The Sea Peoples(37)
All her father’s folk learned song and an instrument in Moon School, since it was an important part of their strand of the Old Faith. And it was notorious that an impromptu céilidh broke out wherever a few of them were set down without something more urgent to do.
Though if it were the war-pipes and Lambeg drums . . .
Karl and his brother Mathun, who looked very much like him with a few years subtracted, faced each other motionless across the circle of swords for a moment. Then they began to dance, left hand on hip and right up so that the crooked fingers were above the blue flat beret-like Scots bonnet; they were both from Dun Fairfax and of the Wolf sept, and had a swatch of the gray fur of their totem in the silver clasps above the left eye.
The rest of the clansfolk took up the words of the song, strong young voices in expert harmony:
“Yule is come
Now beat the drum
And light the Solstice flame!”
The sword-dance kept the upper body almost still, save for when left and right hand switched positions, but the feet moved in a skipping rhythm that sent kilt and sporran and the tail of the plaid swaying; every six beats there was a quick stamping jump to the right, that left the dancer in the next of the eights into which the swords divided the circle.
If you made a mistake, it also meant you were stamping a foot down on the upraised blade of a sword, which would be unfortunate for the sole of your shoe and the foot within. Back in the Mackenzie dúthchas, the Clan’s grave elders waged a continual battle to try and make everyone use dulled blades for this dance; at the major public festivals and for practice among those too young to be Initiates they even succeeded.
“Tonight we’ll raise
A hymn of praise
For the Sun returns again!”
Two more of the young Mackenzies fed themselves into the dance, Boudicca and Rowan, moving in perfect unison.
“Hail to Yule, the longest night
Of all the turning year—
Await the resurrecting Light
That banishes despair!”
Then Karl surprised her a little; he signaled her to come over if she wished, but she was willing enough. Without undue modesty she knew she was a striking dancer. And she’d seen enough to know that here, as in much of Montival, dancing was considered suitable for those of high rank, particularly with a religious element. Which wasn’t a problem, since pretty well everything Mackenzies did had a religious part to it; the Old Faith didn’t make much distinction between the everyday and things of the spirit.
And besides that, I like dancing, and this is a chance to do it!
You needed an even number of dancers for the sword-ring, and it got more difficult with every pair; six was as high as it usually went, with eight reserved for the great feasts of the Quarter Festivals and even there for teams who’d practiced together often.
órlaith wasn’t surprised when a man in Mackenzie dress stepped up opposite her, but she almost missed the beat when she recognized Alan Thurston. That took only an instant despite his wearing kilt and plaid and bonnet rather than the tight blue copper-riveted trousers and tooled boots and Stetson of a Boisean rancher, or the bleak gray practicality of the USB Army’s uniform.
Alan was the nephew of the President-General of the United States of Boise but had only a vague resemblance to his uncle Frederick, though more to his cousins; the family’s men ran to a tall, broad-shouldered, long-limbed build and squared-off chins, and he had all of that. His father Martin was long-dead, and had also been a traitor, parricide and collaborator—later mindless puppet—of the Prophet of the Church Universal and Triumphant, and the reason the Prophet’s War had been a civil strife in Boise. That was also the reason Alan had grown up in quiet exile on a remote ranch with his mother Juliet.
He was also . . .
Gorgeous, she thought happily, returning his grin. If he’d ever gone on the stage, there wouldn’t be a dry seat in the house. Mine all mine! Well, yes, Da killed his father . . . but then, Da’s father killed Mother’s father long before they were married, and that never bothered them much. All the better for the Kingdom’s peace that they wed, in fact, to be a symbol of the burying of old feuds and to produce . . . me.
Curling honey-brown hair sun-streaked with his mother’s gold, eyes of sage green rimmed with a darker color, nose straight and slightly flared, high cheekbones tapering down to a square chin with a cleft, full lips smiling and showing even teeth against skin that was a creamy olive tint just on the pale side of very light brown.
For a moment she worried that he’d have trouble with the dance; square dancing was the closest thing the wilds of rural Boise had to this. Then he took up the tune and the step outside the circle without missing a beat. He must have been practicing.
And Karl must have been helping him, the scheming lout! órlaith thought with fond amusement. Not that it would have worked if he wasn’t quick and graceful by nature.
She sang with the rest, noticing Alan’s sharper accent, with its eastern across-the-mountains hint of a twang:
“For now the tide will start to turn
Night will yield to Day
And the waning Year will shed its skin
And cast the dark away!”
As she moved, she admired the smooth play of muscle in the young man’s legs. He had the strong thighs of a horseman, but good calves as well; in fact, he’d told her that he’d deliberately trained by running alongside his horse for an hour or more every day, vaulting across the saddle now and then.