A Meeting At Corvallis

Chapter Twenty-Three

Field of the Cloth of Gold, Willamette Valley, Oregon

September 5th, 2008/Change Year 10

J uniper Mackenzie woke with a start. The tent was dark, but dawn had broken outside; Nigel's bedroll was empty, and there was a stale cold smell, slightly fusty, that she associated with war. She scrambled into kilt and shirt, socks and shoes, then buckled and belted her plaid as she stood outside, breathing in freshness and wood smoke and cooking smells. A flight of geese went over high above, the first of the year heading south and sounding their long song.

The memory of sorrow clutched at her, like a hand at her throat as she heard the keening among her people, rising and falling and then rising again into a saw-edged wail of grief, the heavy silence from the orderly rows of the Bear-killer camp, the Latin chanting from the chapel-tent of the warrior monks. Nigel turned and she leaned into him, hugging fiercely.

"He was a brave man," he said. "I've never met a braver."

Her head nodded against the rough surface of his quilted tunic. "He was the father of my son."

Then she took a deep breath, and another, standing and raising her head proudly, accepting the strength of his arm without leaning on it.

"And: he was the given sacrifice that goes consenting; the King who dies that the people may live," she said. "I knew it from the beginning, but I didn't: he always laughed at the myths."

"Even when he stepped into one," Nigel said. "And now he's become legend himself."

He shook himself, and she smiled despite her sadness as she felt him put on practicality like a well-tailored suit, even if it was a little threadbare at the cuffs.

"We heard some fighting from over there last night," he said.

He nodded northward towards the Protectorate's camp: a Protectorate without a Lord Protector, now. Smoke rose over it, more than cookfires could account for.

"And according to the Rangers, a block of about five hundred of them is leaving right now-for the baronies along the Columbia, we think; they're worried about the Free Cities and the Jacks. We may not have to fight that great murdering battle after all."

"And our folk?" she asked, knowing the answer.

"Grieving, but not downhearted. I wouldn't like to face them in a fight now."

"Indeed!" she said. To herself: With Mike's spirit behind the blade and the bow? No, no, and no three times!

They stood in line for porridge and bacon, and ate without tasting. The noise of grief died down, but not the reality of it, as the day dawned blue and dreaming over the golden stubblefields around them. Juniper felt herself moving in a shell of quiet, making herself attend to things-reports from spies, the camp disputes and pettiness that nothing stopped. Less than an hour later, a knight galloped out from the Association's camp with a white pennant snapping on his lance. Waiting with the other hastily assembled leaders Juniper was astonished to see the marks of tears and grief on the man's haughty young face as well, as he sat his curveting horse like one born there.

Well, she chided herself. And if there had never been a one who loved Norman Arminger, the man could not have done so much ill or ruled so long. And now he must account for all his deeds before the Guardians, in the place where Truth stands naked and lies are impossible, and choose his own course to self-forgiveness.

"I am envoy from the Lady Sandra Arminger, Regent of the Portland Protective Association for the Princess Mathilda," he called.

O-ho, it's Regent she is now? Juniper thought with a return of the cold calculation a Chief must be able to pull on like a garment; from the corner of her eye, she saw Signe's valkyr face close like a comely fist. I wonder what the others over there think of that?

"She and her loyal Grand Constable, Count Renfrew of Odell, would come and speak peace with the other rulers gathered here," he went on; was it her imagination that there was a slight stress on loyal? "She and he will come alone, if they have your pledge of armistice and safe-conduct from now until her return."

Eyebrows rose. That was a major concession; it was also a show of strength, that she could come unguarded and with what must be her main supporter along: and also a sign of trust, of sorts. Sandra Arminger had always been a good judge of other people's scruples, even if she didn't have any herself.

Will Hutton spoke, his hard Texan drawl skeptical: "Anythin' else, boy?"

The knight's lips grew tighter, but he inclined his head. "Do you speak for this assembly, Lord Hutton?"

"I speak for the Bearkillers, by Mike Havel's last words," he said. "These others are the leaders of free communities. We'll consult."

Even then, the Protectorate knight sneered a little. "The Lady Sandra says that she would speak first with Lady Juniper Mackenzie, Chief of the Clan Mackenzie, and then with your leaders in council."

Signe looked daggers at the Mackenzie chieftain, but Will Hutton smiled. "Wouldn't be tryin' to sow a little distrust here, would she? Sure. There's nothin' she can say to Juney that Juney won't tell us all. We'll meet her at the command pavilion over to there." He pointed. "Whenever you're ready."

"At once."

The knight ducked his head, and wheeled his horse so abruptly that it reared as it turned; then it landed with a puff of dust from among the reaped wheat stems and galloped northward once more.

Well, Juniper thought. Well, well, well!

"Probably best this way," Will Hutton said quietly as they walked towards the big open-sided tent. "We Bearkillers 'r too sore with it now. And Mike died so we wouldn't have to fight that big battle."

"He was the father of my son," Juniper replied, her tone equally quiet. "And I loved him too, Will."

The older man nodded. "Figure so. But you didn't live with him day-in-day-out."

Unwillingly, she nodded: And Mike knew what he was doing when he gave Will the power. Signe would be too blinded by her rage.

Evidently "at once" meant what it said. "Alone" was something else; it included a driver for the light two-wheeled horsecart that Sandra rode in beneath a parasol, and a maidservant on a little rumble seat behind, and a groom to hold Conrad Renfrew's horse. The former consort sat erect and elegant; Renfrew dismounted first, standing at the wheel to hand her down from the vehicle as it bobbed on its springs.

Signe was close. The consort nodded to her. "We're both widowed today," she said. "Let's see if we can keep too many more from sharing the condition."

The tall, blond, young woman in armor looked down her straight nose. "My husband was a great and good man," she said coldly, then stopped herself with an obvious effort.

Sandra nodded, the black mourning ribbons fluttering on her white headdress and framing cold pride. "And mine was a monster. But that, Lady Signe, doesn't mean I loved him any less than you did yours. And now if you'll excuse me: "

She swept into the command pavilion as if it were a gazebo in the grounds of Castle Todenangst, waiting an instant while the servant unfolded a chair and small side table and set out refreshments, even pouring coffee from a thermos.

Juniper followed and sat across from her, studying the face and form she'd never seen so close before. The Protector's widow sat half-turned in her chair; sunlight from outside the pavilion and through the striped cloth made the pale colors of her cotte-hardi and headdress glow in the dimness inside the tent, the mourning ribbons like shadows across the brilliant white, a subdued glitter of lapis and silver from the buttons. The air smelled of hot canvas and crushed grass and coffee; Sandra sipped, apparently as relaxed as she'd have been in a castle solar, and picked up one of the little watercress sandwiches with the crusts cut off, nibbling.

"Well," the Chief of the Mackenzies said at last, into that silence and Sandra's slight catlike smile. "What do you have to say for yourself, then?"

"That I protected your son, when my husband would have killed him," she said promptly, and the smile grew slightly. "Several times, in fact."

Juniper winced slightly. True enough and there's no getting around it. Still:

"You're not a good person at all, really, are you?" she asked, genuine curiosity in her voice.

"No, I'm not," Sandra agreed, and shrugged. "And you are, and yet you won anyway. Unfathomable are the works of God." A pause. "And many are the marvels, yet none so marvelous as humankind."

"You agree we've won?"

Another shrug. "Well, somewhat. A chunk of our army has melted away. What's left isn't big enough to fight you, the Grand Constable tells me, although it would cost you many lives to overrun us and we could probably get away even if you tried. Besides, how long will your farmers stay here, when there's work to do at home? They came to stop us invading their land, and that's: no longer on the program."

Juniper looked aside. Conrad Renfrew was standing like an armored fireplug in the open. Eric Larsson was not far away, glaring at him. The Association's general looked at him, shrugged and walked over. The younger man bristled like a wolf at a stranger on his pack's territory, then nodded reluctantly and answered whatever it was the count said.

Sandra went on: "But the Grand Constable is loyal to me: and Princess Mathilda. It's quite extraordinary, but he has no wish to be Lord Protector himself."

"Ah, but some others do."

"But they can't agree on a candidate, and none of them alone has anything like the strength of the combined loyalists. We can all go home, haul up our drawbridges, and wait-the harvest is in the storehouses behind our walls and gates. And in a little while, after you're tired of sitting outside the moat and making rude gestures, you'll have to go home to your farms and villages too, before we taunt you once again."

Her face was calm but her eyes twinkled; Juniper fought down an answering smile as Sandra went on.

"For that matter, if you split your army up to watch castles, Conrad tells me there are things he could do which might reverse the whole result. And Pope Leo is still talking about a Crusade, you know. He has quite a popular following."

Juniper smiled herself, grimly. She was prepared for that, and there was an edge in her tone when she replied: "But speaking of farmers, before we have to go home we can pay your farmers a visit. We don't have to take castles. All we have to do is take the farmers who want to go with us: and then you can set your men-at-arms to plowing your fields, and follow along with a bag of wheat slung around your neck, sowing the good earth yourselves."

The wimpled head nodded. "There is that. But if you really wanted to do that, you wouldn't be talking to me now, would you?"

Juniper sighed. "We can't make you tear down your castles. We can't occupy your territories and make you reform that dreadful system you've established. We can wreck you, but only with much loss of precious life and a risk of the same to ourselves, and what was left of you would still be a deadly threat. We can't cross the Columbia at all, and much of your strength is there these days. Yet we can't just let you put the Protectorate back together as it was, either- you're smarter than your late, unlamented husband, bad cess to him, the creature. You wouldn't make the same mistakes."

Sandra Arminger's small left hand closed on the arm of the chair; she made it relax, but there was something in her eyes, like a red spark moving in the depths.

"I'm less ambitious than Norman was," she said carefully. "And I know when to stop. My primary goal is to pass his inheritance on to my daughter, intact."

"That's probably even true. However, you're also just as vindictive as he was, if far more subtle. I'm not going to rely on your loving kindness and better nature, so."

Sandra gave a small snort of laughter. "Granted. I don't have a better nature. So?"

"So, we-the Mackenzies, and I'm sure we can persuade everyone else-will recognize you as Regent of the Association, against the time of your daughter's majority, which will be when she's twenty-six. We will even help you enforce it against any noble who disputes your claim-we need a single authority to deal with, not a mass of robber barons raiding as the whim takes them."

"But," Sandra said. "There's always a 'but.'"

"There are conditions. Several of them, in fact."

At her raised eyebrow, Juniper went on: "First, you must withdraw from the territories in the Pendleton area you occupied last year. We'll agree not to occupy them either."

A sigh. "We've already ordered the garrisons there to withdraw; we needed the men. And with so many nobles and even heirs dead, there isn't the demand for new fiefs any more. Agreed. They're a bunch of hicks and boors out there anyway."

"Next, you have to renounce any claim on our lands and recognize all the free communities as equals. Peace on the border."

"Agreed," Sandra said at once. "You have won this war, after all. I warn you that Norman couldn't control what every baron did in detail, and I won't be able to do so either, but I will try."

"And promises are worth their weight in gold," Juniper said; she was a little surprised when Sandra chuckled and made a gesture of acknowledgment.

"And you will decree, and have the decree read in every domain, castle, manor and village, that any resident of the Protectorate is now free to leave, now or at any time in the future, without bond or let, taking their personal property with them."

"Ah." Sandra Arminger closed her eyes for an instant. "Now, that's the big one. That would be difficult to sell to the barons."

"Better lose some than lose all," Juniper said ruthlessly. "Not all would go; I imagine a lot of the free tenants and even some of the bond-tenants would stay. They've put their lives into that land, after all, and leaving would mean starting over again penniless, without land or stock. They can't carry their farms on their backs. But you'll have to stop squeezing the rest so hard, and that's a fact, and get rid of those iron collars, if you want any of your peons to remain. They're already penniless and abused to boot, the which they wouldn't be in the south."

"Which means we'd have to cut back on the army," Sandra observed. "We couldn't afford it any more."

"Exactly, unless your nobles preferred to sacrifice their standard of living." Sandra made a rueful twist of the lips that wasn't quite a smile, and Juniper went on: "That is how we can trust your word; you won't have that great standing army hanging over our heads like a hammer anymore. I suggest you settle the ordinary soldiers on farms and call them a militia-or whatever piece of old- world foolishness you choose to hang on it, fiefs-in-ordinary or whatever suits your fancy."

Sandra's left eyebrow went up again, and she silently looked at Juniper's kilt and plaid and the raven-feathers in the clasp of her flat Scots bonnet. Juniper fought down a smile.

And if she weren't a cruel, murderous bitch who's evil to the painted toenails I could like this woman, sure. She had an uncomfortable feeling that the other could read the thought, as well.

"Anything else?" the consort-now the Regent-said.

"There's to be a yearly meeting of all the communities, to consider grievances and settle disputes."

"Where?" Sandra asked curiously.

"Corvallis. They're further from you and have fewer feuds. Also, later people from south of there may wish to join."

Sandra nodded thoughtfully, looking at the dignitaries scattered around the field outside the pavilion. Turner and Kowalski were there with a clutch of other Corvallan magnates. Juniper could see the calculations of political advantage going through the other woman's brain.

But two can play at that game, my lady Regent. Any number can, in fact. It's not my favorite sport, the game of thrones, but I like it better than the game of swords.

Sandra nodded. "Agreed. A: oh, God, let's not call it a United Nations, shall we? That would doom things from the start."

"We could simply call it the Meeting."

"A yearly Meeting at Corvallis, agreed. And that's all?"

"By no means. There's the matter of Mathilda."

Sandra Arminger went very still. She took another sip of the coffee and put the cup on the folding table with its surface of mother-of-pearl and gold.

"Yes?" she said, her voice full of pride and danger. "There's something about my daughter you don't like?"

Juniper smiled; it wasn't even an unkindly expression. "On the contrary. She's a sweet girl, and nobody's fool, and we agree without dispute she's to be your heir. So much do we all love her that we'd insist on her company, for, shall we say, six months of the year."

Sandra's basilisk glare went blank and opaque; Juniper could see twisting pathways behind the dark brown eyes, like one of those old Escher prints, and felt dizzy for an instant. To help the process of thought along she gently pointed out: "And Rudi is very fond of her, so. And she of him."

The pathways were joined by gears, meshing in silent smoothness. Sandra smiled, a somewhat alarming expression.

"There is that. It would be cruel to part the children, and I'm quite fond of Rudi, as well."

Which I think is even true, Juniper said to herself.

"Two months, though, not six. Her name is Mathilda, not Persephone."

Juniper forced down a startled chuckle. "Five," she said.

"Three."

"Four."

"Agreed, four," Sandra said. "Provided, of course, that Rudi spends four months with us."

She held up a hand to stop Juniper's startled retort. "I can't agree to anything that will make most of my barons: or their widows, now: abandon me. Letting their laborers leave at will is bad enough. If I send my daughter as a hostage without you doing the same, it's a symbol of humiliation and defeat, and it will be the straw that breaks the back of their pride. You have to give them a gesture of respect and hope."

Juniper sat and wrestled with herself. She knew that Sandra Arminger was enjoying every moment of her internal torment, which made her end it the sooner: "Done. Mathilda will come to us at Mabon and stay until Yule; Rudi will return with her and come back to us at Ostara. And when they're old enough, they can visit as they please, of course."

"Whittled it down to a bit under three months, when you had to wear the other shoe, eh?" Sandra said. Then: "Agreed. And each to bring a suite of no more than six with them. No religious pressure on either."

"Oh, agreed."

Sandra finished her coffee and said musingly: "I'll send Tiphaine d'Ath and her little friend the witch along with Mathilda. They'll enjoy that, and I've wanted to poke Pope Leo in the eye for some time now, not to mention trim back his pretensions a bit: "

She extended a hand. Juniper took it and they gave one firm shake before releasing. A murmur rose from the crowd outside, and the two women looked at each other.

Juniper sighed. "Now we have to make them think it was their own idea."

"Just so. Strange, isn't it, that it's always more difficult to talk people out of killing each other than into it?"

Larsdalen, Willamette Valley, Oregon

September 6th, 2008/Change Year 10

The funeral cortege made its slow way up from the gate of Larsdalen, the pennants of the lancer escort and the manes of the horses fluttering in the warm wind from the east, a wind that smelled of baked earth and drying grass as much as wood smoke or massed humanity. Michael Havel's body rested on the flat bed of a two-wheeled wagon drawn by four glossy horses; his charger followed behind, boots reversed in the stirrups. The brown-and-scarlet flag of the Outfit was draped over the coffin, and his unsheathed sword and bear-headed helm rested on it. Silence ran under the sough of the wind, under the crunch of gravel beneath feet and hooves, despite the huge crowd gathered; every adult of the Outfit who could come had, and many had brought their older children to see the passing of the first Bear Lord.

The day was cruelly bright on the white and yellow of the great house and on the gardens, but the lawns were covered right to the edges of the flower-banks that trembled in sheets of gold and purple. To the edges, but not beyond, for Bearkillers were an orderly and disciplined folk, and today they came to mourn. Flowers brought from their own homes flew out to land beneath the horses' hooves, roses and peonies and rhododendrons, until the destriers seemed to tread on a carpet or a spring meadow. Hats came off in a wave as the coffin passed by behind its escort of mounted A-listers led by the dead man's brother-in-law, and heads bowed. They remained that way in respect as the family passed behind: the dead man's wife and children, his sister-in-law, Ken Larsson and the rest.

Signe walked behind the cart, Mike Jr.'s hand in hers; the boy was sobbing quietly in hopeless bewilderment, knowing that something very bad had happened, and that he couldn't bawl the way he needed to or ask: When's Daddy coming home? Mary and Ritva were old enough to understand; their tears were more silent, but more bitter. Signe herself walked like an iron statue from a Viking myth, in A-lister panoply but with the crest of the helmet under her right arm dyed black. Today you could see what she would be like when the last of her youth left her.

He's gone, she thought.

The knowledge was there, but her mind couldn't really take it in. Ten years, and suddenly he's gone. He's gone. He'll never smile at me that way again, mostly on one side of his mouth, and I'll never look over in the morning and find him rubbing his face the way he always did right after he woke up. None of it, ever again.

She remembered his eyes, that first time when he'd walked into the room in the airport: cool and polite and showing no sign that he was mentally undressing her, which she'd known damned well he was. Cute, but a spoiled rich kid had been visible if you knew how to read men, which she had even then. It had driven her wild: and then the terror when the Piper Chieftain's engines had cut out, and the way his face had turned to a slab of granite as he wrestled with the controls.

He's gone. Forever.

Her son's small hand tugged at hers, and she looked down. His hair was hers, white now; it would be corn gold when he grew. But the eyes were his father's, slanted and gray as Lake Superior water on an overcast day, and so were the promise of cheekbones and small square chin.

But my kids are here. His kids too. Everything isn't gone. Not yet.

The cart creaked to a halt on the terrace that held the house. Signe turned, picked her son up and handed him to Will Hutton. The older man's face was graven too, grief and strength in the brown eyes. They widened a little in surprise as the blond boy was put in his arms. The child's own went around his neck, and the tear-and-snot-streaked face was buried in the crook of it.

That immobilized him as she vaulted up into the cart and stood beside the coffin; she stood for a moment, and then touched two fingers to her lips and bent for a moment to press them to the polished wood.

Then she stood, looking out over the sea of faces below, and filled her lungs.

"Bearkillers!" she shouted. A murmur, then hushed silence again, with a soughing sound like some great beast breathing quietly as it waited.

"Bearkillers, Michael Havel is dead!"

There was a fringe of A-listers along the edge of the great crowd nearest the roadway and the house; nobody grudged them the position today. Many were bandaged; some were on crutches; a few were in wheelchairs, pushed along by friends or kin or retainers. The least she saw anywhere were the grave, shocked faces that wondered: what will become of us now? Some of them wept; a few covered their faces with their hands and sobbed unashamed. Nor were the A-listers the only ones.

I hope you can see this, alskling, wherever you are, she thought, with a moment's wistfulness. They always respected you, but now they know they loved you too.

Then she pushed down tenderness. Mike had fought his fight; hers was still to be won.

"When the Change came, I and my family were flying over mountains. A lot of people died that day. How many didn't die, who were in the air when the machines failed? Michael Havel saved our lives."

She let one hand point for an instant to the man holding her son. "This is Will Hutton. You know him; a strong man, and a wise leader. But Mike Havel rescued him too, and his wife and daughter-rescued them and me and my sister from bandits out to rape and rob and kill."

She looked over the rapt audience, feeling their eyes like a huge wind bearing her up. The real wind blew a strand of her yellow mane into her eyes, and she brushed it aside with memories of terror and helplessness.

Mike taught me. I was never helpless again. I never will be helpless again. Nor will our children.

"Who among all of you didn't he save? He found you here and therestarving, hiding, hiding from Eaters and bandits and warlords, hiding from each other, in basements and culverts and little hollows up in the hills, all of you waiting to die like the rest or get hungry enough to do the forbidden thing. Who brought you together and made you into the Outfit, where nobody's alone and everyone has brothers and sisters who'd die for them? Who was it taught you how to fight and made you strong? Who?"

"Lord Bear," a man said near the front, in an almost conversational tone. Others took it up: "Lord Bear. Lord Bear. Lord Bear!"

Now it was a thunder, echoing off the walls behind them and the great house behind her. The house that had been owned by her blood for more than a hundred years, and that looked out over the land that fed her children, its wheat and fruit and meat the stuff of their bones and blood. She raised a hand again.

"Who was it brought you to this good earth? Who was it found you seed grain and tools and stock? Who gave every family their land, and made fair laws, and kept them, and saw that others kept them too? Who made the Brotherhood of the A-list, so that we'd have guardians always ready and you could plow and reap in peace, knowing you'd keep what you grew and made? Who was always ready to hear a grievance, and give those who needed it a helping hand: or a kick in the ass, if they needed that? Who?"

"Lord Bear! Lord Bear! Lord Bear!" Fists were in the air, and drawn blades, men shouting it like a war cry even as the tears ran down their faces.

"I'm not the only one who lost a husband in this war," she went on more quietly, when the sound had died down to a rumble.

The tone brought that to a new hush, and now they were straining to hear what she said. At the rear there was a mumbling as her words were repeated and passed backward.

"I'm not the only one who has children who will grow up without a father. My daughters, my son, the child I'm carrying beneath my heart right now, they've lost the man who loved them, who held them and told them stories. They're crying for him, like all the other children who lost someone dear to them." Several of her family looked at each other, startled. Well, I wasn't sure I was pregnant again until about last week.

A long sigh went across the crowd, and she spoke into it: "But Mike Havel was special. It isn't just my children who've lost a father. My husband was father to this land, to all the people of the Outfit: landfather, they said in the old days. He was our landfather. When the enemy came from the north with all their numbers to take our homes and make slaves of our children, who led us out to fight them? Who made our plans? Who was in the front of every battle? Who killed the tyrant Arminger with his own hand, and preserved our freedom and our lives?"

She bent and then raised the helmet and its snarling covering over her head in both hands. "When this wild thing came to kill, who stood fearless between the beast and his folk, though its claws tore his face and his own blood poured out on the earth? Who killed the Bear, Bearkillers? Who was the lord who died for his people?"