“Orrey! What’s wrong!”
Heuradys was on one knee to her right, and Reiko was to her left. She wiped one gauntlet against her lips, heedless of the rough hardness.
“He made me see the whole world of things through his eyes. Like being trapped in a maggot . . . being a maggot . . . in a giant corpse, eating and shitting and eating through it . . . the whole universe like that, forever, everything you ever touched or knew, all maggots and shit . . .”
She retched again, dry-heaving, and brought the crystal pommel of the Sword to her forehead.
“Oh, Brigit the Bright have mercy on Your child . . . Mother-of-All . . .”
Coolness spread through her mind; enough that she could gasp a deep breath, spit again, rinse her mouth with the canteen thrust into it, use the Sword to lever herself upright.
Droyn was limping over to the last intact catapult, a grim expression on his face and the thermite warhead he’d brought along in his hand.
“No. Leave the last, it’ll make a demonstration tomorrow. Now let’s get out of here.”
Some of the frantic worry on Heuradys’ face abated; she brought up a captured horse, from the scores milling around. Reiko squeezed her shoulder and stepped back. Not far away Diarmuid was flapping his plaid in the face of a dozen of them, turning them back as they tried to break loose. The Japanese were mounting, and some of her other followers. And bodies were being slung over some of the captured animals.
“Mount, everyone! Count your numbers and make sure nobody’s left, dead or alive!” she shouted. “The rest are ready to cover our retreat. We’ve done what we came for!”
• • •
Deor Wid-ferende gasped. “They are coming!”
Thora pushed a body off the parapet of the watchtower with her boot and turned and sat as it thumped down onto the pavement below, her face shadowed under the brim of the helmet. The smells of blood and death lay heavy in the little fortlet atop the old freeway.
“They are?”
“Something . . . broke. As when the drymann died at the Bay. The Princess is coming.”
A wry smile. “I’ll have to get the story from eyewitnesses, this time.”
A curse and a heavy tread, and Kwame Curtis came limping up. He hadn’t done much fighting with his own hands, but a grown son and a grandson right by him had, and the old man had been effective at getting his folk into the fight, which was a stand-up one in a style they rarely used. He looked around in the flickering light of the single torch on a pole still burning.
“I hope this was worth it,” he said grimly. “We took a lot of losses, considering how many people we have in all.”
Deor bowed. “You will find the Princess delivers on her promises, Captain,” he said.
Thora nodded without getting up, unscrewing the cap of her canteen; it was wine cut one-to-three with water, which did duty for sterilization and at least attenuated the local plonk. Her tissues soaked it up greedily, and she could almost feel it spreading out through her body. She handed it to Kwame, and he swigged.
“If they end your war and free your people from this threat, are the losses worth it?” she asked him, and got a steady nod. “Then consider it blood well spent, Captain. Every one of us must dree his wyrd, be it what it may, well or badly. I’ve seen lives spilled to much less purpose—some king’s vanity, some lord’s greed, a mob’s panic or hate, grudges both sides can’t leave alone like an itching scab.”
Kwame sighed and sheathed his sword. “Point.” He cocked an eye at both of them. “If the Lancers take their lesson. I’ll admit the Valley must have lost eight for our one, at least.”
Thora looked off northward. “If they try coming at us after this we’ll break them,” she said flatly. “Now we have catapults and they don’t. And if we go the other way, they won’t be able to stop us. Hopefully they’ll see that.”
Deor was looking in that direction; the fires and clamor were far enough away that they could seem tiny and very distant.
“As a performer—” he began, and Kwame snorted.
“I saw you in the storming party,” he said.
“Well, I’m a singer of heroes,” Deor said with a tired grin. “I have to go where they congregate, not so? But a scop is what I am at seventh and last, and as a performer, I can tell you that House Artos are no mean force when it comes to the . . . part of kingship that’s also a performance. And that may matter as much tomorrow as weight of metal.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY OF TOPANGA
(FORMERLY TOPANGA CANYON)
CROWN PROVINCE OF WESTRIA
(FORMERLY CALIFORNIA)
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
JULY/FUMIZUKI 29TH
CHANGE YEAR 46/SHOHEI 1/2044 AD
“My ship, I think she feels naked without the catapults,” the captain of the Virgen de las Esmeraldas muttered to himself. “Your Highness,” he added quickly.
Órlaith grinned beneath the hand she was holding to her brow under the Scots bonnet with its plume of Golden Eagle feathers in the clasp. The shade of it was welcome on this bright hot morning, but for form’s sake she was wearing a green Montrose jacket as well, with lace at cuffs and throat and a double row of silver buttons, and a knotwork broach of silver, gold and turquoise to hold her plaid at her shoulder.
Heuradys was in full plate, which would be much less comfortable in the sun that was baking up off the pale weathered asphalt of the roadway, and from the Ventura Freeway behind them . . . but which also made a statement. Nobody else here had anything like it; what the Chatsworth Lancers wore was a feeble third-best, and the militia were even worse-off.
“Esteemed sir, I doubt she feels nearly as naked as the people the catapults are keeping under their eyes,” she said to the Esmeraldan captain.
She spoke in español, which she’d known fluently since she first bore the Sword, and found herself slipping into the rather pronounced dialect of that widespread tongue that was his native speech—aguetatar for watch over, for instance, and dropping the final s sound on a lot of words. It was very different from the choppy norteño version still spoken by some families and districts in Montival. He gave her a sharp glance when she slid into his own forms of speech; Feldman had told her there were no flies on Capitán Antonio de Mendoza y Pacheco, and she was inclined to agree.
He wasn’t exactly naked, either, however his ship felt; besides a well-made back-and-breast of steel inlaid around the neck with gold tracery he wore a high-combed morion helmet, arm-guards, and an outfit of close-cut beige cotton twill beneath it all, as practical-looking as possible if you were going to wear steel armor in hot weather, which was the only type his homeland’s climate had. His left hand rested on the complex hilt of a long narrow sword; that and a foot-long poignard hung at a belt of tooled leather worked with gold studs, and he had a small round shield of engraved steel slung over his shoulders.
Several of his ship’s officers had plainer versions of the same gear, and sometimes half-pikes, apparently how gentlemen or people with aspirations in that direction in the Kingdom of Esmeraldas dressed for war. Their fifty or so crewmen were a good deal wilder-looking; most had helmets, some had one form or another of light torso-armor, and a few wore nothing but rag loincloths. All had machete-swords, knives . . . often quite a few knives . . . and either crossbows or sixteen-foot boarding pikes. Their lean muscular dark bodies shone with sweat from their jog up the Canyon, and their hard scarred faces looked ready for anything.
Feldman’s crew from the Tarshish Queen were similarly armed, though they looked more uniform because all of them had the same brigandines of reinforced walrus hide, and they had a businesslike stolidity rather than the wolfish, raffish look of the southerners. Her men-at-arms and crossbowmen stood between them, and the Mackenzies with their longbows in thei
r arms; the McClintocks were wildest of all, with their tattoos and shaggy hair, and the Japanese were discreetly in the background for this internal Montivallan business. The Topangans were a rather shapeless mob, and a bit noisy, but obviously ready for action if they must, their metaphorical tails up with the other night’s success.
And hopefully the other side’s depressed in equal measure. There are few here with the discipline to take ups and downs in stride.
Best of all were the five catapults on improvised field mounts resting across the roadway in front of them, borrowed from the Esmeraldan ship. They were rather old-fashioned by Montivallan standards, but solidly made and well-maintained; nobody would enjoy getting in the way of round shot or bolts from them—that was certain.
“You will pardon me, Don Antonio,” she said, and they parted with bows and more mutual expressions of esteem. “But again, many thanks.”
“Friendly sort, and polite,” she said to Heuradys as they walked away.
Her knight looked over her shoulder for a moment. “He’d like to be a lot more friendly, or I miss my guess,” she said dryly. “Also considering where his eyes are directed right now.”
“Mmmm,” Órlaith said in agreement.
The man wasn’t bad-looking at all, and she had an impression of a forceful but subtle personality, though her thoughts were on other things right now, of course.
“Can’t blame him, really,” she said with a chuckle. “Where would he be seeing two warrior maids as fair as us? Or see two more shapely arses? Enough to overwhelm any man, so it is; or any who likes women, at least.”
“I think we terrified him nearly as much,” Heuradys said slyly. “I get the impression the girls are more . . . demure where he comes from.”
“Like the Association territories, only worse,” Órlaith agreed.
“Oh, I don’t know about that. You don’t know what terrifying is until you’ve seen a council of Countesses settling things over tea before the House of Peers meets to go through the motions.”
“I have, that.”
“No, you haven’t,” Heuradys said with conviction. “You’re the Princess, I’m just the other daughter of a baron and they talk in front of me in ways they wouldn’t with you. Sometimes so I’ll tell you.”
They halted where Droyn sat his horse—much like a northern-bred courser, and spoils of the raid—bearing the banner of Montival on a lance. He was in full plate too, though he had his helm slung at his saddlebow and wore a chaperon hat instead, his face like carved oak and eyes unreadable behind his treasured heirloom Ray-Bans.
The Chatsworth array was drawn up around a thousand yards farther north, with their single solitary remaining working catapult standing in lonely state in their front rank. They had about a hundred and twenty heavy horse; and about ten times that of foot, mostly looking like militia and not too different from their Topangan equivalents, save that more of them bore actual pikes rather than just spears.
“I’m not very impressed with those pikemen,” Órlaith said. “Even just standing there.”
“Yup, not enough drill,” Heuradys said.
Pikes were very effective for a range of specialized military tasks, but they had to be used in unison, in mass, and the troops carrying them had to be able to maneuver quickly over rough ground and change direction without getting their long weapons tangled. All of that required a lot of training; not as much as a man-at-arms or even a good archer, but a lot, much more than a crossbow required. You could tell immediately when you looked at a pike regiment from say Corvallis, or one of the Free Cities of the Yakima League, that they really knew what they were doing. Citizens there had to practice from their teens at muster-days and at an encampment of a few weeks in the slack seasons of each year. Most of them might not be able to do much else of a military nature but drill with pikes, but they could do that. These . . . were not so much.
A herald rode out from the . . . not-necessarily-enemy . . . ranks and halted about halfway between them. At her nod Sir Droyn advanced to meet him, giving no sign of how the knee he’d wrenched when he landed his hang glider was bothering him, which was precisely what she’d have expected. After a moment of talking, the northern knight shook his head and pointed to her and turned his horse.
And one reason I’m giving Droyn this duty is that we’ll have to leave him behind when we cross the mountains, which will cut him to the heart. Best make a public show of trust and honor first.
“They wanted to meet midway?” Órlaith said when he returned, scowling.
“Just as you said they would, Your Highness,” Droyn said. “The arrogance of this little backwoods chieftain! I made it plain they would be coming to you—diplomatically, as you instructed.”
Órlaith smiled. “Make allowances, Sir Droyn. These people have never left their homes. As far as Mark Delgado is concerned he’s a king, more or less, and the son and brother of kings.”
Sir Droyn snorted. His father’s County could have crushed everyone in this part of the world in a week or two, and not worked up much of a sweat doing it. That was precisely the point, of course; this part of the world was isolated, and didn’t have any basis of comparison . . . until now.
After a little while there was a churning in the Chatsworth ranks, and two figures rode out with an escort of half-a-dozen lancers behind them. Droyn bristled a little. He’d probably have preferred they come barefoot and holding out their hands like supplicants. Or possibly barefoot, holding out their hands with symbolic nooses around their necks; the way a beaten foe had to her maternal grandfather, if they knew what was good for them.
“Easy, Sir Droyn, easy,” she said, and chuckled. “That’s what my father always said—let them up easy if you can after you’ve knocked them down. He also said that you should kill a man or make him a friend; there’s not much use in falling between the stools.”
Though if you could get a man to consistently act as if he was friendly, that would do; not least because if he did it long enough it became a habit. Something her mother had told her a long time ago about that came back; that most people found acting one way and thinking another painful, and eventually if they couldn’t act the way they thought they’d start thinking the way they acted instead.
Some people aren’t that way, and they’re dangerous, she’d added. The like my mother had hung unspoken between them for an instant.
Nonni Sandra had still been alive then. As Lady Regent and probably more discreetly later as Queen Mother she’d always been polite and amiable, right until quiet untraceable ruin fell on someone like an anvil from a clear blue sky.
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain, she thought. And knowing my Nonni, she may well have been thinking that while she did it.
Mark Delgado and his wife Winifred drew rein and dismounted; their horses were good-looking even by northern standards, and their Western-style saddles were tooled leather studded with silver. He was around fifty, give or take, and she a decade younger; both of moderate height, he stocky-muscular and she trim, and both dressed in pre-Change blue jeans, a treasured rarity these days even where salvaging was good. Only those packed in sealed plastic and away from light, heat and water stood much chance of being in good condition and even those didn’t last long. There were mills in Corvallis and Boise that could make an acceptable substitute, and handloom workers tried elsewhere, but cotton of any sort was still very pricey.
Their heeled boots were new-made, and he wore a modern leather jacket over a checked shirt, with tasseled fringes down the seams and a black Stetson with silver conchos around the band. You could see where a sword-belt usually went around his waist, but he wasn’t wearing it right now, which was smart. She had a broader-brimmed hat with turquoise as well as silver, and a long-sleeved, thigh-length blouse of embroidered cotton. His face was square, olive naturally and darkly tanned, and with bowl-cut hair of very dark brown; clean-shaven but
with a hint of thick stubble, the sort of man who had to shave twice a day. His wife had long brown plaits caught with jeweled clasps, and a narrow pointed-nosed clever face and unreadable blue eyes.
Mark’s eyes went over her gear and Heuradys’ and Droyn’s, then over the ranks of troops behind her, lingering on the catapults; then they snapped back to Heuradys when she moved slightly to put herself forward and to one side, and you could see him recalculating something on a more personal level. His wife’s gaze settled on Órlaith’s face instead, after a dart to Heuradys. You could see thought moving there, like goldfish beneath the surface of an ornamental pool, but her face was politely blank.
Órlaith held up a hand before they could start. “Welcome, Lord Mark, Lady Winifred of House Delgado.”
She was entitling them the way she would Associates of rank, which was the closest equivalent she could think of. Both of them were very slightly taken aback, and then Mark Delgado puffed up a bit at the respectful terminology. Winifred simply noted it with a dip of her head, acknowledging that it meant the negotiations would be amicable . . . at least to start with.
“I am Crown Princess Órlaith Arminger Mackenzie, heir of House Artos and the High Kingdom of Montival. Just as a formality, it’s customary in Montival to touch the hilt of the Sword of the Lady when greeting the Crown Princess or the High King or Queen.”
The Desert and the Blade Page 58