A Meeting At Corvallis

to those a bit younger, but they didn't really matter. Not the way a horse with splints did, or an attack of
brucellosis in the cattle, or getting a good clear shot at a deer with his bow, or how well a line of
pike-men kept alignment while advancing over rough ground. Luanne had the same detachment, only
more so; she was a bit younger, and she'd been brought up deep-country-rural on her family's Texas
horse ranch or traveling around the country to deliver stock. To both of them it was natural to exist in this
world, where the Willamette Valley and a few days' travel about it were all that really counted.
The thought ran through her mind in an instant; she turned and met Nigel Loring's eyes, and knew that
the thought was shared.
"We adapted," he murmured. Unspoken was: Those who couldn't are dead. "But never
completely."
"No, never completely," she replied in the same undertone. "Although dean cronan cupla barrai
agus cuirfidh me breagriocht air … "
His involuntary chuckle helped her shake the gloom off; in Erse, she'd just said if you hum a few
bars, I can fake it. Looking into his eyes, she knew she'd lifted his mood as well, and that was a
pleasure in itself.
Glancing around her Hall, she made it come real again with a mental effort. The younger Larssons
had finished chuckling over their own joke.
"Well, whatever or Whoever caused the Change, I doubt they did it so we would be done in by
celestial debris," Juniper said.
"They could certainly have finished us off without doing anything so elaborate," Nigel confirmed.
"Moving back to practicalities, what did your father say about our … guest, Luanne?" Juniper asked.
Will Hutton was at least as intelligent as Kenneth Larsson; he had much less formal education, but he
made up for it with a good deal more focus.
"Pretty much the same thing as my honorable father-in-law, for once," Luanne said. "Not to sweat it,
basically. And believe me, after Reuben got killed by the Protector's men last year"—that was her
foster-brother, adopted after the Change—"Dad was as angry at Arminger as anyone."
"I don't know precisely what we can make of Matti's being here. Still, the Lord and Lady wouldn't
send us an opportunity if there weren't some way to use it."
She reached for the horn again. The wine was made by Tom Brannigan over in Sutterdown, the Clan
Mackenzie's only real town, further west in the Valley; Tom owned a vineyard, and was a brewmaster
and vintner besides being mayor and High Priest of the coven there. The drink had a pleasant scent like
cherries and violets, and a smooth, earthy taste just tart enough to accompany the rich savor of the grilled
venison. There was an art to drinking from a horn without spilling half the contents on your face, as well.
"But," she went on, after she'd rolled a sip around her mouth, "do consider what happens if he
doesn't manage to beat us. Say that we beat him. Are we going to destroy the Portland Protective
Association utterly, root and branch?"
"Nope," Luanne said. "Signe and Mike've thought about that. Even if we beat them in the field, we
could only wreck ourselves trying to dig em out. Too many of those damn castles; too many knights and
men-at-arms. And it's just too damned big. Portland rules more people than there are in all the rest of the
northwest outfits put together."
From her other side Sir Nigel Loring nodded and spoke. "And while the man is a tyrant of tyrants, I
saw last year that his obsession with feudalism means that you can't destroy that kingdom of his by
chopping off the head. It's decentralized, and he built that into its bones. If it split up, the parts would be
nearly as troublesome."
"Yeah," Luanne said. "Plus the way he recruited his lords. All those gangers; and the Society types
who stuck with him may have been the roughnecks, but they're tough ones, not to mention the men
who've worked their way up out of the ruck. Now they all have families and want to keep what they've
gained for their children. Winkling every one of them out of his manor … "
"And there are limits to what we can do by encouraging the common folk to snipe at his barons,"
Juniper said regretfully. "Especially now that things there have had a chance to settle down. I have hopes
for that, sure, and contacts there—but the farmers can't hope to rise up against his new-made knights