“Eric,” Rudi went on. “Lady Signe.”
They were fraternal twins, tall and fair and in their early forties, and they ran the Bearkillers as war-leader and head of state, more or less—the post of Bear Lord had been vacant since Mike Havel died at the end of the War of the Eye, fifteen years and a bit previously. Signe had never liked Rudi overmuch…but they respected each other, and he did like her son and heir, Mike Jr. Right now they were both in browned-steel armor, suits of plate that differed only in detail from Association styles, with the snarling crimson bear’s-head of the Outfit on their chests.
Mike was standing in the rear as befitted a junior, and in mail and arm-guards because he was still growing, but he had the mark of the A-List between his yellow brows, the Bearkiller elite, granted for his deeds south of the Columbia when the enemy invaded the lands of the CORA—the Central Oregon Rancher’s Association. That land had been overrun, but the dwellers and the Clan and the Bearkillers had charged a stiff entry-fee and guerrillas were still collecting rent. Rudi went on:
“They’ll try to push you away from the river. The other thing they’ll try to do is tie up our reserves here. Take us by the throat with their left hand, so to speak, so they’ll be free to punch with their right.”
Eric grunted again, looking at the map. “So you’ll want us to hold without reinforcements.”
Rudi nodded. “It’s sorry I am, but that’s so. They’ve more light horse than we do by a wide margin, and out on the north where there’s room to move that will be crucial. I must have the men there to deal with that. Time…you have to buy me time. Remember, we win if we don’t lose. They lose if they don’t win.”
“Point taken.” Thoughtfully: “I’ll put Arvid Sarian and his boys in to form our junction with the McClintocks. His lot are hairy enough too.”
“And I’ll leave the Degania Dalet contingent behind you. Use them if your hairy men fail, or at need elsewhere; but that’s all I can spare.”
“Good. They’re reliable. And we’ll need them before the day’s out.”
Signe traced the twisting south-to-north line and the blocks marking the patched-together coalition that was the host of the High King of Montival.
“And the Protectorate’s knights?” she said, tapping the figures for the reserve behind the line.
“I’m going to shift some of the men-at-arms about and take a few whacks to keep the enemy guessing where the main weight will fall, draw as many of their light horse as I can on to the Clan’s archers—they’re still not used to foot soldiers who can outshoot them—and then concentrate the Association’s lancers for the decisive point. I’ll want the most of them fresh for that, too, where the place is right and the time ripened.”
“For the Schwerpunkt,” Eric said.
Rudi nodded; he’d learned that term from Sir Nigel Loring, his stepfather, who’d been a trained officer well before the Change over in Britain, where he’d attended an ancient warrior’s school called Sandhurst. It summed the concept up more economically than point of main effort, which was the alternative.
“I’d be happier if I knew where the Sword of the Prophet was, for that would be the target I’d prefer,” he said.
That was the elite force of the Church Universal and Triumphant, better than eight thousand men according to the latest estimates, superbly trained from their earliest years and fanatically dedicated. The others glanced at the Sword of the Lady. Rudi shook his head.
“Sethaz is here. He can’t see me or know my mind…or I him, nor his. Not beyond the usual way of deduction from a man’s deeds. So it’s mortal minds and eyes and swords that will settle things, and all the better for it.”
He turned to Frederick Thurston. “And you, Fred—here.”
His finger stabbed down on the map. Fred winced. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to…”
“Fight your countrymen, yes. That’s precisely the point. I think things have come ripe right now in that regard as well.”
Fred rubbed his shaven chin. His crested helmet was under one arm, and he looked quite dashing in the hoop-armor and scarlet cloak, with the loose black curls of his hair moving slightly in the breeze.
“I won’t be able to talk anyone into actually switching sides in the middle of a fight,” he warned. “We don’t think that way in Boise. Those who fight are going to give it everything they can.”
Rudi grinned. “I know. But just not fighting at all…eh, maybe that’s possible?”
Fred brightened. “A sit-down strike? Now, that might be possible, you’re right. As long as all they see in front of them is their own people. We know a lot of them are very, very unhappy about the situation. If they don’t get started, they won’t have to stop.”
He looked at the prisoner the Dúnedain had brought. “Centurion Woburn?”
The man nodded. “Centurion David Woburn, Sixteenth Battalion, AE12774,” he rattled off, conspicuously not coming to attention or saluting, and the battalion number was on his gear in any case.
“And you’re a man caught between two fires.” Frederick Thurston smiled grimly. “Either my brother is lying, or I am. I don’t expect you to take my word for it. I’ve someone here you should meet, though,” he said.
Then slightly louder: “Captain Woburn! Front and center!”
Rudi cut in as a man pushed through from the rear where he’d been standing with Fred’s staff and subordinates:
“Just to make one thing clear, Centurion Woburn; if you choose, you can sit out this war as a prisoner in safety and comfort. And when we’ve won, you can go home free as a bird and live just as you please and tend to your crops and cattle; I understand you’ve a wife and children back home on the Camas Prairie. If we were to lose, however…”
The prisoner winced; he had to have some notion of what his father had been doing in clandestine opposition to Martin’s regime, and it would get back that his brother had openly gone over to Frederick. Martin Thurston had never been the type to tolerate waverers, and since he’d met the Prophet eighteen months ago, he’d become utterly merciless.
Rudi’s nod was not without sympathy, but not overflowing with it either; too much rode on this war to be excessively tender of any one man’s feelings.
That’s the problem with punishing any sign of wavering harshly, he thought. Once a man or his kin have wavered at all, it’s in for a penny, in for a pound and he must see your head nailed over the door of his hall, because neither he nor his can be safe while you live and have power. Those who despise mercy are as much fools as those who can’t withhold it at need. More, for mercy can be a weapon as real as a war hammer to the head.
A man came forward and saluted Frederick, with the same lean, brown-haired, high-cheeked look as the prisoner, tanned and weathered like any outdoorsman but no more than a few years past twenty. He was in Boise light-cavalry gear, mail shirt and Fritz helmet under his arm, a curved saber at his belt and quiver over his back.
“Sir?” he said to Frederick.
Then he saw who was standing near. “Dave! Christ, they caught you too!” he blurted to his elder brother.
“Looks like you landed on your feet, Jack.”
“It was a Goddamned stroke of luck, is what it was,” Jack said; then he looked over at the Dúnedain party. “I see you met Mary Vogeler. She and her husband…now there’s a man who knows his cavalry work!…and a bunch of wild Indians and Baron Tucannon and his menie mouse-trapped my command. Baited it with a flock of sheep, of all things.”
The brothers stood awkwardly for a moment, then embraced even more clumsily and stood back, looking at each other more carefully. Dave went on in a more normal tone:
“Dangled sheep in front of you, hey? What’s the difference between a cavalryman and an ordinary sheep-stealing rustler?”
His brother grinned as he completed the joke: “Same as the difference between bandits and tax-collectors: official permission. Yeah, it was dumb, even if the logistics were shit and we were hungry. But it got us…m
e…where we could find out for sure what’s really going on.”
His face went bleak. “I lost some good men. But not as many as staying in the campaign would have, and…We need to talk, Dave. I’ve talked to Fred’s mother and sisters…and to Juliet.”
“The President’s wife?”
“Martin Thurston’s wife. After she and the…Fred’s mother…came and gave us a talk, nine-tenths of my men came over in a body. And the rest were mostly just sick of the whole thing and wanted to sit it out somewhere nobody was sending arrows and roundshot their way. We really need to talk.”
“Ok…Jack.”
Jack looked at his commander, who nodded and jerked his head slightly aside. They drew off together. Rudi nodded to the younger Thurston himself.
“Sure, and that was well done, Fred. You’re learning. Not least when to speak and when to leave it to others.”
“Got the basics from Dad and the details from you, Rudi,” Frederick Thurston said as he smiled whitely, but it was a slightly grim expression for all that. “It’s like a snowball running downhill in winter now. And every one I talk over…”
“…is one we don’t have to kill. That’s what war is about, sure and it is, for those who don’t love it because it’s the most rapid and efficient way of producing a great whacking heap of corpses. It’s a way of getting people to do what you want, and not the most economical when there’s an alternative.”
“And every one we talk around is another who can fight the Prophet’s men later. We’re not going to talk many of them around.”
“Arra, I fear you have the right of that, not until we’ve hit them hard enough to break the hold he has on their hearts. Though I have my hopes for the long run.”
Dave Woburn must have been thinking hard for some time; the conversation was brief. He clapped his brother on the shoulder and strode briskly over to Fred.
“Sir, Centurion Woburn reporting for duty,” he said, coming to attention and saluting.
“Right,” Fred said with a nod, returning the gesture. “First thing, let’s shed the pseudo-Roman crap; you’re a major. My dad drew on that stuff because it was useful, not because he was some obsessive with a man-crush on Julius Caesar.”
Unlike Fred’s elder brother, Rudi thought, silent.
“Next, I’m operating under the High King’s orders here. You do understand that?”
The young officer’s face grew a little grimmer. “Yes, sir, General Thurston.”
“Good. We’re going to have a referendum on joining the High Kingdom after the war…right after the war, not ‘when circumstances permit’ which is another way of saying ‘Fifth of Never.’”
Woburn’s eyes flicked to Rudi. He nodded, his hand on the hilt of the Sword.
“That has my public oath,” he said, meeting the blue eyes of the Rancher’s son. “I’m confident the result will be yes, which would be best for the peace and prosperity of all Montival; but I’ll abide the result, come what may. I’ve no desire to bring any land or folk into the High Kingdom against their wish and will. Save for the CUT territories, and that’s a matter of common sense and necessity. Just for your information, what’s left of Deseret wants to join us, as well.”
“I’ve never heard that your word isn’t good,” Woburn said after a moment. Then, after another pause: “Your Majesty.”
Rudi smiled, a little bleakly. “And you may have heard that no man can deceive me with effect while I hold the Sword of the Lady. Which, by the Lady and the Hornéd Lord who is Her consort, is nothing less than the truth. If you find that alarming…well, so do I. Not that either of our opinions matters a great deal.”
Woburn swallowed. “I wasn’t planning on lying, Your Majesty.”
“No, you weren’t. I know.”
And for me falsehood now feels like…very much like biting down on a piece of metal foil with your back teeth. Or a smell. I was always fairly good at reading men’s faces, but no more than that. Now it’s like a banner waving in the wind, if I concentrate. Lord and Lady witness, when this war is over I will hang the Sword on the wall and take it down only at direst need, making a sacrifice of Power to Justice, as Jason did of Medusa’s head. Too much truth can destroy you, or destroy your capacity to live among men as one of the human-kind.
“Good man,” Fred said to the elder Woburn brother. “But first we have to win the war. Which means you’re going to debrief, Major, and do so fully.”
“Yes, sir.”
He moved over to the map table, put his hand on the markers for the Boisean forces and rearranged several.
“You had it mostly right. Here’s the order of battle as far as I know it, and how the brigades are going to deploy—”
Rudi’s eyes went north and east. The battle would be starting by now, the fringes of two vast hosts intent on violence meeting and clashing where they met, and battle was chaos where a slipped horseshoe or a man blinking as sunlight struck his eyes could change the fate of kingdoms. But he could feel factors shifting now, shifting a little in his favor.
Favor bought with blood, he thought. So, Ard Rí, let’s be about the work of the day.
He signed, and the attendants put away the markers and packed up the map table. Before they left he took Alleyne Loring aside for a moment.
“Lord Alleyne,” he said in Edhellen. “Rescuing Fred’s mother and sisters was a worthy deed, and it’s a help to us their testimony has been. But rescuing Juliet Thurston, and the manner in which it was done…that’s helped us more still, even though it was no part of your plan in the beginning.”
“Plans don’t survive contact with the enemy.”
“Call it a lucky chance, then, amid so much ill-luck.”
“If chance you call it,” Alleyne said with the ghost of a smile.
Rudi nodded. “Not because Juliet’s beloved as they are, but because being who and what she is her word carries extra weight about Martin Thurston’s doings, and because his trying to kill her to silence her doubles that credibility, the which too many saw to hush up. He—”
He inclined his head to indicate where Dave Woburn was being introduced to his new comrades, then put a hand on the older man’s shoulder for a moment.
“—is not the first fighting-man who’s been brought to our side from Boise by the tale of it, and I’m thinkin’ he won’t be the last either, in this war. The battle today may turn on that, and with it our homes and families; and for a certainty, there will be many on our side walking the ridge of the world come sundown who’d be lying stark and dead save for what you and your lady did that day. I won’t presume to tell you how much comfort to take from that, but for what it’s worth, there it is.”
Alleyne took a long breath. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” he said. “Astrid…Astrid knew what she was doing and why. And I knew what might happen, every time we went on an operation together.”
He hesitated. “When she…her last words…”
“My sister told me,” Rudi said. “Like silver glass…green shores…the gulls…a white tower…home, home, at last…”
The older man swallowed painfully. “I always thought…it was a pardonable eccentricity? The, ah, interpretation of the Histories. It gave people comfort and meaning in their lives, and so I went along with it. But…”
Then he shook his head. “No. That’s being too gentle. I thought it was a functional madness. It didn’t interfere with the rest of our lives, and it did no harm…did good, rather. People need stories to live by, and why not those? Something like the Rangers was essential, Astrid had already set the…the process in motion, it was too late to use a different set of myths. And the Histories were no more fictional than the Bible, allowing for the difference in age. But…”
Rudi looked him in the eye. “Now you’re wondering if there could really be anything to it,” he said.
A nod, and Rudi went on: “My friend, after Nantucket, I think there actually may be something to it; to that, and to many another vision folk have had; to the Bible of
the Christians, for that matter, as well.”
“All at once?”
Rudi shrugged ruefully: “Why would you expect to understand all of a God’s mind, save that part of themselves they make apparent to us? Any more than a dog can understand a man…though he understands the food, and the warm spot by the fire, and the hand of love upon the head, and the joy of a day’s hunt together.”
“Not a flattering comparison.”
“Now with that I don’t agree; there are few men so good as a good dog, for such will neither lie nor will they break faith. And I’ve always believed we pass from here to a place of rest and beauty where we heal ourselves and then return. What your lady saw…I don’t understand it, and I’m not going to pretend I do. But this I do believe; that your lady saw exactly what she thought she did, and that she is home indeed this very moment, the home for which she longed all her life. And that she is waiting for you when you’ve completed the tasks duty and love lay on you here.”
“I…Thank you. Thank you very much.”
He took a deep breath. “And now there’s a bloody great job of work to do, Your Majesty.”
“That there is. I want you and your Rangers on the northern flank now, which will mean some swift riding.”
“We’ll be there, Your Majesty.” More softly: “And someday…it would be very interesting to see. Very interesting indeed.”
“And now we’ve a battle to fight,” Rudi said. He shook his head. “Are fighting now, the opening steps.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change Page 13