A Meeting At Corvallis

would certainly rather be somewhere else with someone else since she's in luuu-uuuuuve again—"
His sister snorted and made as if to clout him with the buckler in her left hand; the movement was
slow and symbolic. A real strike with a two-pound steel disk was no joke.
"—but it's Sam's orders, and Dad's, and Lady Juniper's. You and the princess here get a guard,
every hour of the night and day."
Mathilda pouted a little at the title—she'd tried to insist on it when she first arrived at Dun Juniper
after her capture last spring, and found that to be a mistake, like talking about the splendors of the palace
in Portland or Castle Todenangst. That reminded him of how she'd arrived, and what had followed from
that. His fingers rubbed at his side through his jacket, where the giant's sword had wounded him that
August night. Mathilda's voice was small as she leaned close and said: "Does it still hurt?"
"Nah," he said, smiling, remembering how she'd sat by his bedside through the long days of pain,
reading out loud or playing checkers or just being there. "I heal quick."
"I'm sorry, Rudi."
"Well, you didn't do it, Matti," he replied cheerfully.
"Eddie was always nice before … well, nice to me. And Mack, I thought he was just sort of big and,
well, stupid. Dad just sent them to rescue me. He and Mom are scared for me. They didn't mean to hurt
you."
"Mack was big and stupid," Rudi said. "And he was a bad man, Matti. He did mean to hurt me." He
put an arm around her shoulders. "I know you didn't."
"You want to go and visit Epona?" Mathilda said hopefully.
He hesitated; Epona was the good thing that had happened last summer, the horse that nobody but
he could ride … Rudi sighed. There wasn't time, and he didn't have the excuse anymore that the mare
would only let him groom or feed her—she'd relaxed a bit about that.
"Oh, come on, let's go get dinner. I'm clemmed," he said instead.
The center of Dun Juniper held the larger, communal buildings; school, bad-weather covenstead,
bathhouse, armory, library, stables and workshops, granaries and dairy, brew-house and storehouses.
The heart of it was the great Hall. It loomed bright through the thick-falling snow, firelight and lantern light
red and yellow through the windows and on the painted designs graven into the logs. The ends of the
rafters that supported the second-story galleries were carved into the heads of the Mackenzie totems,
Wolf and Bear, Dragon and Tiger and Raven and more; their grinning mouths held chains that ended in
lanterns of wrought brass and iron and glass. The high-peaked roof of moss-grown shingles reared above
like the back of a green, scaly dragon, and the rafters at each end of it crossed like an X, carved into
facing spirals, deasil and widdershins to balance the energies. The two children and their escorts paused
on the veranda to stamp and kick the mud and sticky wet snow off their brogans and brush it off their
plaids and jackets and caps.
Through the big double doors, and into a blast of light and sound, warmth and smells; woodsmoke,
damp wool clothes drying, leather, meat and cabbage cooking, fir and polish and soap, bright paint and
carving seeming to move on the walls. The great stone hearth across the room on the north face of the
Hall was booming and roaring, and a group around it were laughing and finishing a song as they threw in
chunks of timber:
"Oak logs will warm you well, that are old and dry;
Logs of pine will sweetly smell, but the sparks will fly,
Surely you will find
There's none compare with the hardwood logs
That are cut in winter-time, sir!
Holly logs will burn like wax—you can burn them green
Elm logs burn like smoldering flax,with no flames to be seen
Beech logs for wintertime, and Yule logs as well, sir—"
He genuflected to the altar on the mantel and signed the air with the Horns for the Hall's tutelary
guardians, and his bodyguards did the same. The long tables were up as well, set in a T this day with the
upper bar on the dais at the east end of the Hall, and people were bustling in and out of the doors on