The Given Sacrifice

by S. M. Stirling

  Delia resolutely steered the conversation away from Tiphaine’s wound, duels or anything connected to them; evidently she was embarrassed at her lapse by the train station. The closest she came to the subject was after the salmon bisque had been replaced by a salad of summer greens and cherry tomatoes garnished with slices of melon wrapped in paper-thin envelopes of cured ham.

  “And Heuradys wants to be a knight,” she went on, rolling her eyes.

  “I don’t see why she shouldn’t,” Tiphaine observed. “Lioncel and Diomede are both well above average for their ages and they’re going to be very dangerous as adults. And don’t give me that but she’s a girl. I’m a knight. Her Majesty is a knight. Yeah, it’s harder for us, but it can be done. It involves beating the crap out of a lot of assh . . . contumacious persons, but that’s a perk, not a drawback.”

  “I think Órlaith will be a warrior,” Rudi observed thoughtfully. “She’s got the doggedness, she’s naturally active, she’s worked hard at the basics this last little while as much as we’ve let her, and from her hands and feet she’ll have the heft—she’ll be taller for a woman than I am for a man, or I miss my guess, which means that she’ll have more reach than most men, and as much weight or nearly.”

  And to be sure there’s that vision I had at Lost Lake, at the Kingmaking, but let’s not put a chill on the occasion. It bothers me, and others understandably more so.

  Aloud he finished: “And her balance and reflexes and situational awareness are excellent for her age. As good as mine were, folk who knew me then say. But if Lady Tiphaine says Heuradys has the potential—”

  “She does,” d’Ath said decisively.

  “Then there’s no better judge.”

  Delia frowned slightly. “Well, Órlaith’s a princess. Crown Princess, at that. And Your Majesties spend a lot of time elsewhere in Montival, outside the Protectorate where customs are, ah, different from those of Associates. It will be . . . hard for Heuradys if she takes that road. I mean . . . you know.”

  Tiphaine grinned sharklike as she broke open a roll and buttered it. “Sweetie, I do know. Abundantly.” To Rudi and the rest: “Heuradys is eight, and it’s obvious she’s going to take after her father—”

  She inclined her head to Rigobert.

  “—as far as her build goes.”

  Delia nodded. “Her coloring’s more like my mother’s.”

  “Or my father’s,” Rigobert said. “She has his eyes.”

  “I think she’s serious, too, and she’ll have the talent,” Lady Tiphaine went on. “Whether she wants it badly enough to take the crap involved is another question. Time will tell, but I don’t think we should discourage her. Just make it plain how difficult it’s going to be.”

  Mathilda frowned. “Well, there’s no actual religious prohibition, I mean, look at me. Or legal ones; there were some women knights even in my father’s time.”

  Maugis put in: “Weren’t you knighted by the first Lord Protector, Lady Tiphaine?”

  “No, by Sandra; but Norman was right there and he’d have done it if she hadn’t claimed the right as my patron. Just as well; when he gave the colée, Norman always hit hard enough to draw blood.”

  “That’s right,” Mathilda said. “I was there, I remember, I think. It’s just custom that knights are largely men.”

  “That and it’s hard to combine with small children,” Lady Helissent said.

  “Oh, tell me!” Mathilda said, and they all chuckled. “Heuradys is eight . . . how’s this, Delia? If she still wants it in two or three years, she can come to the Royal Household as a page. That’ll give her the best possible tutors, she can train with Órlaith, and we can keep an eye on her to make sure there’s no absolutely outrageous bullying. I know what kids can be like at that age.”

  “Thanks,” said Tiphaine. “And I can train her until then, and when she’s home after.”

  “And I,” Rigobert said.

  “No better examples,” Rudi said sincerely; Tiphaine had trained him, and if de Stafford wasn’t quite at her level he was still very good indeed.

  Delia sighed. “We’ll see in a few years, then.”

  The salads were removed, and followed by roast suckling pig with honey chipotle glaze, florets of baked potato with flecks of caramelized onion, steamed colored beets with a delicate cream sauce, and new asparagus. . . .

  Let’s let everyone get comfortably full and into what the Dúnedain call the filling-up-the-corners stage before we get on to the more dramatic part, for all love, Rudi thought.

  • • •

  “Did you hear that, Herry?” Órlaith whispered. “You can be a knight!”

  She whispered very carefully, because the gallery around the hall hadn’t been furnished yet, not even with rugs, and it echoed. They lay on their stomachs side by side, only their eyes over the marble lip, below the carved screens of some pale hard wood that made up the waist-high balustrade. It was densely shadowed now, since the chandeliers hanging from the hammerbeam rafters overhead weren’t lit, only the lamps on the table.

  “I knew it,” Heuradys whispered back, or lied. “I’m going to work twice as hard now! I’ll be your liege-knight, Órry, and fight by your side and everything!”

  Órlaith nodded solemnly. “Like Da’s companions were, on the Quest,” she said.

  Heuradys put a hand on her shoulder for a moment, then said: “Shhh, I want to hear the rest, too. We’re scouting. And it’s funny . . . Dad never talks about his parents.”

  Órlaith put her finger to her lips; she wanted to hear everything.

  “Your harvest looked good,” Órlaith’s father said; the hall was built so that sound travelled well, for during feasts musicians would play up here.

  “Thankfully,” Tiphaine said. “Developing this place has been swallowing money, fencing alone costs the earth. About time we got some return.”

  Delia nodded. “Sixty bushels of wheat to the acre on the demesne land this season and nearly as well on the tenant strips in the Five Fields, and very well on the barley and lentils. That’s better than we do on Barony Ath out west, though of course there we have the vineyards and orchards and we’re closer to the market in Portland. Fruit trees grow reasonably well here with some watering but there just weren’t any, they didn’t do anything but wheat here apparently in the old days, so we have to start from scratch and you need to find the right varieties just to begin with. I think we can have vines if we select the ground carefully for aspect and frost drainage.”

  “We manage in Tucannon, and it’s only a little south of here,” Maugis said. “The Boiseans didn’t damage the vines at St. Grimmond-on-the-Wold, thanks be to St. Urban, though the winery was a wreck.”

  “Vines will take a while,” Delia said. “Sheep are much faster and we’re getting twelve pounds per fleece. The bunchgrass here is just fabulous for livestock in general and flocks in particular. It’s a pleasure to watch them eat.”

  “Merino?” Mathilda asked.

  “Corriedales. The wool fetches nearly as much and the yield is better and they make better mutton carcasses,” Delia said.

  “The sheep actually make most of the returns so far—don’t judge the rest of this estate by St. Athena manor, we started here,” Tiphaine added. “Most of the land is still native grazing.”

  “I resemble that remark,” Rigobert said. “We’re running six thousand head in our flocks on Barony Pomeroy this year.”

  The silent Sir Julio spoke for virtually the first time: “You haven’t worked as hard at your grant as Lady Delia has on this.”

  “I’m leaving something for Lioncel to do, now that he’s a belted knight and his father can put him to work,” Rigobert said. “When he gets back from visiting Huon Liu at Gervais. He’s there to attend his friend’s knighting vigil.”

  “When he gets back from mooning over Huon’s sister Yseult, you mean, Rigoberto mio,” Julio said dryly.

  “She’s a nice girl, well-dowered, and beautiful. Smart, too,” Rigobert s
aid.

  “She is. She is also too old for him, she has an acknowledged lover who carries her favor in the tournies and whom she will almost certainly marry soon, and she does not squash his tender young heart like a bug beneath her shapely foot solely for her brother’s sake because Huon is Lioncel’s brother-in-arms.”

  “Hopeless passion is good for a knight’s soul. They say,” Helissent de Grimmond said.

  The adults all found that funny, for some reason.

  “Lioncel and Huon both did very well in the war as squires,” Mathilda said, and Lady Tiphaine nodded. “And afterwards in the San Luis expedition—that was more diplomacy than fighting, of course. It’s a pity about Yseult in a way, but there you are.”

  Maugis de Grimmond spoke: “I’m surprised at how much both of you have gotten done, starting from nothing with land mostly abandoned since the Change or at least since the Foundation Wars or the border skirmishes with Boise back in the old days. We’re only now getting back to where we were before the Prophet’s War on Barony Tucannon, and we brought nearly all the people through, which is the important thing.”

  “We moved some younger peasant families in from our manors in the west,” Delia said briskly. “One’s not in line to inherit holdings if we didn’t assart land from the waste or common, which we’re not doing there for obvious reasons.”

  “And there were broken men, refugees from the interior, looking for a place where someone would lend them the price of the tools and seed. That’s drying up, now,” Rigobert added. “Lioncel really will still be working on this when he’s my age, particularly since we can’t neglect Forest Grove.”

  “And Diomede will be working here,” Delia said. “At least when Yolande and Heuradys come of age they’ll have manors on the estates. That will make it easier for them whatever they decide to do. A girl who’s heir to three manors is in a different position from one with an annuity.”

  Órlaith’s father leaned back and cleared his throat as the desserts were brought out; she wiggled a little and nudged Heuradys with her elbow, knowing that was something he did before he surprised people.

  There was an ice-cream cake carved into the shape of a ship, which she knew was deliciously studded with hazelnuts and fruits; a smaller but identical one had been served at the children’s dinner earlier. She had gotten an extra two servings to bribe Yolande to watch John while they were supposed to be playing quietly in the nursery—Yolande was nice, but she didn’t like sneaking around as much as Órlaith or her own older sister did.

  “You’re both of you”—the King nodded towards Lady Tiphaine and Lord Rigobert—“doing the Protectorate and the High Kingdom well here. Still, this County is mostly a wasteland.”

  “Tell me,” Tiphaine said.

  “There are still bandits, too,” Rigobert said. “I think some of them may even be deserters from the Cutter army still at large, at least the core of them. There aren’t enough people living here to keep eyes on all the likely pockets where the scum can hide. And you can tell Fred Thurston from me that his patrols don’t do enough in the hill country east of here over the old border. There are jurisdictional bunfights over hot pursuit both ways all the time, and there have been what, four Crown castellans at Campscapell since the war? As soon as one learns his business and the country here he gets reassigned. I’ve lost livestock, and we had a shepherd killed last year.”

  Rudi nodded gravely. “It’s a puzzlement to find a Crown castellan who’s both able and not needed more urgently elsewhere. Which is why, Rigobert, you’re going to spend your old age working harder than you want. Here.”

  He slid a parchment he took from the wide trailing sleeve of his houppelande across the table. Rigobert glanced at it and choked on his sip of brandy.

  “Congratulations, Sir Rigobert de Stafford, Baron of Forest Grove . . . Baron of Pomeroy . . . and Count Campscapell. We’ll have the ceremonial investiture later in Portland—Matti will be appointing you, strictly speaking.”

  There was a lot of noise for a moment, and Lord Rigobert stopped gaping and coughing; his friend Sir Julio pounded him on the back.

  “And as for a Castellan and second-in-command, well, that will be your responsibility. I’ve heard good things of a certain Julio Alvarez de Soto, though.”

  Wow, Órlaith thought. Campscapell is a big castle.

  There was a murmur of congratulations from below. Heuradys sighed very slightly, getting a bit bored, but Órlaith loved to watch her parents being King and Queen, even if she didn’t understand it all yet.

  Delia stopped with a snifter halfway to her lips. “And Lioncel . . . Lioncel will be a Count!”

  “Only when I’m dead, Delia,” Rigobert grinned, and she blushed. “I might point out that you are now a Countess. Don’t be alarmed, I think I can handle it without demanding Baroness d’Ath give up her Châtelaine.”

  “You’ll do a good job of it, Rigobert,” Tiphaine said. “Better than I would. You’re better at getting people to cooperate, especially in peacetime, but you’ve got an excellent record in the Prophet’s War too.”

  “And in my fifties, people have different expectations. I can delegate . . . certain matters.”

  Sir Julio laughed, a low sound that made Órlaith feel a bit shivery, and flexed his sword-hand.

  “Speaking of jobs,” Rudi said. “Lord Maugis, you did say most of the war damage has been repaired on your Barony of Tucannon?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. The basics; only time will cure some things. My vassals and everyone down to the very cottars worked like heroes, just as they fought during the war.”

  “Good. Then I won’t be taking you away from your folk in their hour of greatest need.”

  He produced two more parchments, and slid one to Lady Tiphaine and one to Baron Tucannon. Maugis read his, frowning and then blurting:

  “Grand Constable of the Association?”

  Tiphaine spoke simultaneously: “Marshal-Commander of the High King’s Hosts?”

  Her father threw back his head and laughed. “That’s squeal-of-complaint followed by Your Majesty, if you please, my lord, my lady.”

  Maugis rose from his chair and went down on one knee, bending his head. Aleaume was fighting to keep an incredulous grin off his face.

  “Your Majesty, I am not worthy of this honor.”

  “That is for your sovereigns to decide, and we have,” Mathilda said. “Do you accept the office, my lord?”

  That’s me-and-Da ‘we,’ not the other type of ‘we,’ Órlaith decided.

  Maugis sighed, and looked at his wife. She nodded . . . after an instant’s hesitation. “Yes, your Majesty,” he said.

  “You needn’t look as if I’d sent you to the mines, Lord Maugis,” Órlaith’s father said. “Get back up and enjoy your cake, for all love.”

  Mathilda spoke: “I wanted an able man for this, one with a good war record in independent commands, administrative talents . . . and one who was not heir to a Duke, which is why Érard Renfrew Viscount of Odell isn’t getting it, to be blunt. Also I trust your liege Count Felipe to be sensible about it, given that you’re not a tenant-in-chief.”

  Maugis sat back down slowly, and Lady Helissent gripped his hand. “I . . . I will do my best to fulfill the trust you have shown me, Your Majesties. Though it will be hard, following such a Grand Constable as the one who led the Association through the war.”

  Tiphaine had been frowning. When she spoke it was slow and considering, her voice even more cool than usual. “Your Majesty, you’re appointing me commander-in-chief for Montival as a whole? Creating a new ministry and me to head it?”

  “Exactly. You’re fit for the job, and you’re also the only Associate most of the rest of the realm would accept. Being, as it were . . . unconventional.”

  “But you don’t have a Host in peacetime for a Marshal-Commander to command. All you have is a Royal guard regiment and some people the provinces send in rotation. You need a general the way a bull needs a mandolin! It would be like ca
lling me a Lord High Admiral because you gave me a rubber duckie for my bathtub. If you and Matti don’t want me as Grand Constable anymore, fine—the job’s routine now anyway and I’m tired of it and the Gray-Eyed knows I’ve got enough other things to do. But this is make-work. I don’t need my feelings soothed.”

  Órlaith’s father raised a hand. “The job’s organizational, not operational, yes, but none the less real for that. I need a staff structure that will be there and ready if . . . when, alas . . . it’s needed and I call up contingents.”

  Tiphaine started to nod, then glanced sharply at her Châtelaine’s carefully concealed delight.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “This is an appointment by the High King.”

  “And High Queen,” Mathilda put in.

  “Both of you, yes. That does mean you could punish anyone who challenged me, have their head and forbid the encounter; the High King’s ministers are immune, extraterritorial, even if they’re Associates.”

  “That’s in the Great Charter, yes, Marshal-Commander.”

  “I don’t need protection—” she began sharply.

  “Shut up!”

  Órlaith blinked; that was her mother, and she’d accompanied it by a cracking slap of her palm on the table, and she was using the High Queen’s voice.

  She wasn’t the only one surprised; she could see that all the grown-ups were too, except maybe Lady Delia. Mathilda pointed a finger at the silent face of Lady Tiphaine: