Paladin of Shadows 4 - Unto the Breach Page 4

  The Keldara used it for much the same reason, now. That was where the tribe gathered for the minor portions of festivals. That was where the kids ran screaming through the crowds and, in this case, people gathered to sample food.

  The women of the Keldara prided themselves on two things: their beer and their cooking. Already trestle tables piled with special foods had been set up in the area and everyone was sampling the wares. Which meant there were plenty of young teen girls in the area, carefully ignoring their male counterparts. And Mike had been spotted as soon as he left the gates of the caravanserai.

  So when Dumbass came cantering up the road into the area, Mike sawing on the reins to slow him down before he trampled some kid, he was immediately swarmed.

  "God, girls!" Mike said, grinning against his better nature. "Give me a chance to at least get off the damn thing!"

  The girls were a swarming mob, dressed in bright blouses and black skirts. The Keldara kept some very strict customs about dress which told an informed observer a lot. Girls who had had their first period wore "dhimmie" scarves, a legacy of Islamic occupation under first Magyar tribes then the Ottomans. Girls who were "available" wore their hair in braids. Girls who were married wore their hair unbraided.

  Younger girls, those who hadn't hit puberty, didn't wear scarves. Younger ones their hair was generally pulled back but unbraided. The older ones, though, mostly wore braids.

  Mike tossed his reins to one of the girls with a dhimmie scarf and braids and slid off the horse.

  "Don't overfeed him!" Mike said, sternly. "He nearly got colic the last time! You don't want to kill him, you know."

  "Yes, Kildar," the girl holding the reins said, bobbing in a curtsey. She had blonde hair and bright blue eyes. And, as always with the Keldara, was just fucking beautiful. Okay, so maybe the Rite wasn't all bad.

  Mike made his way through the mob as politely as he could, trying to avoid brushing against breasts or being groped. The Keldara were very strict about sex but there were some very odd aspects. If they could get away with it, if they thought nobody would notice, if, for example, they were surrounded by other girls who shielded the act from the Elders and who wouldn't tell, the girls in the dhimmie scarves would grope him in an instant. And they had very strong hands.

  They also weren't above giving the Kildar a little tease with a quick brush of a breast against his arm. Or back or any other part of his body they could reach.

  Mike finally broke through that throng and then hit the kids. He'd taken to carrying hard candies with him whenever he went down to the Valley and he gave it out to the children. Sometimes he was pressed for time and all but the youngest understood. But when he had time he handed it out.

  "Gregor, that's Stasi's," he said, pulling back a sweet and giving it to the younger girl by the boy's side. He handed Gregor one, next.

  Generally, he could just hold the sweets out in cupped hands. The Keldara kids had learned not to grab more than one, to let the younger ones go first. It had taken a while, but Mike had been firm and patient. By now the older kids tended to teach the younger the rules, sometimes with a slap on the hand or the back of the head.

  The kids also didn't drop their wrappers. Mike had instituted the almost purely US and Western European concept that "littering is bad." The older Keldara still had trouble with the idea but the kids were learning. A child that just dropped his wrapper on the ground was, like as not, not going to get a sweet the next time around. Mike sometimes had trouble with names, there were nearly six hundred Keldara all told, but he rarely forgot a face.

  Once the kids had their candy, Mike dropped the last few pieces into his pockets and looked up into a pair of blue eyes so deep they were very nearly purple.

  There was one girl of the Keldara who, dhimmie scarf or no, didn't braid her hair despite being all of fourteen. It fell long and fiery red past her shoulders in a titian waterfall. Heart shaped face and slightly Tartar eyes and that incredible blue.

  "Hello, Katrina," Mike said, smiling faintly. "How have you been?"

  "Actually, not that bad," Katrina said, walking up to stand far too close to him and looking up at him out of those huge, beautiful, eyes. "I'm working up at the brewery these days."

  The reason Katrina wore her hair unbound was simple. She, against every order, prohibition or curse, considered herself Mike's primary partner. The Kildaran was the term. The fact that Mike had never laid a hand on her, that Anastasia effectively held that position, that Mike had stated he wasn't going to have anyone with the moniker "Mrs. Jenkins" or children with that last name as potential hostages, didn't particularly matter from her perspective. She'd set her sights high and she wasn't taking them off the goal.

  "Glad to hear it," Mike said, trying not to gulp.

  Katrina was the first Keldara he'd ever met. He'd gotten lost in a snowstorm headed for a ski resort in northern Georgia. Lost, in the middle of a blizzard, damned near out of gas, he'd almost hit a figure struggling down the road. The female, at the time he'd thought her an old woman, was carrying a bundle of sticks and wrapped up against the cold. He'd offered her a lift home and not really seen her face or figure until he entered the House Devlich.

  Despite the difference in age, despite all the differences, Mike had to admit there was something that really got him about Katrina. Oh, there was plenty of lust there and a good bit of infatuation on both sides. But Mike hadn't felt this way about a girl in a long time, if ever. Call it chemistry. In a few more years he'd have to make up his mind what to do about it. In the meantime, he tried very hard to keep his distance. But he wasn't going to back up just because the girl had closed to a few inches.

  "I've started working directly with Mother Lenka," Katrina said, smiling secretly. "She is teaching me much of her magic."

  "Well, you're the one to do that with," Mike said, frankly grinning. "You and Lenka are two of a kind."

  Mother Lenka was the Keldara brewmistress. All of the Houses had their own brew but, hands down, Mother Lenka, who like Katrina was of the Devlich Family, was the best of an amazingly good lot.

  Lenka was a Russian war-bride, originally from St. Petersburg. A force of nature, she was never willing to describe what role she had been in, exactly, prior to marrying Fredrik Devlich and returning to the Valley to live out the rest of her days. Given her foul mouth, generally lewd approach to life and absolute bloody-mindedness, though, Mike was willing to bet she wasn't displaced aristocracy. The term "whore" came to mind.

  But she had carved a niche for herself in the Keldara, a position of respect equivalent to or even higher than the House Mothers.

  All of which were reasons Mike had chosen her to run the new brewery. That beer was designed for sale and export. The first batch had just hit the American market and it was receiving rave reviews. Mike wondered what the drinkers would think if they knew the Keldara considered it less than third rate.

  "You think so?" Katrina asked, tilting her head to the side. "And is that a compliment or an insult?"

  "I think it's a compliment," Mike said. "A sort of sideways one. I don't think that Lenka has had the happiest life."

  "Should life always be happy?" Katrina asked, her eyes still pointed at his face but now looking past him at some other place. "The world is a wheel, cycles upon cycles. Winter and summer, night and dark, good and evil, all spiraling together. Without pain there is no pleasure and without sadness no joy. All of life is a circle of balance on the wheel." She shook her head and looked at him again. "Sorry. I... I guess..." She looked down, clearly ashamed. The Keldara were, by and large, a pretty rock-headed lot when it came to philosophy. Katrina was not, by any stretch, considered a "good" Keldara.

  Mike liked the Keldara for about a billion reasons. But that particular rock-headedness was not one of them.

  "Don't apologize," Mike said. "There are some pretty good technical thinkers among the Keldara but I think you're just about the only true genius. Genius is never easy to live with. Especially in a pl
ace like this. I know you want to be Kildaran but if I have my druthers you'll get shipped off when you're eighteen to someplace like the Sorbonne or Princeton to get turned into a nice little liberal."

  "Very funny," Katrina said, shaking her head. "Look at what happened to the last Keldara to go to college."

  "He came back to be the farm manager," Mike replied.

  "I don't want to get an agronomy degree," Katrina snapped back, just as fast.

  "No, I think you're more the liberal arts type," Mike said. "Semiotics, maybe?"

  "I've read some Foucault," Katrina said, shrugging. "Not interested. I think one rock dropped on his head would have adjusted the whole concept of relativism."

  "Where in the hell did you get a copy of Foucault?" Mike asked, surprised.

  "Out of your library," Katrina said. "I think it's Colonel Nielson's though. It was filled with notes, most of them consisting of foul-mouthed diatribes."

  "Yeah, that'd be Nielson's," Mike said, chuckling. The former War College instructor had very little patience with anything that smacked of "baffling with bullshit." And people had learned not to say words or phrases like "Politically Correct", "Marxist" or "Trans-National Progressives" around him unless they'd brought a chair, a lunch and some sort of poncho to keep the spittle off.

  "Well, then, you can go to Texas A&M and hang out with the Aggies," Mike said. "You should get a kick out of that."

  "I don't want to go to college," Katrina said. "I want to be Kildaran. It does not require a college degree. The only training I need is from that blonde witch you brought in from Uzbekistan."

  "Oh, yeah, you two would get on like a house afire. Every been in a house that's on fire, Katrina?"

  "I actually get along just fine with Anastasia," Katrina said, batting her eyes at him. "Who do you think gave me the book?"

  "Katrina!" Father Devlich shouted, striding over. "Quit pestering the Kildar!"

  Father Devlich was tall and broad with gray-shot red hair clipped above the ears and off the collar. Practically the definition of "rock-headedness" he had been landed a "daughter" that was his functional opposite. Perhaps it was the reason that he seemed to be perpetually angry.

  "It's quite alright, Father Devlich," Mike said, smiling at the man. Of all the Fathers, Devlich was, hands down, his least favorite. And the feeling was mutual.

  "Kildar," Father Devlich said, nodding. "It's just that the Elders are waiting."

  "I will be there momentarily," Mike said. He was, after all, the fucking Kildar. If he wanted to talk to a pretty girl, the Elders could damned well wait. On the other hand, Father Kulcyanov was in the group and the old soldier didn't deserve to be ignored. "Katrina, we'll talk later. But you're not in the running for Kildaran. That's final. Not any time soon. So do good work for Mother Lenka. Get your education down, too. Okay?"

  "Oh, I will," Katrina said, licking her lips. "A very broad education, yes?"

  "Oh, my God!" Mike said, shaking his head and walking over to the cluster of Elders.

  * * *

  "Katrina, I swear by the Father of All..." Father Devlich ground out.

  "You swear what, Father?" Katrina asked. "That you will beat me? That you will deny me food? That you will have me shunned? That you will cast me out and send me to town? You've done all of those but send me to town and the Kildar has forbidden that for any girl of the Keldara. I do my job at the brewery, do it well. And I will be Kildaran, bringing honor to the Family. Be it in a year or ten years, I shall be Kildaran. And as to the Father of All, blessings be upon his eye, you know that I now follow the other way. So cursing me by the Father is a weak threat, Father."

  "Very well," Father Devlich said. "You feel that you are a woman grown? Then I give you into the hands of Mother Lenka. Let her handle you."

  "I have been for three years, Father, and you know that," Katrina said. "I have been in the hands of Mother Lenka since I came of age. At this point, I am very close to being her designated Heir, Father. More status to the House, yes?"

  "Much peace be it to you," Father Devlich said, contemptuously. "Great honor, yes. The Goddess is so honored, no one will speak Her name. Her Priestess does not speak of Her except in the dark of the moon and the stillness of the cave."

  "She holds Her hand upon the Wheel," Katrina said, smiling and looking into the distance. "It is She who brings the Spring."

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  "Father Kulcyanov," Mike said, bowing to the Elder.

  Although not the oldest Keldara Father, that would be Father Ferani, Father Kulcyanov was the Elder held in the highest honor. A highly decorated war veteran of WWII, what the locals called the Great War, the man was tall and broad but much of what was clearly formerly great strength was wasted by age. He must once have been as huge as Oleg, Mike's primary team leader, but age had shrunken him.

  He still, when he summoned it, had a commanding majesty. He was currently wearing a black broad-cloth jacket and fine wool trousers but Mike suspected that later in the day, as ceremonies approached, he would don the tiger-skin mantle of the High Priest of the Keldara.

  "Kildar," Father Kulcyanov replied, raspily. "You honor us with your presence."

  "I am honored by the Keldara," Mike said. "But I'll admit I wasn't briefed on this day. I hope I'm not chopping wood again."

  The first season ceremony Mike had participated in had been the Rites of Spring, a twenty-four hour long festival that was the most authentic Spring Rite that might be left in the world.

  Part of that festival involved cutting several types of trees for a great bonfire. They had to be cut over one night, starting near dusk. Only a special axe could be used and it wasn't well suited for the task, being one of the ancient battleaxes of the Keldara.

  Mike had ended up, through a desire to bond as much as anything, one of the designated wood cutters. What was worse, after the wood cutting and moving the logs up to the ceremonial area he'd been expected to participate in feats of strength and agility.

  It was an annual ceremony to determine who was the best of the Keldara. Mike had realized that too late but, unfortunately, his competitive streak, which any SEAL has in full measure, kicked in. He ended up, effectively, winning the contest, even the bull wrestling. He'd refused the honor of being the winner, though. The position, the Ondah, was one of high honor in the Keldara and Mike wasn't about to take that from the, in all honesty, second place, Oleg.

  His argument was that the Kildar should be the best of the best but that Ondah was a position reserved for the Keldara.

  The entire ordeal, though, had been as exhausting as a day in Hell Week. He wasn't interested in repeating his previous triumph. If he could. The Keldara were in high training at this point. Mike wasn't sure he could win if he had to do it again.

  The summer festival had been another day straight out of a storybook. Held on the longest day of the year it was straightforward Lammas festival with the exception that the Keldara held the "bringing of light" portion in spring.

  "Not today, Kildar," Father Ferani replied, grinning.

  At "somewhere around seventy-five" Father Ferani was the eldest of the Fathers of the Keldara, short for his race and shrunken from age. But he was one of those men that, as they aged, seem to harden like old teak. Like Father Kulcyanov, he was a veteran of the Great War, one of the handful of Keldara to return alive. But unlike Kulcyanov, he had spent most of the war in a supply depot well behind the lines.

  He was one of the Fathers that Mike got along with very well. Mahona was in that category as was Makanee. Father Shaynav still treated the new Kildar with caution, being a bit hide-bound when it came to change. Father Kulcyanov simply went along with the changes of the Kildar but was always cautious, always watching, always considering exactly where the line might be that impropriety set in. Strangely enough, from Mike's perspective of "impropriety", it was Father Kulcyanov who originally suggested the Rite of Cardane.

  Father Devlich simply hated Mike's guts. H
e was the first Father Mike had met the night Mike returned Katrina to her House in the middle of a blizzard. Whether from the impropriety of a man being alone with one of his "daughters" or just because he was a bloody-minded bastard, it was Father Devlich that always presented obstacles, that carped and worried about all the changes.

  "During this morning we will simply gather and enjoy the fruits of the harvest," Father Mahona said. Mahona was medium height and heft with short-cropped blonde hair shot with gray and a graying beard. "In the afternoon, the brewmistress will choose which crop of barley is suitable for the beers of the House. The young men will then cut the field. For this ceremony we prefer to do that by hand."

  "Of course," Mike said, nodding. Mike fully recognized that this was as much a religious ceremony as a get-together. It was a hell of a windy day to harvest, though. He hoped that wouldn't fuck things up. He was pretty sure that if the ceremonial harvest was screwed up, all the grain and fat livestock in the world wouldn't make the Keldara happy.