Actual manors in their own names would improve their prospects considerably, whether they wanted to marry, go into the Church, or make some other choice. Right now the “manors” were each just big chunks of rolling bunchgrass, but his sisters were very young.
Wait a minute, if my lord my father got a grant like this, a hell of a lot goes to me, too, he thought for the first time.
Which meant raising him as well as Diomede into the top rank of tenant-in-chief barons; there were Counts with less, though not many. That was a distant enough prospect to seem pretty theoretical, but it was agreeable enough too.
“Right,” Tiphaine said. “And—”
She stopped, cocking her head as if to listen. “That’s odd . . . did you hear that owl? Sounded like a big Harfang.”
Lioncel looked at her blankly; he knew all the birds of prey well, from hawking and hunting.
“Owl, my lady? It’s the middle of the afternoon!”
It was, and a bright one in early summer; the sunlight was a thick glowing bar across the table, patterned where the Gothic stone tracery of the window cut it, and even the corners of the room showed a bit of glitter on the metallic threads of the tapestries.
“That does make an owl unlikely, eh?” Tiphaine said. “And you’ve got youngster’s ears.”
He’d rarely seen her indecisive. For a moment her face went utterly still, and she touched her right hand to the base of her throat; she wore an owl pendant there lately, he remembered.
Then her eyes opened and she looked upward, crossing her arms and tapping her fingers thoughtfully.
“So, logically . . .” she murmured. Then, oddly: “Thanks!”
The next floor was the Lady Regent’s . . . no, now the Queen Mother’s . . . chambers; some sort of do was on for this afternoon, ostensibly a tea party, with the High Queen and his own mother and a clutch of countesses settling privately what would be supposedly debated publicly later. Tiphaine didn’t raise her voice—she rarely did—but there was a crispness to it when she spoke.
“Tell Sir Armand and Sir Rodard to turn out the menie, everyone on hand right now. Then arm me, half armor, no more.”
Putting on a suit of plate complete took about fifteen minutes with expert help, and couldn’t be done alone at all.
“Move, boy!”
He did. Nobody stopped him to ask for explanations, just started doing what was needed. And by the time he dashed back with the flexible plate cuirass of lames in his arms and the other equipment slung around him Tiphaine had already tossed her houppelande aside and hung her sword belt over the back of the chair. The steel would be a little loose without the padded arming doublet beneath, but he latched it quickly and stood by to hand her the articulated steel gauntlets, sallet helm and the four-foot knight’s shield shaped like an elongated teardrop with its arms of sable, a Delta Or upon a V Argent.
“What are we going to do, my lady?” he asked, proud that his voice was steady.
“Head straight in, yelling alarm and murder,” she said absently.
“That will . . . look strange, my lady.”
She shrugged to settle the harness, and put both hands up on the sallet’s low dome to press the broad-tailed flared helmet with her palms so that its circuit of internal pads were snug in exactly the right place before she buckled the chin-cup. The visor was down. Without a bevoir attached to the breastplate her mouth and chin showed beneath, and the long narrow blankness of the vision slit in the smooth curve gave a look of merciless detachment and power to her glance.
The armor the menie of Ath wore wasn’t black like the harness of the Protector’s Guard, because that color sucked up heat in the sun and sometimes stood out against a background. It wasn’t white—bare and brightly polished—like that of many baronial fighting-tails, either, because that was even more conspicuous.
Instead it was a pale neutral gray like her eyes, the finish very slightly roughened so that it wouldn’t glint, though in fact you rarely tried to hide in plate. Lady Death was meticulous about details.
Mom is that way too, Lioncel realized suddenly. Only she does it about other things.
“It’ll look very strange, my lady,” he added, and didn’t go on to say: Charging into the Queen Mother’s quarters with drawn sword and armed men at your back.
“Lioncel, have you heard the saying that you can do wonders if you don’t care about who gets the credit?”
“Yes, my lady. My lord my father is fond of that one.”
She smiled, a chill stark expression. “Well, you can do even more if you don’t give a damn how crazy it makes you look.”
As she spoke he went down on one knee and buckled the sword belt around her waist while she pulled on her gauntlets; that took three extra holes on the belt in armor, and he tucked the tongue neatly beneath. Then she drew the sword, a yard of tapering watermarked cross-hilted steel. That slid the honed edge within an inch of his ear, but it didn’t occur to him to flinch. Tiphaine d’Ath’s sword went exactly where she wanted it to go, neither more nor less. He’d seen her flick flies out of the air, neatly bisected with a twitch of the wrist, something he still couldn’t do in practice.
With the curved top of her shield she knocked the visor of her sallet up. His own vision disappeared for an instant as he pulled his light mail shirt over his head; when he settled the familiar weight and belted on his own sword the two household knights were there.
“Lioncel, get your helmet on,” she said. “And stay behind the shields when we move.”
“What’s up, my lady?” Rodard said as he strode briskly in, blinking at the naked sword, his brother Armand at his heels. “I have six men-at-arms including us—”
All knights were men-at-arms, full-armored and capable of fighting as lancers on horseback among their other skills. Not all men-at-arms were knights, though most hoped to be some day.
“—and as many more of spearmen and crossbowmen. I could recall men from other duties or rustle up some more from the Lord Chancellor’s household—”
The Georges brothers had been given the accolade last year; Rodard had been wounded at the Horse Heaven Hills and was just back on full service. Both young household knights were armored cap-a-pie with their shields slung point-down across their backs; they’d been on duty. Usually there weren’t more men than that up here in the Silver Tower; most of the menie of Ath was still at the front, or at work on half a dozen assignments.
“No, no time for explanations,” his liege replied.
Lioncel felt himself nodding, under a tight-held excitement. His liege-lady was fond of the maxim that it was better to react in good time with a small force than too late with a larger one. He used the moment to get his own crossbow and hang the quiver of bolts to his waist; he was still too young to match a grown man with the sword, but he was a good shot and his quarrels hit just as hard as a veteran’s.
“I think the enemy are going to try something underhanded and we need to move now.”
She flicked the point of her blade towards the ceiling, and the steel-framed faces of the knights changed; they pulled on the guige straps that slung their shields and ran their arms through the loops. Armand spun on his heel and began calling orders.
There was a rustle and clank as the command party came through into the outer chambers, and the ranks of the menie stiffened the way a cat did at the beginning of its stalk. This part of the Grand Constable’s suite was interlinked reception rooms; in normal times they were spacious and airy, despite the massiveness of the structure around them. Even a small force of armored men in a bristle of shields and spears and glaives made them at least feel crowded. Honed metal winked and glinted as the pole arms shifted into beams of light from the high windows, amid a smell of leather and male sweat and oiled steel.
“There is a plot against the Crown,” Tiphaine said without preliminaries. “Some officers of the Protector’s Guard must have been suborned or replaced and we may have to fight the Guard.”
Which would
mean being grossly outnumbered, for starters.
“Anyone who isn’t ready to follow me on this had better step aside right now. Fall out if you care to.”
Fists and swordhilts thumped on breastplates and shields. There was a short crashing bark of:
“D’Ath! D’Ath!”
Lioncel wasn’t surprised; he’d have been shocked if anyone had dropped out. These were all men who’d sworn fealty to Tiphaine d’Ath of their own will. Nobody became a personal vassal of Lady Death because they longed for a quiet life.
“The cry is Artos and Montival. Follow me!”
Then they all trotted towards the stairwell; there were two on this level, spirals set in the east and west thicknesses of the tower. A slam of boots and a clatter of harness, men-at-arms and spearmen settling their shields and crossbowmen loading as they ran.
Mother! Lioncel thought suddenly with his hand on the cocking lever. And the girls, and Huon! They’re up there with the High Queen!
The war was here, with shocking suddenness, not just out at the front. It was like running down a staircase in the dark and expecting another step when there wasn’t one, a blow running up into his chest and squeezing even as his hands fumbled through the loading routine.
This is Castle Todenangst, not some gulch out east!
CHAPTER FOUR
Seven Devils Mountains
(Formerly western Idaho)
High Kingdom of Montival
(Formerly western North America)
June 15th. Change Year 26/2024 AD
Cole Salander was under a fallen tree, sweating and baring his teeth in an unconscious rictus of tension. The first warning had been a covey of blue-gray upland quail taking off, and then a Cooper’s hawk perched in an aspen had turned its mad red eyes upslope and discovered business elsewhere without trying for one of its natural prey. And then something that could have been a dog giving tongue . . . that was when he’d gone to ground in a hurry.
Cole glowered at the POW lying to his left out of the corners of his eyes. Alyssa was the reason he couldn’t just try to outrun the pursuit. The enemy glider pilot smiled at him��with poisonous not-real-sweetness—and lay quietly with her splinted arm cradled against her chest. A distant sound . . .
Yup. A hound belling. Shit.
Somewhere the damned dog bayed again, and closer, the sound echoing against rock, startling the woods into silence. All that could mean only one thing here in the Seven Devils Mountains of western Idaho. Nobody had lived here even before the Change, and few had even passed through since the machines stopped. It had to be soldiers in this time of war. More than one or two, and he didn’t think they were soldiers of the US Army. Normally that wouldn’t be an insoluble problem; he could cover forty miles a day or better if he really pushed it, even in mountain country like this, and the same terrain made a cavalry pursuit impossible. There might be individuals in the bunch combing the area who could equal his best pace, but no unit of any size could.
I should have just bugged out when I found where the glider crashed but no, I had to be a hotshot.
Soldier and captive were both well-hidden, in a hollow covered by a hundred-foot lodgepole pine that had fallen across the mountainside sometime in the winter just over, surrounded by a thick scrum of blue lupine taking advantage of the light let in by the gap in the canopy. The root-ball wasn’t totally broken off, and the needles had mostly stayed on the branches as the wounded tree struggled for life. He could smell his own sour sweat under the sweet pine and flower scents, and hers—though he had to admit she was a lot less rank even now. You had to be borderline insane to be a military glider pilot and the last chaotic tumbling smashing crushing moments of your short terrifying life were likely to suck bigtime, but until then you lived better than a foot soldier, with cooked food and hot water available every night.
The soil in the declivity was shaded and damp, and the wet had soaked through the mottled green-brown-gray linsey-woolsey of his battle-smock and pants, chilly and uncomfortable. Summer came late and reluctantly to these heights. The forest was open here, big old-growth conifers widely spaced, with thickets and aspens around the occasional clearing where fire or geology had kept the climax vegetation at bay. Fortunately the wind that bore the sound of the dogs wouldn’t be carrying their scent back to the animals.
Unfortunately, good hunting hounds can follow a ground trail regardless of the breeze, once they’ve cut across it.
And while he was confident he could outrun men, even without an injured prisoner he couldn’t outpace dogs; over short to medium distances four legs just plain beat two. But there was a mountain stream running strong and cold with melted snow downslope. If he could just get there and use it to break trail . . .
But I’m tasked with getting Ms. “That’s Pilot Officer Bitch to You, Soldier” back to our lines. And I’m doing it alone because we’re losing the war and everybody’s trying to do three men’s work so I can’t fight even if it’s a small patrol. The enemy don’t have to send their men out alone.
She won’t run away or shout, she gave her parole and I think she’ll keep it, but I can’t make her move . . . not all-out, and anything else would be a waste of time if there’s a pursuit. To be fair, that arm has to hurt if she moves fast.
He still felt like he’d fought a grizzly himself.
Mainly because I did.
It wouldn’t stop him from moving fast or fighting hard, he hadn’t actually cracked bones or torn ligaments, but it would make it a lot more painful. He wasn’t at quite ten tenths of capacity.
And if I just cut her loose, then her parole is over and she can shout her lungs out with a clear conscience and then I am so fucked. Unless I just kill her, which isn’t going to happen. Shit. Maybe trying to get her back to base wasn’t such a good idea even if she’d be a valuable intel source.
He had a good view through a little gap in the branches of the open forest across the broad slope. He brought his crossbow to his shoulder and peered through the telescopic sight, careful to move slowly and keep the lens well back; he might be just out of the accelerated SF training course, but he had done well in it, and he’d been a hunter since he was old enough to take a slingshot out after rabbits to help fill the family stewpot and guard the truck garden. The downside of a scope was that it narrowed the field of view but that was all right if you kept switching back between the scope and naked eyeball.
Two shaggy gray-brown dogs bounded into sight, big ones—as big as he’d ever seen, and looking to have mastiff and Great Dane and deerhound and a bit of timber wolf in their ancestry. Or possibly a donkey in the woodpile, if you concentrated on the size alone. They wore leather collars with steel studs, and they quartered the ground in an efficient-looking pattern. Fortunately there weren’t any tracks for them to find right there; he’d come in from the north, trying to loop around the latest known enemy activity . . . which was now evidently much closer than anyone had thought.
Alyssa Larsson had just smiled every time he asked her where the base was. Now he knew why: he’d been headed straight towards it all by himself.
I was giving her an armed escort home!
One of the dogs bayed again, a deep-chested sound. That was a signal, it wasn’t just making noise because it liked to hear the sound of its own voice. Four minutes later a human figure came loping through the woods. Doll-tiny at this distance, around three hundred yards, but the scope brought him close enough to see the knee-length kilt and the long yellow yew bow in the left hand with an arrow held on the string.
Shit. Clan warrior.
They weren’t exactly the enemy’s equivalent of the Special Forces. Those were the Dúnedain Rangers who were supposed to be even weirder. But the Clan Mackenzie were rumored to be neobarb headhunters and they were most definitely and by hard objective evidence very bad news. He’d talked to men who’d made it back from the battle at the Horse Heaven Hills. Sometimes in conversations that carefully excluded officers. They’d all featured profan
ely emphatic warnings about the reach and punch of those arrows and the uncanny rate of fire.
They’re sneaky, too, had been common.
Closer, and he—
No. It’s a she. Christ, aren’t there any normal women out west, looking after babies and working in the fields and fighting off bandits while the men are away at war?
—leapt easily onto a jut of rock that stood out from the slope and stood with arrow half-drawn. That was close enough that her face filled the scope. A young woman, early twenties like Cole.
It took him a moment to see the details, because the face was painted. Not makeup, real lines of black and white like a mask of dark wings starting on the forehead and sweeping over eyes and cheeks and then curving in along the jaw to the chin. It gave the countenance an eerie alien aspect, like something you saw in a dream.
OK, the briefing said Mackenzies wear war paint. Nice to know we get information right sometimes.
She wasn’t wearing a helmet, which was good practice doing a scout in the woods; the protection wasn’t worth the way it restricted your hearing and peripheral vision. Instead she had on a sort of beret-like thing, with a clasp that held a spray of raven feathers standing up above her left eye. Brown hair hung in plaits at the front down either side of her face, and then the scalp was shaven above the ears to leave a braided roach falling down her back with a length of cord wrapped around it.
He shifted the scope slightly. Pleated kilt and plaid over the shoulder in a green and brown tartan with slivers of dull orange, a broad leather belt, buckled ankle boots and knee-hose. A short sword a lot like the one he carried except that it was on the left hip and not the right, with a green-painted steel buckler the size and shape of a soup-plate clipped to the scabbard; a long dirk; a smaller knife tucked into her hose; and a green brigandine over her torso. On it in dark outline was a crescent moon cradled between antlers, and a big war-quiver stuffed with gray-fletched arrows jutted up over her right shoulder.
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