A Meeting at Corvallis Read Online Free Page A

through flesh and bone like a spear when it slipped just wrong. That was why you always kept it pointed away from your face when stringing or unstringing, something he’d learned years ago.
    â€œYou’re getting pretty good, Matti,” he said.
    â€œI always had a bow,” she said. “Not just here.”
    â€œNot a bow like that, I bet,” Rudi said, grinning.
    â€œYeah!” she said enthusiastically. “It’s great. We heard about Sam’s bows, even, you know, ummm”—she didn’t say Portland —“up north.”
    The longbow was one of Sam Aylward’s; the First Armsman made Juniper’s son a new one every Yule as he grew, and last year’s was about the right weight for Mathilda. It was his bowyer’s skill as much as his shooting that made him known as Aylward the Archer.
    It’s funny, he thought. She learned some things up there—she can shoot pretty good. But not how to look after her own gear. Weird.
    They both wiped their bows down with hanks of shearling wool, slipped them into protective sheaths of soft, oiled leather, laced those tight-closed and slid them home in the carrying loops beside their quivers. By the time they’d put on the quiver-caps—getting wet didn’t do the arrows’ fletching any good—the snow was thick enough to make objects in the middle distance blurry, turning the faint light of the moon above the clouds into a ghostly glow. The thick turf of the meadow gave good footing, but the earth beneath was mucky, with a squishy, slippery feel.
    Most of the mile-long benchland that held the Mackenzie clachan was invisible now from here at the eastern edge; the mountain-slope northward was just a hint of looming darkness. They could hear the little waterfall that fell down it to the pool at the base that fed Artemis Creek and turned the wheel of the gristmill, but only a hint of the white water was visible. Rudi cocked an ear at it, humming along with the deep-toned voice of the river spirit in her endless song, and enjoying the way the snow muffled other sounds: the wind in the firs, the sobbing howl of a coyote—or possibly Coyote Himself—somewhere in the great wilderness that surrounded them, creaks and snaps and rustles under the slow wet wind’s heavy passage.
    The teachers and their helpers chivvied everyone into order on the gravel roadway, counting twice to make sure nobody had wandered off into the woods and fields. Aoife Barstow hung a lantern on her spear and led the way; she was Uncle Chuck’s fostern-daughter, a tall young woman of about twenty with dark red braids, and a figure of tremendous prestige with the younger children. She and her brothers Sanjay and Daniel had been on Lady Juniper’s great raid against the Protectorate just after last Beltane, when Mathilda had been captured; Sanjay had died on a northern knight’s lance point. Aoife had not only killed the knight who did it; she’d cut off his head and waved it in the faces of his comrades, shrieking and possessed by the Dark Goddess the while. Gruesomely fascinating rumor had it that she’d wanted to bring the head home pickled in cedar oil and nail it over the Hall’s front door, the way warriors did in the old stories, but that Rudi’s mother had talked her out of it.
    Chuck mounted his horse and trotted along, quartering behind them and to either side to make sure nobody straggled.
    â€œSchool’s over until after Yule!” a boy named Liam shouted as they walked, which got him a round of cheers.
    â€œI wouldn’t mind school, if it were all like this,” someone else said.
    â€œYup,” Rudi said. “Even arithmetic and plants aren’t so bad. It’s that classwork about things before the Change. Bo ring!”
    â€œYeah.” Liam nodded; he was several years older than Rudi, but far too young to really remember the lost world. “Presidents and atoms and