Lord of Mountains

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE HIGH KING’S HOST

HORSE HEAVEN HILLS

(FORMERLY SOUTH-CENTRAL WASHINGTON)

HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL

(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)

NOVEMBER 1ST, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

The High Queen’s party cantered forward, her banner of the Lidless Eye taking the breeze beside the triangle-and-delta of the Grand Constable’s; another lance carried the Crowned Mountain and Sword of Montival between them.

Royal squire Huon Liu spat aside to get the harsh alkaline dust out of his mouth; tens of thousands of shod hooves and hobnailed boots had ripped the thin sere grass of late summer here on this stretch of the Horse Heaven Hills, and the few rains hadn’t been enough to lay the light volcanic soil beneath. Dust blew tawny about the fetlocks of the horses, and the rays of the westering sun behind them turned it to a mist of gold all along the front where the armies had met and clashed and parted since dawn.

“Grit gets right into your teeth, doesn’t it?” Lioncel de Stafford said quietly.

“Yeah,” Huon said.

He gave his friend a look; the dust of a hard day made him seem older and Huon was struck again with how much he looked like the Grand Constable, which was sort of odd when you thought about the…

Complex, Huon decided, pleased with his own sophistication. Complicated.

…complex family arrangements. Though you never knew how much of the rumors were true…Thinking about some of them was enough to make you shift uneasily in the saddle at the sinful images. Rather intriguing sinful images, at that; he was dolefully sure that “impure thoughts” were going to figure in his next confession, which was sort of doubly embarrassing when they were sinful thoughts about your friend’s mother, of all people.

It’s easier to be brave in company, though, he thought, and went on quietly:

“This is it.”

“Yup,” Lioncel said. “The jugglers and tumblers and dancing dogs have done their acts, the tables have been carried out, the floor swept, all the dancers are in place for the Grand Volta and the music’s about to start.”

“Dust and Sweat Pavanne with Scrap-Metal Accompaniment,” Huon said, and Lioncel chuckled.

Elsewhere the din of onset sounded where the great hosts came together in an embrace of desperate violence as they had all day, but in this space and moment on the northern flank the mutter was a far-off burr; Huon felt his brain stutter as he tried to take in how big this battle was. Half a continent was here, with edged metal in its hands and murder in its heart.

Beneath the distant surf-roar was the creak of leather and clatter of metal from the royal party and the hard clopping thud of hooves bearing the weight of horse-barding and metal-sheathed rider, and beneath that the same sound from so many thousands more at a little distance, turned into an endless grumbling rumble that you felt up through your seat in the saddle as much as heard.

The High Queen looked over her shoulder and grinned, her white teeth flashing in the shadow of her raised visor, the black ostrich plumes rippling above.

“Mud’s worse than dust, squire,” she said lightly. “Much worse. This is a good day to fight, and the best of company to do it in! Even if it is thirsty work. A drink, if you please.”

“Your Majesty,” he said.

He grinned back as he said it and brought his courser forward, leaning across to put the canteen in her hand. She nodded at him and drank; he felt his heart lurch with a vassal’s love and loyalty, dread and a furious exhilaration like nothing he’d felt before in his fifteen years. His own swig afterwards at the water cut with cleansing wine seemed like a sacrament.

Ahead of them, at right angles to their course, a long line of horsemen stretched north and south, twisting with the rippling curl of the land and far enough back that they were hidden from the enemy to the east by the crest ahead. More came up as he watched, trotting behind the ranks of the Montivalan host and falling in around the standards of Count and Baron as the heavy cavalry was withdrawn from the rest of the kingdom’s battle line and concentrated here.

There was a ripple of movement as spare destriers were led up and men-at-arms and squires and varlets switched saddles and horse-barding to the fresh mounts. Destriers were trained and bred for aggression, and most of them were entire stallions; they knew exactly what the weight of padded leather and steel being buckled onto them meant. Squeals of rage sounded, and here and there one reared. More stamped and mouthed the heavy jointed bits, foam dripping from their jaws.

A cheer went up as the High Queen’s party came through the line and trotted along it, banners fluttering; Huon saw men grinning as they thumped fist to chest or bowed in the saddle. Some shouted out:

“For the Light of the North!”

He felt a twinge at that; Odard had been a troubadour as well as a knight, and he’d made a song in Mathilda’s honor with that title. It had become very popular recently. Chaste and hopeless love by a lowly knight for a lady of impossibly exalted degree was a staple of the stories, but after recent experiences Huon suspected it was better in a chanson than in day-to-day life. It all seemed a lot less theoretical since that haystack.

“What news, Your Majesty?” one baron called. “Do we charge?”

Mathilda laughed back. “Do we charge? Is the Holy Father a Catholic? The High King brings you a great gift this day, chevaliers, esquires and men-at-arms of the Association. A cadeau beyond price. He will give you a chance to die with honor!”

That produced a laugh and a cheer, and more up and down the line as the words were passed from man to man beyond immediate hearing. The chevaliers were in the first rank, a linear forest of bright steel lanceheads atop the twelve-foot ashwood shafts. The plate armor of the men and the articulated steel lames that covered the head and necks, shoulders and breasts of their mounts were often burnished until they glittered as well, and through it shone the bright colors of four-foot kite-shaped shields blazoned with the arms and quarterings of Count and Baron and Knight and the shining gold of their spurs.

The lanceheads wavered a little as the men shifted and the horses stamped and tossed their heads, and the brisk wind caught the pennants and streamed them out behind. The second rank were household men-at-arms of the nobles and manor lords and those squires old enough to ride to battle armored cap-a-pie behind the knights they served; spaced along the line in back were clumps of mounted varlets and younger squires like him, ready to dash in with a spare horse or a new lance or to rescue a knight down and wounded and carry him across a saddlebow back to the field ambulances.

Men were taking a final swig of water cut with rough wine, handing the skins down the rank, tugging to settle their sword belts one last time, touching the war hammers or maces strapped to their saddlebows. Making ready to die as each felt best, some silent, others passing one more foul joke, more crossing themselves and muttering a prayer, shaking hands with a sworn comrade or looking again at a photograph of wife or leman or child tucked into the inside curve of their shields. Men who could afford destrier and full armor could pay the high price of a camera and its operator.

He’d thought he would be envious of the squires old enough to hope for their golden spurs this day, but now he knew they envied him his place by the Queen’s side.

Lord Chancellor Ignatius said squire to the High Queen would be a post of honor and peril, and he was completely damned right, may Saint Benedict bless and keep him. I wouldn’t trade places with anyone here, not for twenty manors and a Count’s blazons. Plus I don’t have to wait in ranks. I get to see everything and know what’s really going on! I’ll really have a story to tell Yseult…

He spared a brief prayer for her, too; his older sister would be stuck helping the nuns and doctors in the field hospital well back, seeing only the wreckage of war and not feeling this driving excitement. The knowledge that destiny was at work, that you were part of the wheel of fate turning on the pivot of mighty deeds…

St. Michael witness, I’ll have a story to tell my grandchildren when I’m an old man! There’s been nothing like this since the Change, nothing!

Or he might die today, of course, and House Liu with him. He knew that, but the thought seemed remote, like a line sung in a romaunt in a hall after dinner.

“Saints Valentin and Michael be with me,” he murmured very quietly. “I will burn a candle the length of my arm from wrist to elbows for them both when the war is done and I ride back to Castle Gervais.”

At the middle of the long line the banner of House Renfrew and the Counts of Odell fell in beside the Lidless Eye of House Arminger. Others trotted to meet them, beneath the blazons of Chehalis and Tillamook, Molalla, Skagit, Dawson, Walla Walla and more and more, all the great families of the Protectorate. When they drew rein, not all the glances exchanged were friendly, and there was a little jockeying for position as horses were spurred accidentally-on-purpose.

“My lords, there’s no time for precedence and state,” Mathilda said crisply. “Just your bannermen and signalers, please.”

House Renfrew of County Odell was led by Viscount Érard, a square hard young face under the visor, blue-eyed and rough with dusty brown beard-stubble. His helmet looked a little incongruous, obviously a brand-new spare brought up during a lull in the action worn atop a suit of plate that had more than its share of fresh dings and nicks. He was probably on his second or third shield of the day; a sword might last a lifetime, but a shield was lucky to see out a few hours of strong men and heavy blows.

“My lord your father?” High Queen Mathilda asked. “I didn’t hear the details.”

The heir to County Odell shrugged in a clatter of metal. “The chirurgeons say he’ll be on his back for six months and limp when he walks again, Your Majesty. Pelvic cracks, hit with a war hammer, they have him in traction and on blood-thinners, but he’ll live, for which God and St. Dismas be praised.”

“Amen!” the High Queen said, crossing herself. “He would try to take on a younger man’s work.”

Érard grinned. “He told me that until today he’d always thought it was just a metaphor, Your Majesty, but that now he can indeed truthfully say he’s busted his ass for the Crown.”

She raised her eyes a little in fond exasperation; the Grand Constable just blinked, but there was a bark of harsh male laughter from the noblemen before the High Queen went on:

“Ride with me a moment, my lords.”

They crested the rise, two-score horsemen, and rode a little down it. Ahead of them the land sloped eastward, a gentle surface with only a little roll to it for several thousand yards; then some steeper ground. The shadows of the lances lay long and thin before them. The ground was open, save for the rust-streaked mound of brush growing in drifted soil that marked the grave of some great farming-machine of the ancient world, the size of a peasant’s cottage and dead with the Change long before he was born.

The rest was pasture, nothing growing more than knee-high…except the piled bodies of men and horses, of which there were a fair number scattered here and there. Everyone but the screen had kept below the crest as the heavy horse moved into position, but that had meant a fair bit of fighting to keep eyes away as both armies extended their flanks northward, reaching for advantage.

“That’s good ground, that’s very good ground, Your Majesty,” Count Chaka of Molalla said admiringly, his smile splitting his broad-featured dark-brown young face. “You couldn’t find any better. Not for a knight’s battle.”

Piotr Stavarov of Chehalis nodded silently, his pale blunt jowly face looking very like a wolf’s for a moment; by what Huon suspected was no coincidence, the arms on his shield included a white wolf passant. Countess Anne of Tillamook wasn’t here in person, of course, but her contingent was and her war-captain Baron Juhel de Netarts, the Warden of the Coast March. If the company of the greatest nobles of the PPA intimidated him, he didn’t give any sign, just tapped fist into palm on either hand like a man absently settling his gauntlets as he frowned, narrow-eyed.

“The Grand Constable picked it and the High King confirmed the choice,” Mathilda said. “We’ve spent considerable blood today getting things set up this way.”

Out there, men were fighting right now, and his breath came quicker at the sight. Not the smashing impetus of a charge à l’outrance; this was the darting quicksilver snap-and-slash of the eastern light cavalry, the way ranchers and rovers made war.

Huon could see little knots and groups of riders tiny with distance, each trailing its plume of dust. The twinkle of arrowheads as the horse-archers swept past each other, rising in the stirrups to bend their short thick recurve bows. Now and then two groups would dart together, and the sabers and shetes came out, the blades swinging in deadly arcs. He thought he caught the faint ting-crang! of steel on steel and the shrill war-shouts. Or possibly of men screaming in mortal pain and fear of death. Once a melee ran over a knot of the fallen, and the black wings of the carrion birds squabbling for tidbits exploded upward like a torrent of grief.

He grimaced a little at that. He’d seen men die-you couldn’t grow to his years without that happening, in the modern world-but the birds were an uncomfortable reminder that at seventh and last people were made out of meat.

With souls, remember that, Huon. So many to Heaven or Hell or Purgatory today…Holy Mary, Mother of God, intercede for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

After a moment he noticed the leaders had given the skirmishing only a glance as they turned their field glasses about. A squire was supposed to learn by example as well as precept, even a very new and very young one; and he had the luck to be a squire of the royal household, with more to see than how to hold a lance and charge when the trumpets blew. His left hand was busy steadying the two spare lances that rested with their butts in a rawhide bucket at his saddlebow, but he managed to get the small pair of binoculars cased at his waist out and up to his eyes; the light squire’s sallet he wore didn’t have a visor to get in the way.

The Association foot was northward to provide the base on which the chivalry would pivot, blocks of spearmen and crossbowmen and field-catapults between them; beyond that only swarms of light cavalry, screening the flank of the war-host of Montival. Some of them were from the eastern manors of the Protectorate, where the PPA bred its own cowboys; more were from south of the Columbia, refugees from the Central Oregon Rancher’s Association territories occupied by the enemy. They weren’t very organized beyond the level of individual ranches, but they certainly had plenty of spirit. And not much inclination to take prisoners. They wanted their homes and grazing back, and they wanted revenge.

South beyond the last Portlander banners he could just make out the positions Clan Mackenzie held, the long jagged hedge of swine-feathers planted point-out and behind them the harrow formation of the kilted archers. They weren’t engaged right now either; the thick drifts and windrows of dead out three hundred paces beyond their position showed why, and what happened when a charge tried the arrowstorm. And the goose-feathered arrows standing in the ground so thick that they made a gray haze over it where the flail had fallen, hundreds of thousands of shafts falling out of the sky like hard steel rain.

Eoghan-youths and maidens about his own age who were something like squires in a rude tribal fashion-were running about there, snatching up armfuls and rushing them back to the reserves. Far and faint he could hear the triumphant pagan war-chant of the clansfolk roared from thousands of throats:

We are the point

And we are the edge-

We are the wolves that Hecate fed!

Huon shivered a little and crossed himself as it ended with a rising banshee shriek and then silence save for the eerie wail of the pipers; so did Lioncel. Mackenzies weren’t actually evil, the way the Church Universal and Triumphant was, even the most stiff-necked Catholics admitted that. But…

They are very, very strange and weird. I’m glad I was born among sensible and civil folk with normal customs and in the bosom of Holy Church.

Mathilda bent her wrist to look at the watch tucked under her armored gauntlet, then up and back at the nearest tethered balloon behind the Montivalan lines. A heliograph snapped a signal from the basket below, bright enough to leave after-images. Huon could read Morse; it was part of the training a youth of gentle blood received, but this was in code and gibberish to him.

The High Queen followed it; Huon could see her lips moving slightly as she decoded mentally.

“Not long now,” she said. “The High King is on his way. Rudi’s coming.”

The Grand Constable nodded and spoke, her voice as cool and expressionless as her pale grey eyes:

“It’s our turn to do something besides feint and skirmish, and start bearing our share of the heavy work. Most of the action has been down towards the Columbia, the Bearkillers and the Corvallans. And the Yakima regiments.”

There were a few muttered grumbles, from the retinues of the great lords if not from the noblemen themselves, and Mathilda laughed.

“Be content, my lords, be very well content. The High King hasn’t stinted our plate. Take another look at who we’re facing now.”

Stavarov’s field glasses were a heavy Zeiss model, pre-Change heirlooms his elders had looted early in the first year. You couldn’t really stand in a knight’s saddle, your legs were already about straight and the armored saddlebow and curving crupper locked you in place, but he managed to come up a little as he leveled the binoculars and peered eastward.

He grunted and then spoke bleakly: “The Sword of the Prophet. They’ve got that lacquered armor. Just about the color of dried blood, I can make that out, now that they’re closer. There are Satan’s own lot of them! At least as many as we are here. They’re the only real lancers the enemy have, and they’re bloody madmen, too.”

“The High King shows his trust for us by using our chevaliers against the enemy’s elite. That’ll satisfy the most sensitive man’s honor,” Lord Chaka said happily.

Huon nodded to himself; he’d been a page for a while with House Jones, and he liked and admired the young Count.

“Yes,” Stavarov said dryly. “Though it may be less good for his body.”

Everyone chuckled at that except Tiphaine d’Ath, and she unbent enough to quirk an eyebrow. Mathilda went on:

“And our Boiseans versus theirs in the center, though that was more talking and less fighting and then the lot of them just sat down. That was…fortunate. They’ve been giving the Corvallans and the Yakima foot hard trouble, they certainly don’t have any objection to fighting them.”

Everyone but the Grand Constable grinned at that, though Huon noticed that the High Queen’s expression was a little strained; he’d seen how tight-wound she’d been about it, before things came right.

Just then trumpets sounded; faint, but out in the fields between the main armies. The enemy light horse were withdrawing. So were the Montivalan horse-archers, forming up and heading northward around the PPA’s position, some in ordered ranks while others just streamed away in a clotted sprawl that still gave the impression of coiled danger. A smaller party came cantering towards the High Queen’s standard, and everyone waited.

There’s a lot more waiting to war than I’d thought there would be, Huon thought. They leave that part out of the songs.

He leaned aside and whispered that to Lioncel, who snorted as he smothered a laugh and then said sotto voce:

“And then Bold Sir Dagobert/He did yawn/And then he did scratch himself/With a stick up under his breastplate/And wish he could get down/From his faithful steed Papillion/And take a leak…”

The three horsemen reined in, saluting; the High Queen returned the gesture gravely with a thump of fist to breastplate. Off to the side, Huon thought she winked. Certainly Lady Mary of the Dúnedain did, the more conspicuous for the eyepatch. She was tall and slim and elegant in her dark green-and-black Ranger war-gear, spired helmet and brigandine with polished bronze rivets holding the little steel plates between the layers of leather. Huon found himself fascinated by one of the men with her; he had a headdress of buffalo hair and horns, black-and-white war paint on his face, a vest of white bone tubes across his mail shirt, eagle feathers woven into his braids and several fresh scalps slung from his saddle, besides tufts of older ones sewn into the outside seams of his buckskin pants.

“Saw ’em off,” he said. “The Dúnedain punched through while we tied up most of their screen and got a look. They’ve got some good horses, the Rangers, and they ride pretty well. For white-eyes.”

The Sioux rolled a cigarette in a leaf wrapper one-handed as he spoke, flicked a lighter and ceremoniously inhaled a lungful of the smoke. Huon watched with interest. Some of the tribes in Montival used tobacco as a sacrament-the Warm Springs confederation and the Yakama among them-but he’d seldom seen it himself.

“It wasn’t too much like hard work, either,” the Indian said cheerfully. “I’ll leave that to you guys.”

Rick Mat’o Yamni, Huon reminded himself. A war chief of the Lakota. Who are part of Montival now, and invading the Cutters from the eastward. St. Stephen’s wounds, but this is a big war!

He handed the cigarette to Lady Mary’s husband, passing a hand through the smoke before he did. Ingolf Vogeler inhaled, in a way that showed he was accustomed to the peculiar habit. He had a strange accent too, at once flat and harsh and slightly singsong; he was from the fabulous lands of the far east, east of the Mississippi itself, though he looked mostly like a battered fighting-man a little past thirty with a cropped brown beard, nose slightly kinked by an old break, and dark-blue eyes; his deeds were legend, though. He’d been the one to bring the news of the Sword all the way from Nantucket to Montival, and had accompanied the High King on the Quest all the way there and back again. They called him Ingolf the Wanderer, and it was said no man since the Change had crossed from the eastern sea to the western so many times.

He spoke to the High Queen with casual friendliness; they’d been on that Quest together, after all.

“They weren’t trying too hard, Matti. The light horse weren’t, that is.”

When some of the Counts scowled at him, he added: “Your Majesty. Just screening while the Prophet’s bone-breakers got into position.”

That’s right, they have different ideas about rank and station off in the Midwest, Huon reminded himself. Though Lord Vogeler is nobly born; his father was a Sheriff, which is a baron, near enough, from what I’ve heard. He married Lady Mary, who’s the High King’s half sister and daughter of Lady Signe of the Bearkillers, and so a princess twice over. And of course he was one of the High King’s companions.

For a moment he felt pure sea-green envy; Ingolf’s name would live as long as honor’s praise was sung, and so would Lady Mary’s and the others who’d made the great journey and shared its perils. So would his elder brother Odard’s name and fame go on down the ages, who’d been with them and who’d died on the cold shores of the Atlantic. Squires generations from now would hear the ballads and try to model themselves on him.

Well, I’m young yet. Odard brought great honor to our House, but I’ll do my part too.

Ingolf went on as the High Queen took the smoking cylinder and joined in the ritual: “They weren’t really pushing at us or even trying to keep us out of sight of their main battle line, just making us keep out of bow-range so the Sword of the Prophet could get into position and get ready without being harassed, I think.”

“They’re deploying by companies of around two hundred, flank to flank in a triplex formation,” Lady Mary added. “Tricky, charging in a three-deep line-”

Huon nodded unconsciously; moving horses were big objects and collisions a disaster waiting to happen.

“-but from the way they moved I think they’re up to it.”

Ingolf nodded. “This is the big push, probably the last they can make this fight. Seems like we all had the same idea; the southern half of this…screwed up battle-”

“I think the phrase you’re looking for is cluster-fuck, Lord Vogeler,” Tiphaine d’Ath said crisply, which brought a chuckle.

He nodded and handed the cigarette back to Three Bears; Lady Mary made a slight moue of distaste as it passed her:

“-the southern part of this gigantic cluster-fuck…is tied up solid for now. So they’re going to hit us as hard as they can here on the north. I don’t think they realize how many of your lobster-backs are here. If they think they’ve got all our reserves pinned down piecemeal, they’ll calculate on ramming home a charge and breaking this flank, then rolling us up because we don’t have enough left to throw in and stop them.”

“And we’re going to do that to them,” the Grand Constable said. “Any field artillery with the Prophet’s men?”

“Not that I could see,” Ingolf said.

Lady Mary nodded. “We Rangers got as close as we could, about half ordinary arrow range-the Sword carry bow and lance both, it wasn’t easy-and didn’t spot any.”

“They don’t like it, the Cutters,” Ingolf said. “Too many gears, some crazy religious thing.”

“We could bring up some batteries from the general reserve,” Count Piotr said thoughtfully. “Soften them up.”

“Then they’d retaliate in kind, my lord of Chehalis, and this would turn into another artillery duel,” Tiphaine replied. “They may not approve of complex machines, but they’ve still got a lot of Boisean artillery working for them. On balance, and right here, taking the springalds and scorpions off the table is a net advantage to us if we want to force a rapid decision. Besides the no-fun-at-all part of having roundshot and four-foot darts and balls of napalm shot at you.”

Everyone nodded; Association nobles used artillery and heliographs and field-engineers and the other accoutrements of scientific modern war, but most of them didn’t really like the contraptions of springs and levers much. Knightly accomplishment lay in the clash of lance and blade. From the slight pursed expression around the Grand Constable’s mouth, she didn’t agree, at least not in principle.

Lioncel caught Huon’s eye, inclined his head towards his liege-lady and nodded, mouthing almost silently: She can’t stand that Society bullshit.

Huon was surprised the other boy had known what he was thinking, and mildly scandalized; his family had been Society-the Society for Creative Anachronism, a heroic band who kept alive the arts of knightly combat, the skills and graces of noble life and good lordship before the Change. Or at least his mother had been; his father had been a free-lance man-at-arms who rose to noble rank during the early days of the Association, like many others in the terrible years. That made his mouth thin a little. His parents were dead, his father long ago in the Protector’s War and his mother more recently, dying by the sword for treason.

And she actually was a traitor. She could have gotten us all killed and the estates attainted, she nearly did, only Odard’s deeds and the High Queen’s favor saved us from the Regent’s anger…but she was still Mother.

Just then a new sound came from the southward, deep and thudding, blurred by distance-and, Huon realized, because tens of thousands of voices could not call in perfect unison even if they tried. It grew and cleared as it approached, and behind the wave of sound came a band of men beneath a great banner of green and blue and silver, the Crowned Mountain and Sword of the new High Kingdom of Montival. Knights of the Protector’s Guard, some Bearkiller A-Listers, and the bowmen of the High King’s Archers following on their bicycles.

And the shout…an enormous guttural sound, like Pacific surf growling on storm-beaten cliffs:

“Arrrtos! Arrrrtos!”

The High Queen swept her own hand up. “Artos and Montival!” she shouted, like a bronze bell pealing.

Now the ranks of the knights and men-at-arms were taking up the call, thunder-loud and close, like a chorus of trumpets. Some of them were hammering lance-shafts against their shields as well, a drumbeat to the chorus:

“Artos! Artos! ARTOS!”

The man in the lead of the approaching party reined in his great black horse, its hoofs beating the air for a moment; Epona was nearly as famous as her rider, like something from a chanson de geste. He drew his sword, his left hand reaching for the long blade hanging at his right hip, and thrust it high. Huon felt and heard himself grunt a little, as if something impalpable had punched him in the gut like a quarterstaff. It was the Sword of the Lady-

Obviously the Virgin Mother of God, though the poor pagans don’t realize it.

— forged in the world beyond the world like Curtana or Durendal or Joyeuse, and it shone. Not with light…

At least I don’t think so, he thought, blinking and taking a shaky breath; he’d seen it before, but you never got used to it, never. Not just like a bright light. As if it’s shining inside my head somehow.

In form it was a knight’s longsword, thirty-six inches of tapering blade; the guard was a shallow crescent like the new Moon, the double-lobed hilt of silver-inlaid black staghorn, the pommel a shaped crystal of something like opal gripped in branching antlers. If you were close enough the swirling patterns in the not-really-steel drew your eye, falling inward and inward through infinite shapes that were always the same and never repeated, until the universe seem to be opening outward-

But it glowed, as if it lit all about it and at the same time washed it out to a faded dream, too real for the world of common day. For a moment Huon Liu felt as if he were a figure in a tapestry or an illuminated missal. Then like a hero himself, simply because he was here and following the Sword’s bearer.

He tore his eyes away. The sound of the cheering cut off, falling to a murmur and then something like a collective intake of breath as the blade pointed high. Then the High King sheathed the sword, waving to the host and drawing rein beside the Queen with a friendly nod to Rick Three Bears and Ingolf and his kinswoman.

His suit of plate showed evidence of hard recent service, and the visor of his sallet had been torn away. Huon could see the ripped hole where one of the pivots had been, just in front of one of the two sprays of raven feathers that ornamented the helm; he blinked as he realized that Artos had probably simply gripped it with one hand and stripped it off when some foeman’s blow bent it out of shape, casually rending the tough alloy steel. The face beneath was a young man’s, in his mid-twenties and with a straight-nosed, high-cheeked look; the strong cleft chin was only a little concealed by a short-cropped beard as bright red-gold as the locks of hair that escaped the mail coif. Blood had trickled down from a cut across his forehead and dried, with smears showing where he’d wiped it out of his eyes with a palm.

Lord Chancellor Ignatius was with him, in the plain good armor of his Order; he nodded to Huon with a smile and then made an imperious gesture behind him, and someone passed forward a fresh helmet; its surface was beautifully worked in a feather design of black niello, but obviously battle gear and not for parade.

“Now, Your Majesty. We are not going to lose you to a stray arrow. Not from carelessness.”

“Arra, and I thought my mother behind the battlefield,” the High King said, in a strong pleasant Mackenzie lilt; but he unstrapped the damaged helmet, tossed it to the attendant and accepted the fresh one.

“And the best of the day to you, my lords, my lady wife and Queen,” he went on, trying the visor. “It’s time, I think.”

“If the other side thinks so too,” the Grand Constable said, in what wasn’t quite agreement. “It takes two.”

Artos-who had been Rudi Mackenzie-grinned. “They will. It’s breaking contact that the Prophet wants now, and for that he has to rock us back first, lest we wreck his host with our pursuit. Perhaps he still hopes to carry the day, the creature. It isn’t a favorable prospect they’re facing otherwise, retreating through hostile land they’ve already stripped bare of everything that isn’t behind fortress walls or hidden in the hills, and with winter looming.”

“Past my people, Your Majesty,” Count Felipe de Aguirre said.

He was Count of Walla Walla and the Eastermark; the city and the castles of the County Palatine still mostly held out behind the enemy’s lines and harried their outposts and foraging parties with slashing mounted raids and ambushes and arrows in the night. Not to mention the fact that he’d left his Countess to hold the chartered city of Walla Walla in his name when he joined the host of Montival; there was a hungry look in his dark eyes, and the squire was glad it wasn’t directed at him.

He’s a young man too, a Changeling like me, like the Queen and the High King, Huon thought. This is our time. It’s our world now, the Changelings’ world.

“Indeed, it’s bloody and useful work they’ve done and will do,” Artos said to the Count Palatine.

Then he went on to them all; the nobles leaned forward a little, tightly focused:

“See you, they’ve tried hard all day to hammer our right back and away from the Columbia to cut us off from supply and water, and it didn’t work…didn’t ever quite work, though they came close more than once. They tried to push at our center…and Fred Thurston stopped that, the luck and cleverness of the world. Now we’re going to hammer their right wing back. Against the river and its gorge if we can, and put those unforgiving cliffs under their backsides, the which will be profoundly discouraging to the omadhauns if we can pull it off. Or we may be able to chase them all the way to the lower Yakima and catch them at the bridges. To your men, then, my lords, and the Powers strengthen the arms of your knights, for the fate of the kingdom and all our folk rest on the points of their lances and the edges of their good swords this day.”

There was a thump of salutes and the noblemen turned their mounts and cantered back to their places, each taking his post at the head of his menie, his fighting-tail of household knights and men-at-arms and vassal barons and their followers.

The High King turned to Ingolf and his companions. “Ingolf, you carry the word to the CORA Sheriffs; and Mary, you to the lords of the Association light horse. If we can break the Sword of the Prophet the enemy will fall back as best they can. Don’t let them rally.”

He slapped a fist into a palm for emphasis, a flat smack of steel on leather.

“I want a merciless pursuit and a relentless one. It’s a profound shaking of their faith in the Prophet and the Ascended Masters I intend, and for that I want the survivors running shrieking in terror until they hit the Bitterroots and not stopping overmuch along the way. Harry them. Take whatever chances are necessary. See that the remount herds are well forward so our horse-archers can keep up the pace as long as needful. And give them my solemn word I will hang any man who stops to plunder anything but food, weapons and fresh horses while the enemy are still running.”

Ingolf raised an eyebrow. After a moment Huon understood; those spare horses were the main wealth left to most of the mounted bowmen who’d lost their lands and cattle to the enemy. Bringing the remounts forward would mean they could follow a beaten opponent for days if necessary. It also meant they could lose the herds entirely if they were the ones who had to fall back. Artos nodded acknowledgment before he went on:

“But that’s only risky if we lose, and I don’t intend to. Get them ready, brother-in-law; promise and threaten as necessary, but do it. And you, sister mine. Now.”

Ingolf nodded and made a casual salute. Lady Mary delivered a more formal one in Ranger style. Rick Three Bears just flicked the stub of his cigarette away.

“You should have more Lakota out here, if you want a merciless pursuit, Strong Raven,” he said. “But hey, we’ll do what we can.”

“I’m sure you will. Farewell, and the Lady shield you and Lugh lend his spear to strike down your foes.”

They cantered off, skirting the rear of the Association lancers. Huon smiled to himself as Mathilda stretched out a gauntleted hand and Artos took it in his for a moment.

“Together, my heart,” he heard the High King say softly.

“Always.”

Mathilda chuckled. “How Odard would have loved this!”

“He’d have charged like William’s minstrel Taillefer at Hastings, tossing his sword up and catching it and singing the Chanson de Roland.”

Then the King’s smile died, and his head swung towards the enemy. He spoke again, more softly still, as if to himself or to something or Someone invisible to common sight:

“Peace to the sky

Sky to the earth

Earth beneath sky

Strength in all.”

Then: “Morrigú-Badb-Macha, hear me. Great Threefold Queen, Red Hag, Battle Crow, Dark Mother, She who is most terrible in majesty amid the shattering of spears, You claimed me long ago and ever have I walked with Your power. To Your black-wing host I pledge the harvest of the blood-watered field whose crop is the skulls of men. Grant me victory as I strike for the land I am sworn to guard, for my folk and their homes and their children yet unborn. Let that land fight for us, whose flesh and bone grew from this good earth we till. And know that if this is the day when the King must die for the people, then I go to You consenting, with open eyes, as to a joyful feast. So mote it be.”

Huon shivered, as for a moment great sable wings seemed to swirl around the High King’s form, caressing and enfolding. Then he shook off the pagan fancy. The King’s voice was hard and firm as it snapped out:

“Sound advance!”

Trumpets screamed as the signalers blew, and then others took them up behind, all down the line. Huon turned and felt his eyes grow wide; Lioncel swore softly by St. Michael. The lance-points showed first, then the pennants. Then all at once miles of ridgeline bristled like the scales of some great beast, like a dragon waking on its bed of gold in terror and majesty. Glittering steel and blazoned shield, plumes and banners and destriers rising in caracole, as men roared out the war cries of their Houses and tossed their lances in the air, more and more…

A savage blaze, an exultant splendor like a dream of glory come to earth.

“Face Gervais, face Death!” he shouted, his voice lost in the roar as he called the war cry of his barony and his bloodline. “Artos and Montival!”

“Lance!” Mathilda Arminger snapped, holding out her right hand without looking around in a gesture unmistakable even in the tumult.

Huon juggled reins and gave a grunt of effort as he levered the ashwood shaft into a position where she could slap her palm on it. Lioncel was doing likewise for the Grand Constable; then they dropped back together as the plate-armored leaders and guardsmen drew into a blunt wedge behind the banner of the High Kingdom. The world blurred into hammering sound and steel as the main body came up on either side.

“Blow prepare to charge!”

The long Portlander oliphants screamed, like silver in torment. The chivalry of the Association was riding to war, eight thousand lances strong, and the earth shook beneath the hooves of the destriers.

“À l’outrance-charge!”