and whistled between his teeth, showing the neat round hole punched through near the center of it. ?This is not a little boy who?s come among us!? he said. ?Ah, it?s the cold steel that wins a battle,? one of the others grumbled.
Garbh returned with the arrows held gently between her long yellow teeth, lips curled daintily back. The fletching of each had been stripped off as they made passage through the wood, but they were otherwise intact. ?Not with one of those through your eye,? his friend said thoughtfully.?And through your shield first. I?d guess you could punch through a byrnie, too, eh?? ?A mail shirt? Yes, with anything like a straight hit, and a nice bodkin. But a solid steel breastplate or lames, now… no, not always through that. The surface may glance the point; you need a closer range and a little luck. Enough shafts in the air at once-an arrow storm, we call it-will do the job right enough.?
Edain finshed checking the arrows and slid them over his shoulder into the quiver. He spoke with a little slyness in it: ?You were speakin? of the cold steel? Well, my Chief there, himself, is a very fair shot, enough to keep me exercised, as it were, but a man of the sword first and foremost. Better at that than I am with a bow, if truth be told, and I?ve fought by his side more than once, in ambuscades, onsets, raids and pitched battles.?
He reached out and took an apple that one of the local men had halfway raised to his mouth, twitching it out of his fingers, tossing it up and catching it. Then he threw it with a sudden hard snap, the plump red fruit a blurred streak through the air. ?Chief!? he called as it left his hand.
Rudi had been waiting for something of the sort; the contests had all been friendly, but he didn?t think the men of Eriksgarth would have spent this much time with their weapons on the day of a feast if the strangers hadn?t arrived. Though they seemed to love games and tests of skill of all sorts, from chess to wrestling and swordplay, and this gathering was a chance for trials between many from isolated steadings.