The Tears of the Sun tc-5

by S. M. Stirling

  “Point,” he said. “Very definite point. Have to keep this bandage dry somehow, though.”

  “I’ll soap and rinse and dry you again. Thoroughly, very thoroughly. And whatever.”

  When they came out again, dressed for the day in a clean set of the rough clothing you used when traveling or fighting, the bedding had been stripped from the four-poster and their own kit was on the bare frame, neatly strapped up into their saddle-rolls. Ingolf looked around the room again, this time by daylight. An experienced eye told him that nothing except the double-glazed sash windows was pre-Change; he’d worked for years running a salvager outfit making trips deep into the wildlands to loot the dead cities. It hadn’t been that different from his previous job as head of a troop of paid soldiers; in fact, they’d included a lot of the same people.

  That lack of old-world goods was a little rare; most places had a mixture, with more new-made as the years went on. The rest of the room was just a big rectangle with pleasantly shaped wooden furniture in the rather twisty PPA Gothic style, armor-stands for their harness and weapons, exposed but smoothly planed and attractively carved beams above, a floor of polished western larch, and a couple of alpaca rugs patterned in vivid geometric patterns of black and red and off-white. A fireplace was built into one wall, a closed model with a metal door in its tiled face, empty now with summer. The only fancy touch was a Catholic prie-dieu in a corner, with an image of an armored woman with a halo in the central panel of the triptych facing it.

  “St. Joan,” Mary said, making a reverence with hands pressed together before her face. “She’s their patron here, and a powerful one when you’re fighting invaders.”

  He was still figuring out the Dunedain attitude towards religion. It seemed to include cheerfully stealing everything from anyone; sort of like the Old Religion of Rudi’s bunch but with different names. He’d been brought up a conventional but not very intense Catholic himself, and gotten careless about it in his wandering years. Since Nantucket, he’d become increasingly unwilling to be skeptical about anyone’s approach to the supernatural, which caused its own difficulties. He didn’t feel comfortable with treating faith as a buffet lunch, either.

  He also noticed the windows were deep-seated, confirming his initial impression that the manor was built by ramming moist earth down hard between frames and then letting it air-cure, what some called pise. The natural texture of well-made rammed-earth pise was like a coarse porous stone, often with the impress of the framing still visible, but the interior here was smoothly plastered and the outside whitewashed. One of the advantages of the material was that it was no great trouble to make it as thick as you wanted; at this second-story level it was over a yard through. They had fittings for steel shutters, too, and the wall surround on the window wasn’t square, it was beveled in. That would let you step up to a slit in the shutter and shoot an arrow or crossbow bolt through it easily at any angle under full protection.

  Uh-huh, he noted. Wall all around the manor gardens, too. Nothing to a siege train or field catapults, say twelve-pounders, or even just regular troops with assault ladders, but you could put the whole village in here for a while and stand off bandits or a casual raid easy. Rammed earth’s not quite as strong as concrete, but it’s more than halfway there once it’s had time to cure and it’s a lot cheaper and easier to come by. Good stuff, as long as you can keep too much water off it.

  They passed more people stripping and bundling and crating things outside, turning what had been a big rambling comfortable house into an empty shell, and dodged a string of eight men with a long rolled-up rug or major tapestry. He found the sight oddly melancholy. One of the crew working at removal was the girl who’d brought them their tea.

  “Taking stuff up to the castle?” he said, as she passed with a big basket full of linens.

  “Oh, no, my lord. The castle’s much too crowded with more important things. This is all going up into the mountains.”

  The gazebo court turned out to be part of the gardens at the rear of the house, which covered several acres. The gazebo part was a long arched wooden trellis, overgrown with a great sheet of green vine thickly starred with trumpet-shaped crimson flowers; the table was underneath. The rest of the gardens were a spectacular blaze of flower beds and blue oaks, copper beeches and poplars, with the odd stretch of lawn. Terraces and wandering paths paved with basalt blocks stepped down from the higher terrace the house was built on, with water channels running down stonelined troughs to a swimming pool not far away. The leaves of espaliered fruit trees shimmered green against the whitewashed surface of the perimeter walls, alternating with fragrant deep blue Chinese clematis twined through trellises.

  The warm air was heavy with sweet scents, drowsy with humming bees; a flock of birds with light gray bodies and bright yellow bellies and underwings went by, swooping after insects. A terra-cotta fountain of descending bowls tinkled nearby, welcome in this arid heat. Baron Maugis was already at the table, along with an older woman in a dark green cote-hardie and white wimple and lace shoulder-veil who was probably his mother, and a younger one with pale tilted eyes and a slim build, dressed in a riding habit with a divided skirt, who was certainly his wife. She was just handing an infant to a nanny and setting aside a broad hat. Her hair tumbled like a black torrent down her back through a light wimple, hardly more elaborate than a kerchief but bound with silk cords. Two other children were there, a boy of about six guiltily wiping his face with a napkin and a girl half that age sitting on her father’s lap.

  Mary sighed, and Ingolf nodded. “You know, I could get used to having a place like this,” he murmured to her. “They do look all-’round comfy, don’t they?”

  His wife gave a slight rueful chuckle. “I think you could get the land out of brother Rudi after the war, lover, but I doubt he’d hand you a few thousand people to develop it with, the way the Lord Protector did our host’s father. For that matter, there aren’t big bunches of people around… loose… anymore. Arminger just culled them out of the ones running from the cities and they were glad to get the chance.”

  “Well, we can have the kids on our own, when we finally get the time and quiet, and our own homeplace somewhere. Anywhere but a city, eh?”

  She nodded agreement with a shudder; both of them had seen the great cities of the world, Portland and Boise and even distant, mammoth Des Moines. They were country folk to the core and the thought of living all their lives in one of those ant-heaps-Des Moines had over a hundred thousand people-was loathsome.

  The baron and his lady looked up and rose to make them welcome as the servants led the children away. Mary put hand to heart and bowed.

  “Mae govannen,” she said. “Well-met, my lord, my ladies.”

  “Uh… hi,” Ingolf added. “My lord, my ladies.”

  “My wife, Lady Helissent de Grimmond, my lord, Your Highness,” Maugis said.

  Ingolf knew enough to bow and kiss the ladies’ hands when they were extended to him palm-down, taking them gently in his. They both started to curtsy to Mary; as the new High King’s half sister her status had to be stratospheric, not to mention that her father and mother had been and were respectively the sovereigns of the Bearkillers and her aunt led the Dunedain.

  “Please,” Mary said, with a graceful gesture. “I’m just a commander of Dunedain Rangers for now.”

  Maugis nodded acknowledgment of the courtesy as she exchanged kisses on the cheek with the women of his family, and bowed over her hand.

  “And my lady mother, the dowager Baroness, Lady Roehis de Grimmond.”

  “Originally Jenny Fassbinder,” the older woman said; she was in her sixties but looking very healthy for it, with a worn gentle-looking face but an ironic quirk to her mouth. “A long long time ago.”

  Helissent gave her a look of fond exasperation and gestured towards a buffet laid out on the side table. “We’re not keeping any state today, Lord Vogeler, Lady Mary. The staff are far too busy, I’m sure you understand.”

&
nbsp; “Uff da, of course! There’s a war on, no need to apologize, my lady.”

  “Do help yourself. The others will be here soon.”

  He did, feeling sharp-set as he lifted the anti-fly gauze over the various dishes; he’d done hard work all day yesterday and as far as he could recall dinner had made lunch out of his helmet look like a banquet. There was a ham, and what they called a mutton-ham here, which was a leg of mutton pickled and cured the same way as ordinary ham and surprisingly good; cold fried chicken; some salads; half a dozen types of bread and rolls. And all the fixings, rather like a very good picnic. Mary constructed herself several large sandwiches and filled a plate with the green salad; she had a passion for those.

  To his pleasure there was also a decent potato salad, creamy with well-made mayonnaise and with flecks of peppers and onion, something which he’d had trouble getting on this side of the continent. Few people outside Richland and its neighbors really seemed to understand what could be done with potatoes.

  “Delicious,” he said sincerely, when he was back at the table.

  There was also a crock of beer; only moderately cold, but quite good, well hopped and nutty. He didn’t like the prospect of wine in this heat even if he was sitting in pleasant shade, or this early in the day for that matter. Mary and the Association nobles sipped very slowly at small glasses of it, between draughts of fruit juices.

  “Dang, but this is good!” he said. “You’ve got a good cook!”

  “He was chef in a restaurant in Seattle and my husband Lord Amauri found him in a group of refugees,” Lady Roehis said. “Quite able, but given to temperaments. And he drinks, sometimes. His children are just as good and they don’t, not that way.”

  Maugis rolled his eyes slightly in an agreement that hinted at crises over the years.

  His wife went on: “Aleaume-our eldest son-was complaining about there being no French fries. For the last month, they are all he wants to eat.”

  Mary laughed. “My aunt Astrid’s daughters Hinluin and Fimalen are five, and they were like that for a while, only with them it was noodles. Nothing would do but noodles. And nothing on the noodles but butter. I love them but they drove me and my sister crazy while we were living in Stardell Hall.”

  “You have to be crazy to be a parent,” Lady Roehis said confidently. “But it’s a rewarding insanity, in its way.”

  Everyone chuckled, but Ingolf thought after an instant that it was a rather odd way to talk about it, though it was funny. But strange, as if having kids were a hobby you could choose not to have. As far as he knew it was just something you did, like growing up. Unless you couldn’t, which would be like being born with a clubfoot, a terrible and pitiful calamity.

  He searched for something to say, not wanting to leave the whole burden to Mary; he’d left home at nineteen, and at that age you ignored younger kids just as hard as you could, being falsely convinced you were a man now. His life afterwards hadn’t been very domestic. But he did like flowers.

  “Ah, these are lovely gardens, Lady Helissent.”

  Helissent nodded towards her mother-in-law. “Lady Roehis did those, starting from nothing. This was bare pasture when she arrived in the second Change Year, and thin pasture at that! I wouldn’t have believed it possible until I saw it, and you’re right, it’s lovely. I’m from Barony Skagit originally, myself-my elder brother, Sir Adhemar de Sego, is a knight there, and holds Sego Manor as vassal of House Delby as my father did while he lived. Flowers are easy in Skagit. I was used to things being green naturally.”

  “Including the people,” Maugis said with a smile. “Skagit’s on Puget Sound, my lord Vogeler. Where they think it’s a drought if the moss on their north side dies.”

  “As opposed to places where the rabbits starve to death if they don’t run between blades of grass,” she said tartly, and they both laughed.

  Mary’s hand stole into his beneath the table and squeezed. It’s true, when you’re in love you see it everywhere, he thought.

  “My father picked this land when this county was shared out among the conquerors, and his comrades in arms thought he was crazy,” Maugis said. “My lady wife is quite right; there was no settlement here; we have photographs. Nothing for miles but a few farmhouses, and thirty miles north to the nearest rail spur. But he saw the possibilities, and so did my lady mother.”

  “We wanted to get as far from Norman Arminger as we could,” his mother said suddenly; she’d been looking a little abstracted. “Somewhere he’d never think of visiting. That was worth living in tents for a year, and dugouts for another, and the castle until this place was ready. Anything was worth getting out from under his eye. Court was a cesspit then. Dreadful man, absolutely dreadful. When I knew him in the Society I thought he was just an asshole, as we said then, but after the Change he blossomed into a monster.”

  The other two nobles stiffened in alarm, looking around reflexively. Lady Roehis nibbled on a biscuit and smiled at them, irony and affection mixed.

  “He’s dead,” the older woman said. “He’s long dead. Good riddance. And nothing would delight his evil heart more than knowing that fifteen years later he could still frighten people, ones who’d been children when he died. I think I’ll take a nap before we go up to the keep, dear.”

  “Ah-” Ingolf said, as she nodded politely and left.

  Mary spoke: “Lord Maugis, she’s perfectly right. I say it, and my husband and I are good friends of Princess… High Queen Mathilda. And here’s the others.”

  Ingolf breathed a well-concealed sigh of relief; at least he thought it was, until he caught Mary’s sideways glance and smile.

  “Captain Jaeger,” Maugis said.

  Mark was with the other Richlander, but looking a bit shaken, almost certainly from memories of the fight surfacing. That happened after the insulating rage and fear burned out of your blood. It was worse when it happened at night when you were half asleep.

  And the captured Boise commander. “And Captain Woburn… Rancher Woburn, I believe, too; your father is a Sheriff as well, isn’t he?” Maugis went on. “Please join me and my family for luncheon. As a Montivalan I say, let us put aside the war for a little; as a soldier, I say, welcome, comrade.”

  Woburn looked as if he’d been having those night-thoughts too. It was worst of all when you’d lost, and were lying alone blaming yourself for it.

  Jaeger filled half his plate with the potato salad and took a tankard of the beer; evidently Richland’s foodways bit deep. The Boisean ate as well, but kept silent; he was limping and had a couple of bandages and his left arm was in a sling, and no doubt he was hurting for his men. Ingolf sympathized, but he had business to do. Fortunately it was all stuff the Boisean already knew, or which he wouldn’t at all mind the enemy knowing if by some unlikely chance he got loose.

  “I’m promoting you to Major, Jaeger.”

  That got a blink and a smile, but not a big one; which said that Jaeger’s priorities were good.

  Kohler thought he was sound, and Kohler was a good judge of men.

  “Pick your own replacement for your command and run the name by me. What’s the state of the regiment?”

  Since I’m now going to have to be more hands-on. Dammit, Kohler, I needed you! I’ve got half a dozen jobs to juggle! I only took the Colonel’s post because you needed someone whose father was a Sheriff as a figurehead!

  He’d led them to victory more than once, led from the front, and his latest plan had let them give the enemy a lot more of a world of hurt than they received. That had probably kept the men reasonably happy with him, even though he was busier than he liked with other things half the time. It wasn’t that he couldn’t run a light cavalry regiment; he’d done it before, and pretty well. Time, time…

  Jaeger flicked his eyes aside at Woburn while he chewed hastily; Ingolf nodded very slightly. Let him know how light we got off; can’t hurt, might help.

  “Three more of the wounded died overnight, Colonel,” Jaeger said when he’d swa
llowed.

  He had medium-brown hair and was whippet-thin despite the way he was shoveling in the potato salad and mutton-ham and something very like kielbasa, and tomatoes and onions dressed with oil and vinegar and crusty rolls and butter, and eyeing the pastries. He’d eaten that way every time Ingolf saw him have an opportunity, but he wasn’t surprised at the man’s looks. From what older people said now and then, fatties had been common before the Change even among farmworkers, though that was difficult to imagine. You certainly weren’t going to get that way doing what a horse-soldier did these days.

  “Richter and Smith died of internal bleeding, the doctor tried, but too much was sliced up. They had to stop transfusing them, there were men who might recover who needed it and only so many donors.”

  Ingolf sighed. There were places that could store refrigerated blood for a while, but they were few and far between. Triage was an ugly fact of a fighting-man’s life, but it was a fact. You weren’t doing anyone a favor if you let a man who had some chance to live die just to keep someone who didn’t have a chance going another half hour. There were times when the only favor you could do a comrade was a quick knife-thrust; at least they’d been spared that.

  “The third?” he said.

  Can’t recall anyone else who looked that bad and it’s too early for infection to show up.

  “Sir, Olson got hit on the head hard enough to dent his helmet in, but he was doing fine and then… he just started breathing funny and died, real quiet.”

  Ingolf nodded. Head wounds were tricky that way; there was no way to see inside a head, of course, and nothing much the doctors could have done if you could see inside. They could pick fragments out of a depressed fracture or trepan for pressure on the brain if you were lucky, but that was about it. He’d been knocked out once and had had blinding headaches at intervals for six months afterwards; sometimes men never did entirely recover from a clout to the skull; and sometimes they just died, like Olson.

  Three more dead made ten too many, but fewer than he’d expected. Ten dead altogether and thirty non-walking-wounded of whom only half a dozen would be crippled for life was a light butcher’s bill for an engagement that size, but then winning always made for a lighter payment. The Boiseans had taken five times that. Still, you died just as dead either way.