A Meeting At Corvallis

by S. M. Stirling

  There were three men with the column not in the new … well, Alleyne had called it the national costume. Alleyne himself was in his suit of green-enameled plate armor, with his visor up but the heater-shaped shield with its five roses on a silver background on his left arm, and a long lance in his right, the butt resting on a ring welded to his right stirrup-iron. John Hordle wore a green mail shirt, and an open-faced sallet helmet pushed up until it rested on the back of his head, with his bow and long sword worn crosswise across his back; the cob he rode had a goodly share of Percheron in it, which was only fair considering that he weighed more than Alleyne did riding armored cap-a-pie in steel.

  Sir Jason Mortimer was in the pants and quilted gambeson he'd worn under his armor, complete with old bloodstains, and cuffs that ran through a ring on the pommel of his saddle securing his right hand; he looked frowsy and disheveled, even apart from the way his shield-arm was in a sling. Nobody had hurt him, and his wounded shoulder had been competently tended, but they hadn't been all that considerate either; he'd spent Yule locked up in a storage shed near Mithrilwood Lodge, with a lump of salt pork, waybread, water and a bucket for his necessities.

  They'd made him empty the bucket himself, too.

  "Ah … Lady Astrid … "

  The militia lieutenant was floundering, but she knew who she was talking to. There weren't many in the Valley who'd fail to recognize Astrid and Eilir together. Then she visibly pulled herself together, shifting her glaive into the crook of her left arm.

  "What's the purpose of your visit to Corvallis, Lady Astrid?" she said politely. "And who are those with you?"

  "We come to speak the truth before the people and Faculty Senate; what other business we have in Corvallis is our own. And those with me are the Ohtar and Roquen of the Dunedain Rangers," Astrid said loftily.

  "Ah … "

  Well, when you're with Astrid, things are never dull, Eilir thought, delighted. Then she signed to Little John: Have pity on the nice lady with the glaive, excessively biggish boyfriend, and translate. I doubt she knows Sign or Sindarin.

  "That's squires and knights," the big man said in his bass voice. "I don't suppose you speak Elvish, ma'am?" he added, his little brown-amber eyes twinkling.

  "Ah, where were you planning on staying?" the militiawoman said, blinking again. "You understand, such an, ummm, imposing force—"

  All the riders had helms and some sort of body armor besides their swords and bows; four carried long horsemen's lances as well.

  "We're staying with Master William Hatfield," Astrid replied, pulling a folded letter from her saddlebag and handing it down. "Or at least leaving our horses and gear with him; he stands surety for us. And our prisoner."

  "Ummm," the lieutenant said, a variation on her previous nonverbal placeholder as she read. The You can't keep prisoners in Corvallis! she obviously wanted to say died silent.

  "Errrr … I know Bill Hatfield. OK, I suppose … Who is this man?"

  Alleyne cut in. "He's Sir Jason Mortimer, from the Protectorate. He won't be hurt on Corvallan soil," he said. "Or at all, really. We captured him in company with bandits; leading bandits on a raid, in fact."

  "You're going to accuse him before a court, or the Faculty Senate?" Chen said sharply.

  "We're going to show him to the Senate, yes," Alleyne replied.

  Everyone looked a little gloomy at that. Sir Jason had resolutely refused to cooperate, and the Dunedain didn't go in for the toenails-and-burning-splints forms of persuasion. Which wouldn't work here anyway. If he kept his mouth shut, there went most of the public-relations effect of capturing him in the first place.

  Maybe we should just have chopped his head off anyway, Eilir thought. Though of course …

  "We're also going to arrange his, you might say, repatriation with the Association's consul here," Alleyne went on.

  Meaning we're going to squeeze him until his eyes pop out, Eilir thought happily.

  Running an embryo nation had turned out to be unexpectedly expensive, with endless things they needed to get; and besides, by rights they should have whacked the man's head off with the rest, who were only his tools after all.

  Besides, the way the Association works, Liu's widow will have to cough up to help him.

  In the end it would all come out of the people who worked Mortimer's lands, but he probably took as much as he could from them anyway. The payments on the ransom would have to be subtracted from his own income, unless he wanted his peasants to die, revolt or run away in despair. Bad as they were, the Protectorate's nobles had learned that you couldn't skin the sheep if you wanted to shear it next year, and there was more work than hands to do it everywhere these days.

  The rest of the formalities took only a few minutes, not much longer than required to peace-bond their swords. Few of the Rangers had visited Corvallis before; they stared about them in wonder as they crossed the northernmost bridge. Fog covered the water, but the current made odd swirling patterns in it, and Celebroch moved uneasily under her, feeling the toning of the swift water against the pilings through her hooves. Barges and boats and booms of logs for timber moved beneath, dim and half-seen; a few sported tubby masts and gaff sails, and more were tied up along the waterfront. Eilir ran a soothing hand down her mount's neck, and again when they passed through the inner gate and the city wall and the Arab mare shied at the bustle of the crowded street.

  The Stone Houses, Astrid signed. Fallen from their former greatness, aren't they?

  Eilir looked at her, slightly alarmed; it was possible—not likely, but possible—that her anamchara would decide that this decayed city needed a princess or two to lead it back to greatness, and you didn't need three guesses to know who'd be in that role. And she just might pull it off … she'd brought off crazy schemes before. Perhaps she could have brought off the ones Eilir had talked her out of, as well.

  Or maybe they'd just have gotten us all killed, Eilir thought, searching for inspiration. Help!

  "Little do they know our labors in the distant wilds, that keep them safe,'' Alleyne said before she could sign, and Astrid nodded.

  Phew! Eilir thought. She was always one for going off on tangents, but it was all a lot less scary and more fun when we were younger and less powerful.

  Their destination was just right of the gate to which the bridge led, tucked into the northeastern corner of the city wall and separated from it only by the paved strip around the base, the pomeramium kept clear for military use. Parts of the complex looked like they had been something on the order of a car dealership before the Change, and more timber-frame buildings had been run up on a parking lot to add space; a house had been tacked on as well, probably moved from somewhere outside the walls and rebuilt here.

  A group of men waited under a sign that read "Hatfield & Hatfield." Will Hatfield was a wiry man in his forties; he smiled broadly and waved as the Dunedain column drew up before his complex of warehouses, stables and workshops.

  "All's ready," he said; his eyes narrowed as they saw the captive knight. "Including a nice tight room for your little pigeon there. Harry, Dave, see he's stowed away."

  Eilir unlocked the handcuffs. Two tough-looking young men in rough clothes helped Sir Jason Mortimer off his horse, and then frog-marched him away. They didn't carry weapons, strictly speaking—their belt knives had blades under ten inches long. That was enough, and they also had ax handles thonged to their right wrists. The city bylaws said nothing about carrying a stick.

  Hatfield was a wholesale merchant who dealt largely in hides and leather, a growing business as the pre-Change plastic equivalents finally wore out, with a sideline in tallow and wool and hemp and other goods. The actual tanning was done outside the walls, but the big shadowy spaces of his warehouse were still pungent with the smell of leather, the greasy lanolin scent of the wool, and the fatty-beefy smell of tallow, with beeswax and horses and half a dozen other goods beneath. Eilir took a deep breath; it was the smell of faraway places and happenings.

/>   I wouldn't like to live in a city, she signed to Hordle. But it's nice to visit once in a while.

  The woods can get quiet, he replied, then winked. Although there are ways to make them lively, eh?

  Hatfield handed Astrid a key to the padlocks that secured the space he'd turned over to the Dunedain. He waved aside her thanks. "You saved my life that day over in the mountains," he said. "Not to mention a wagon train full of goods I couldn't afford to lose."

  Astrid smiled with regal courtesy, and greeted his family likewise; his wife was a competent-looking person with cropped black hair and ink-stained fingers, with a six-year-old girl clutching at her leg and peering out shyly from behind it. His son was just into his teens, and he looked at the Dunedain with awe.

  "Mae govannen sinome—" he began, and stumbled through a clumsy greeting in Sindarin.

  From the stiff way he shaped the words he'd learned strictly from books; the Ranger version had become more like a living tongue, and they'd had to make up a good deal to fill in the irritating gaps—words for "sexual intercourse" and "to pee," for instance.

  Astrid's face blossomed into a smile, and Eilir knew wryly that she'd made another slave for life; she answered in the same language, then shifted into English:

  "I know your father to be a brave man and a good friend," she said to the boy. "It's good to know his son is a scholar of the ancient tongues as well!"

  Much of the covered space was loose-boxes for horses, and there was enough room for their mounts and a little to spare. Hatfield and his staff helped with easy competence, and his son practically flew around running errands, but the Dunedain saw to their own horses. Her Celebroch and Astrid's Asfaloth went into a stall on their own; they got along well, being sisters themselves, dappled-gray and beautiful, accepting the wedges of dried apple the two women fed them as only their due after the currying and rubdown.

  Got that youngster under your spell, Alleyne signed a few minutes later, his blue eyes laughing, as they walked out into the street. And really, you know, the languages aren't all that ancient.

  He might make a Ranger, someday, Astrid replied. Or at least a Dunedain friend. And who's to say they're not really ancient? Are dragons and rings of power any stranger than the Change?

  She turned to the assembled Rangers. "All right, how many of you know how to handle money? Really, I mean."

  About a third raised their hands, some uncertainly; the confident ones included all the few Dunedain from the city and its lands. The Rangers had all been twelve or younger at the Change, and few of them remembered using currency at all well. Money had only come back into circulation in the last couple of years, starting with Corvallis and the Protectorate. The Bearkillers had their own mint, but the Mackenzies hadn't bothered; neither folk made much use of coin as yet.

  "Everyone gets two silver dollars each," Astrid said. "You can get a room and your meals for longer than we'll be here on one, at a good tavern. Two is the price for a pretty good horse, or a sword. So be careful while you're shopping! You should have some left over when we leave. And remember, you're on best behavior. The honor of the Dunedain Rangers is in your hands! Not to mention our secrets; use Sign or Sindarin if you have to discuss anything confidential."

  One of the Dunedain grinned; he was all of eighteen, and newly promoted to ohtar. "Besides, Sindarin's great for wowing the women. All you've got to do is look into their eyes and whisper something like I lempë roccor caitaner nu I alta tasar and the townie girls go all weak in the knees."

  A girl about his own age thumped him on the top of the head. "Talam e-gass," she said. "You're using the five horses stand under the willow tree as a make-out line?"

  Talam e-gass was another compound of their own coinage, added to the Elvish stock. It translated roughly as asshole.

  Astrid snorted. "What part of best behavior didn't you understand, Dathar? And nobody goes off on their own—pairs of anamchara together at least. We'll meet each morning at Hatfield's."

  They nodded solemnly, and Eilir pulled the pouch out of her jerkin and handed over the dime-sized coins; about three-quarters bore the beaver head of Corvallis, and the rest a mix of the snarling bear mask of Mike's Outfit and Arminger's Lidless Eye. Those made her palm itch, but it was good silver and you couldn't avoid using it, since the Protectorate had been minting money the longest and made the most. Everyone coined to the same fineness and standard weight, anyway.

  Eilir cocked an eye upward. Between the clouds, the fog and the short winter day, it took experience to estimate the time. Then she looked at the signs of the eating-houses that congregated along lower Monroe Street. The smells were appetizing, and included the scent of frying fish.

  Anyone else feel like lunch first? she signed.

  "A good idea," Alleyne said. "Never bargain on an empty stomach."

  * * * *

  "That was a good bacon cheeseburger," Astrid said over her shoulder. "I hate to admit it, but sometimes I just get tired of roast venison."

  Tired of food? Eilir signed ironically, making her eyes go round; she'd had pizza lavishly strewn with dried shrimp.

  They all laughed as they headed up Fourteenth on their way to Polk; deer were abundant in Mithrilwood … sometimes too abundant. So much so that salt pork stewed with lentils and dried onion was a relief occasionally.

  "Even the Fellowship got tired of lembas," Alleyne said. "I liked the grilled chub with herbs, personally."

  "At least in winter the deer lasts long enough you can trade for something else before it goes off," Hordle rumbled. "I take a good deal of fueling up, I do. It's not 'ealthy for me to go off me feed."

  Since he'd just put away three platters of crab cakes, several pounds of what he insisted on calling chips rather than French fries, and vegetables on top of it, nobody argued. The four of them had also shared a green salad, a scandalous luxury in January, when the winter-gardens were giving out; some of it came from the old University greenhouses, and it had cost as much as the rest of the meal together.

  Astrid and Alleyne went first down the crowded sidewalk. Eilir watched with tender amusement as Astrid's hand moved out towards Alleyne's, drew back, then darted out and gripped his fingers. Her own arm was tucked through John Hordle's—which took some arranging, even though she wasn't a short woman by any means. Their eyes met, and Hordle's rolled up. She knew exactly what he was thinking: Seven months, and they're just up to holding hands in public?

  Eilir scowled at him and then gave her silent giggle; it was sort of funny, when you thought about it. And sweet and sad at the same time.

  Amusement died when they came up to the old brick-built Victorian structure that housed the consulate of the Protectorate, and alertness replaced it. A banner hung from the eaves to just over the door, night black save for a flame-wreathed Lidless Eye in gold and crimson.

  Something's up, she thought.

  The building usually made do with the discreet plaque reading "Portland Protective Association" to keep from provoking the citizenry. The four-horse carriage that had just drawn up outside it was unusual as well, very like a Western stagecoach except much fancier and with pneumatic tires, with brass and lacquered leather and glazed windows with sashes drawn across them, and a different blazon on the doors—a blue-mantled Virgin Mary standing on a submissive-looking dragon.

  Even after what must have been days of travel in the wintertime the vehicle still had a subdued dark gleam, and the horses looked reasonably fresh. The outriders were four men-at-arms in full fig: conical helmets with nasal bars that splayed out to cover the mouth over mail coifs, knee-length short-sleeved hauberks with the skirts split up the middle for riding, plate or splint protection on shins and forearms; the destriers had steel chamfrons on their heads and peytrals to protect their chests. They'd diplomatically left their lances somewhere else, their swords were peace-bonded, and their four-foot kite-shaped shields were slung diagonally across their backs from left shoulder to right hip by the guige straps, point-down like a cou
ntry-singer's guitar in the old days. They swung down and let grooms lead their mounts away to the stables behind the house, taking position around the carriage facing out with their arms crossed over their chests, standing with a relaxed alertness like so many hunting dogs.

  Two footmen had been riding on the back of the carriage, blue with the chill despite warm woolens. They leapt down and opened the door facing the side- walk, and swung down the folding stair. A young maidservant in double t-tunic and long, embroidered tabard stepped down, a light suitcase in her hand, an elegant pre-Change French type surfaced with ostrich leather and closed with a built-in combination lock. Another woman followed her, dressed in Portland's idea of male civil garb and wearing a sword at her belt, which was more than a little odd in Association terms, and carrying a lute; she handed that to the servant when she saw the Dunedain. The bundle slung over her back was probably a crossbow in a zippered nylon bag. Her plain, dark t-tunic had long sleeves that flared below the elbow; from the way it moved, Eilir suspected a mail lining, and a sheathed dagger strapped to her right forearm; she was in her early twenties, blond hair cut in a pageboy bob, with eyes the pale gray of the sea on an overcast winter's day, graceful features as hard and watchful as the guardian warriors'.

  Look at her wrists and the backs of her hands, Eilir thought, conscious of a quick, professional appraisal directed at her. Look at her eyes, look at the way she moves. That's a fighter and a very good one.

  Then a third passenger left the coach …

  Astrid forced her hand back from the hilt of her sword and rested both hands on the broad, heavy belt that cinched her waist; she stood there bristling quietly with her face a beautiful, calm mask, something that would make anyone who knew her well nervous. Alleyne raised an eyebrow, and John Hordle muttered an oath; the passenger was someone they'd both met, when they came into Portland on the Pride of St. Helens last spring.

  Sandra Arminger! Eilir thought.

  * * * *

  "Why, it's Roquen Astrid, Hiril of the Dunedain!" Sandra Arminger said with a smile.