Emberverse #04 - The Sunrise Lands by S. M. Stirling

Author:S. M. Stirling [Stirling, S. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General, American Science Fiction And Fantasy, Fiction - Science Fiction, Science Fiction - Alternative History, Alternative History, Willamette River Valley (Or.), Oregon, Regression (Civilization)
ISBN: 9780451461704
Publisher: Roc Hardcover
Published: 2010-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

The song died away, muffled in the clinging mist, and they rode on in silence; though usually you couldn’t get four young Mackenzie clansfolk to shut up, riding abroad for adventure and strange sights. The air was too thick, and the way it drank sound made the song forlorn.

I feel like a ghost, Edain Aylward Mackenzie thought, peering through the fog. Then he shivered a little at the thought, spitting leftward to avert the omen and signing the Horns. Thick morning mist off the sea puffed and billowed about them, and moisture dripped from the boughs of the roadside trees. Drifts wandered over the graveled way; the fetlocks of the horses stirred it like a man’s breath in smoke. Slow wet wind soughed through the Coast Range firs behind him, louder than the sounds of the little caravan’s hooves and wheels; the Association baron and Rudi Mackenzie rode directly ahead.

“These clansfolk have come all the way from Sutter down to see about your cheeses and smoked salmon,” Rudi said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder towards the wagons. “Not to mention that attar of roses stuff you wrote about. If trade’s not below your notice, Juhel.”

“Men with wheatfields and vineyards in their demesne and Portland on their doorstep can afford to get picky about dérogeance, ” the young baron growled. “What I’ve got is trees, grass, cows, potatoes and fish. God has given this land and these people into my charge—and now that I’m Anne’s guardian, the whole of goddamned County Tillamook’s on my plate till she’s come of age, not just Barony Netarts. It’s up to me to see to it the people prosper. I’m sick of courtiers making jokes about Tillamookers in wooden shoes.”

Edain listened and snorted quietly to himself. He’d seen enough in this visit to know that any Association aristo would say that sort of thing, and a lot of them were right bastards all the same. Evidently Rudi thought this one meant it, though—he’d gotten to know the man while he was up north in Protectorate territory on his yearly visits.

That was why Juniper Mackenzie’s son and tanist had agreed to speak for the wagon train’s owners. Edain and his three friends had come along for the fun of the thing, this being after Mabon and slack time on their parents’ crofts. There were casks of Brannigan’s Spe cial and carved horn cups from Bend and raw turquoise and such packed in the wagons, and blankets and cloaks woven on Mackenzie looms—his own mother’s and sister’s among them.

He let the conversation blur into the background noise of hooves and wheels on gravel and looked around instead; he’d come along on this trip with Rudi to see new things. That I have! he thought.

The ruins of Salem, the steel gates of Larsdalen, great empty-eyed skyscrapers in Portland staring like lost spir its of the past at the present-day pomp of tournament and court, the majesty of the Columbia gorge and hang gliders dancing through it like

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