The Sword of the Lady Read Online Free PDF Page A

headed westward along the river. Fireflies flickered across the waters, and a cool wet breath came from the river′s surface. Rudi took a deep lungful, glad to be away from most of the stink of blood and opened bodies, though Murdy and the game on the packhorses—a white-tail, an elk and a feral cow—weren′t all that fragrant either. Something hooted in the woods; they all stiffened, and then relaxed when experienced ears told them it was a real bird. Tuk continued:
    ″Yeah, monssers, like the ones who chased our pamaws—″
    Ancestors , Rudi realized, as they crossed the river where a fallen bridge broke the current and made a ford.
    ″—outta Chi-town in the Bad Time. They were just littles, but they was clean, our pamaws. Clean!″
    In fact Jake and his friends were a fair bit ranker than the wet heat of summer here demanded, and their ill-cured clothes and harness smelled worse, not to mention the spatters of sticky drying blood that they ignored, despite the river being close at hand. Jake explained for the stranger as Rudi quickly bent and scooped up water and sand in passing to rub his hands free of the sticky mass that threatened to gum his fingers together. He could finish the job later, and take care of his sword—even the finest metal got nicks when you slammed it through bone.
    ″Didn′t eat nobody, even when they had to kill ′em anyhow to keep their own asses off the cookfire. Not even once. The Knifers, they still eats man-meat sometimes. Even when they don′t hafta. Think it makes ′em spook-strong.″
    Pride of ancestry rang in his voice, and Rudi gave a little sigh of relief. That spared him the necessity of explaining what was geasa to him, taboo.
    And that story would help account for how crude their gear is, Rudi thought. If their parents were mostly children . . . teenagers at most . . . themselves. And how much their speech has changed. And if this man is chief, none of the pamaws survived much longer than it took their own children to be three-quarters grown. He′s no older than me, I think.
    From what he′d heard, most of the folk of the old world had been utterly helpless when the Change came and the machines stopped, country-folk and farmers only a little less than townsmen. In some places enough skills had been found or pieced together to build life new on old foundations; the Clan Mackenzie had been luckier than most, since many of its founders had been lovers of the ancient arts. Close to the great cities it had been worst of all. There tens of millions were left without food or water; everything went down in a doomed scramble to keep alive an hour at a time, and plague ran through the surging masses like wildfire through dry grass.
    From the Mississippi to the east coast, where the cities had been thickest, little remained but bands like these—and Rudi seemed to have been fortunate indeed in the ones he met.
    Luck of that sort is only to be expected, if you′re fated to dree a hero′s weird, he thought with an inward grin, half at himself, half defiant mockery at the Powers. It′s one of the compensations for the fear and danger and general misery and the prospect of an early death. You′re lucky until you aren′t, so to say.
    ″They was all littles, the pamaws, ′cept old Jake, he was my pa, and Tuk ′n Samul′s,″ Jake said. ″He brought everyone out and hid ′em till the New Year. He was a good one, old Jake the sailor man. Dead a long time now, though; he′s a good spook″—
    Spirit-guardian, Rudi translated mentally.
    —″for all of us Southside studs n′ bitches.″
    Men and women, his mind added.
    It was going to be a strain talking, until he learned a bit of this dialect. He′d heard many on his trip across the continent, but none quite so strange except those that weren′t English at all.
    They stayed in the river valley for the most part, working their way south and slightly west, despite the deep dark under the trees that blocked most of the