“The sort-of airship,” the soldier said; he was in plain civilian denim and linen, with a bristle-cut of graying brown hair. “I see you remember our little meeting in Boise and points east.”

“Considering how you saved us all, yes, I do,” she said, shaking his hand enthusiastically.

“How’s Father Ignatius? There was a man who appreciated good engineering!”

“He’s helping build a kingdom now, sir,” Ritva said. “Artos, the High King, he was Rudi Mackenzie when you met him, has appointed him Chancellor of the Realm.”

“Dang, a politician who does sensible things. I may die of shock,” he replied, with bitterness behind the smile.

The main hall of the ranch house reminded Ritva a little of Stardell in Mithrilwood. The decoration was entirely different, but the tight-fitting logs squared on top and bottom on a fieldstone base were similar, and so were the exposed rafters above. There was a big stone fireplace in one wall, empty and swept on this warm summer’s night, and a trio of tile stoves in corners that probably did more in blizzards even if they lacked the cheery crackle. The walls held hunting trophies, elk and bear, cougar and wolf and tiger. And against the far wall was a skeleton, with the door to the kitchen beneath the place where its belly would have been . . .

“Valar bless!” she blurted. “What’s that?”

Woburn laughed, and his soldier guest from Boise chuckled. That was the bones of an animal that must have been twelve feet at the shoulder, with a massive skull and two long curling tusks.

“An Oliphant!” Astrid said in fascination.

“Mammoth, actually,” Woburn said, grinning.

“Same thing,” she said with conviction. “Third Age, you see. Where did you get it! It’s magnificent!”

“Someone found it over at Tolo Lake not far from here a few years before the Change. Nobody wanted it anymore, so I sent a few wagons over to Craigswood when we built this place and brought it back.”

“It takes up a lot of room,” a daughter-in-law said; she was evidently the lady of the household, black-haired and much younger, only a little older than Ritva herself. “Please sit.”

They all did; the Dúnedain, Ian, Woburn and his daughter-in-law, Hanks and a taciturn leathery man in his fifties who was evidently the ranch’s top hand. A trio of middle-aged women in housedresses brought out food; platters of grilled pork chops crusted with chili-flavored breading, mashed potatoes with chives and butter, green salads of lettuce and spinach, celery and tomatoes and onions, glazed carrots, orecchiette pasta and broccoli baked with pine nuts and cheese, onion-and-cabbage pancakes with sour cream, hot biscuits and fresh bread, pitchers of cold spring water and several bottles of red wine from down around the Boise area.

“You folks enjoy,” one of them said as the rancher nodded thanks.