The Given Sacrifice

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Valley of Paradise, near Corwin

(Formerly western Montana)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

August 28th, Change Year 26/2024 AD

“Hold them off, by Our Lady of the Citadel!” Rudi heard Tiphaine d’Ath mutter. “Don’t chase them, just hold them and look like it’s killing you with the effort.”

“They’ll do it long enough, Grand Constable, long enough,” he said. “And the effort is killing some, to be sure.”

Mathilda swept the horizon northward. “Nothing that the gliders missed. Everyone’s here, and the Volta can begin.”

They sat their horses on a slight rise about long catapult shot from the action, surrounded by the usual staff and couriers and guardsmen; and they were out of the woods, literally if not metaphorically. Well behind them lay the arched stone gate that had For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People on it-another of the old American ruler Roosevelt’s works, like Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood; the man had certainly left his mark on the world and usually in a way Rudi admired.

The Valley of Paradise opened out before them. As far as looks went, it lived up to its heavenly name. To the west were the Gallatin Mountains, to the east the Absarokas, blue in the distance and tipped with white. The lowland ran north-south, opening out in a broad diamond shape with the Yellowstone river running through it in a broad swath of gallery forest, aspen and willow and big cottonwoods. Up from the valley flats rose buffalo-hump foothills, dark where tongues of spruce and fir and pine thickened amid the grass, fading into the endless mountain forests. Even with the heights upon every hand it felt. .

Big, somehow, he thought. As if the sky were larger, somehow. And yet-is that sense of some menace just things working below the surface of what my waking mind thinks, or am I really feeling it?

“The League and the Dominions are on the other side of Bozeman Pass,” Rudi said aloud.

“The League’s siege-train was most impressive, what we saw in Iowa,” Mathilda said, her voice carefully neutral. “Now they’ll get a chance to use it.”

“Lucky it is that the CUT put their major forts there when they were thinking how to protect Corwin, is it not?” Rudi said, with just a little sarcasm.

“Because nobody would be crazy enough to come through Yellowstone,” d’Ath said dryly. “Always better to fight nature than men, when you can. They’re earning their corn, our gallant allies. . at last.”

Mathilda made a slight chiding sound; she’d never say anything so impolitic in public. Ruling folk were seldom really alone, and their words travelled. You had to remember that what you said casually could hit like a club.

Rudi glanced upward; sunlight flashed off his reconnaissance fliers, wheeling thousands of feet above. The High King’s host had direct communication with the League and Dominion forces now, by very daring glider pilots, which cut about a week off the closest land route. Coming through Yellowstone had been nerve-wracking, mainly because he had to cover both banks of the river, giving the enemy the chance to cut one half of the army off from the other and destroy it. . or it would have given them the chance, if the Scouts hadn’t given him a better grasp of the Cutters’ movements than their own commanders had.

Sure, and it’s the Threefold Law in operation.

“Not long now,” Mathilda put in. “A month or two, and we’ll be seeing Órlaith again.”

Rudi nodded agreement, putting aside a stab of longing that felt like a wound to speak judiciously:

“There’s no doubt about the outcome. Their last chance to preserve anything was to keep us from crossing into this valley. . and they failed at that, thanks to our Scout friends. We’re just seeing to the details the now.”

The details would mean an arrow through the gut for some, which would be unpleasantly final whether you were winning or losing. No point in mentioning that; it was a cost of doing business.

“About now, I think,” he said aloud instead.

The surface of the valley was open, with few buildings and those clustered inside palisades or earth berms. Much of it was tilled in big square fields colored brown or shades of green, planted with buckwheat and rye and potatoes and other hardy crops that could grow in a climate that consisted of an eight-month winter briefly interrupted by two months each of spring and autumn. Most of the harvest had been gathered, except for some rye that was cut but still standing with the sheaves in stooks. The rest was pasture and hay-meadow, and there was rarely anything tall enough to be much obstacle to a horse.

He leveled his binoculars. The skirmish-it would have been counted a battle in any war less huge-involved several thousand fighters on either side. There was a block in the reddish-brown armor of the Sword of the Prophet, about a regiment’s worth, six or seven hundred, hanging back to the north, waiting to punch at the right moment. That was more than he’d seen of them since the Horse Heaven Hills last year, and he hadn’t missed them at all; the Prophet’s guardsmen were as disciplined as any of his own troops, too disciplined by far, and fanatically dedicated to their cause and leader. They waited quietly with the thread-thin shafts of their lances standing upright topped by the bright slivers of the heads.

The main action was between the light horse on both sides, armed with bow and round shield and curved sword, few with more armor than a helmet and mail shirt. His CORA levies and some of the PPA’s eastern cavalry and the Boisean equivalents, along with the Richland volunteers under his brother-in-law Ingolf, and Rick Three Bear’s Lakota and the Dúnedain.

The Grand Constable was using her own binoculars, below the raised shelf of her visor. “Now, the question is, will the CORA-boys obey the signal to get the hell out of the way? They’ve got lots of motivation, but not much discipline.”

“Oh, I think so,” Rudi said. “We’ve all been working together for some time now. You have Baron Tucannon. . Lord Maugis de Grimmond. . in charge of your first detachment of men-at-arms, correct?”

She nodded. “I’ve been giving him more work, now that a lot of the Counts are out of the picture. He’s very able, and well-born enough he doesn’t have to kill anyone to get the others to pay attention. And he’s mentally flexible as well as intelligent.”

Which was not something you could say for every Associate baron; they were all brave, but many had about as much subtlety as a war hammer in the face. Maugis was a vassal of the Counts of Walla Walla, a smallish wiry young man with frizzy red hair and jug ears, and he was very clever indeed. Also. .

“Also the enemy burned his manor house and villages and those of his vassals, and chased him and his men like a wolf before hounds through the Blue Mountains for months while his lady held their castle against the besiegers.”

Motivation like that could turn a man into a berserker; or if combined with intelligence and self-control into someone very useful to his King.

“Let’s bring it all together and sample the taste of the stewpot,” Rudi said. “Now, Grand Constable.”

D’Ath nodded and raised her gauntleted hand and the wand of office, chopping it downward. A signal team nearby worked the lever of their heliograph, flashing the sun through an angle. Instants later trumpets blew below, half a dozen different varieties.

The Montivallan light horse had been busy at the deadly swirl of a horse-archery engagement, small parties sweeping past each other, rising in the saddles to shoot as they passed, advancing or retreating with eyeblink agility. Only occasionally would two bands clash hand to hand when one or the other miscalculated. A brief melee of shetes and sabers, the clash of steel on steel or the cracking thud of blades against the varnished leather of shields, a scream of war cries or just animal shrieks of rage and pain, then the combatants exploding outward with riderless horses galloping and bodies lying in the green grass.

At the sound of trumpets the Montivallans all turned tail and ran for the shelter of the woods as fast as their horses could carry them, turning in the saddle to shoot behind. The Cutters pursued, but cautiously-feigned retreats to draw an enemy in were the favorite tactic of all the vast interior lands of mountain and steppe and desert. The Cutters would be afraid of artillery, too, field catapults that outranged even the powerful composite bows. They didn’t make the machines themselves, and now that Boise was part of Montival they didn’t have allies to supply the lack. What they wouldn’t be afraid of, hopefully, was what was really waiting for them. Down there Oak Barstow Mackenzie, the First Armsman of the Clan, would be judging distances and preparing to give the signal.

About. .

“Now,” Rudi said crisply; it was the moment he’d have chosen.

Three thousand Mackenzies stood and threw off their disguising war-cloaks, trotting forward out of the final screen of trees. They were in open order, and they drew as they came, halting only when they needed to pull that last few inches. The savage snarl of the war-pipes sounded, raw and hoarse, and the inhuman roar of the Lambeg drums.

“Let the gray geese fly!” Rudi murmured to himself, what the bow-captains would be shouting down there. “Wholly together-shoot!”

The arrows flew upward at forty-five degrees for maximum range, two more flights in the air before the first came slanting down out of the sky and struck like steel-tipped rain. The loose mass of horse-archers wavered, men dropping clawing at the iron in their flesh, horses running in bucking frenzies.

“They’re really going to have to stop underestimating infantry,” d’Ath said thoughtfully, in a detached professional tone. “Particularly longbowmen. Everybody understands a pike when it’s pointed at them, but it’s taking them a while to realize foot-archers have three times as many bows per unit of front than mounted ones. Horses take up a lot of space.”

“It’s a bit late for them to learn. Now let’s see how desperate they are to knock back our vanguard.”

The cowhorns the Cutters used sounded in a series of snarling blats. The whole mass came forward after an instant’s wavering, and the contingent of the Sword of the Prophet moved up in support. . or to take advantage of the arrow-absorbing capacity of their light cavalry, depending on how you wanted to look at it. The Mackenzies were spread out, and they hadn’t planted their swine-feathers-the knock-down double-ended spears they carried to jam into the dirt and hold off horsemen with a hedge of points while they shot.

It would look like a tempting bit of arrogance by an overconfident invader, a chance to get in close with the shete and cut down footmen.

“There they go, taking the bait. Sure, and when something’s too good to be true, it usually isn’t true,” Rudi said. “But you’ll also seldom go wrong encouraging men to believe what they strongly want to be so.”

“Let’s see how Lord Maugis is at timing,” d’Ath said meditatively, raising a brow for permission to wait. He nodded; that was something you needed to know.

They waited a few moments more; Mathilda was looking a bit unhappy at the length of it by the end. She was a good competent field commander but a little more conservative in her style than Rudi. Or the Grand Constable-the gauntlet was just going up again when the Portlander oliphants sounded down below, long and shrill, a sound that somehow gleamed like polished metal in the sun, fit to raise the hair on the back of your neck.

“He’s good,” the Grand Constable said. “Waited until the last minute but no longer.”

“Or we’re all three wrong in the same way,” Rudi said dryly.

He wished he were down there, ready to charge with the rest, but that would have been self-indulgent under the circumstances.

There was a concerted flicker from among the underbrush, as the knights walked their destriers forward. They’d had time to add the horse-barding for their mounts as well, or rather their varlets had; armor of articulated steel plates riveted to padded leather, covering for head and neck, shoulders and breast. It made the great beasts look like dragons uncoiling as they emerged into the sunlight, the more so for the touches of fancy, plumes nodding, rondels and silvered unicorn-horns on the chamfrons, spikes or brass inlay. There were five hundred of them, their formation a block of two staggered lines, a mass of muscle and hoof and steel that would make ground quiver hundreds of yards away once they got moving. The clatter and ring of the harness of men and horses carried clearly to where he waited.

More metal glittered as the low-held lances went up to the rest position, hand on the grip behind the bowl-shaped guard and the butt resting on the thigh. The trumpets screamed again, and the mass of horsemen began to move, first a walk, then a canter, the colorful pennants on the lances beginning to flutter, blazoned with the arms of knight and baron and count like the big kite-shaped shields. Then the fast pulsing call for the charge à l’outrance.

The horses were as well-trained as the men, and they rocked up to a controlled hand-gallop as the lancepoints fell in a rippling wave amid a crashing bark of:

“Haro, Portland! Artos and Montival!”

“Go for it, ironheads,” d’Ath said. “Another chance to die with honor.”

The words were cool, but there was undertone of affection; Rudi reflected that the Grand Constable had mellowed somewhat over the last few years.

The Cutter horse-archers had learned enough not to try to play at handstrokes with Associate men-at-arms or their Bearkiller equivalents. With enough room to run and sting like an elusive cloud of wasps they could be very dangerous, but here they were caught between the onrushing lancepoints and the Sword of the Prophet frantically deploying and countercharging behind them; their only option was to slide away eastward, and that put them in the killing ground where the Mackenzie arrows still rained down. The men-at-arms slammed through the ones who remained without slowing, spearing men out of the saddle or just letting their chargers bowl the light cow ponies aside with their armored shoulders. The tall long-legged destriers were fast once they got going, if not as nimble as the quarter-horses, and they built up massive momentum.

The Sword of the Prophet answered with a charge of their own, but they’d never done well against the heavy metal of the western knights in this sort of stand-up fight. Twenty minutes later the whole Cutter force was in flight north, with half the Montivallan light cavalry ant-tiny figures in pursuit. A brigade of Fred’s Boiseans came swinging down the cracked, potholed pavement of the old US Highway 89 and out into the valley, with a regiment of Bearkiller cataphracts deploying into the open on their flanks; their leader Eric Larsson had argued furiously that they be allowed to launch the charge, and had still been grumbling about it when Rudi left him.

Behind them came blocks of sixteen-foot pikes, like rectangular walking forests topped with a glitter of honed steel; the levies of the Free Cities, with the banners of their towns before and their batteries of field catapults rumbling along between. A crash of boots and squeal of fifes, and a deep chorus paced to the marching stride:

“O’er the hills and o’er the main

Through mountain snows and burning plain

Our King commands and we obey

Over the hills and far away-”

Rudi nodded to the Grand Constable; he and Mathilda turned the noses of their coursers and trotted down to the main body. Their escorts followed, the High King’s Archers and the lancers and mounted crossbowmen of the Protector’s Guard bristling slightly at each other. Huon turned and gave a friendly salute good-bye to Lioncel de Stafford where he stood by the Grand Constable’s stirrup, handing up a leather map folder.

“D’you think they’ll be a book, someday, Songs of the Prophet’s War?” Rudi said. “There are enough to fill a mort of pages. Mind, there’s been a fair deal of marching and waiting in camp, and singing does make that go faster.”

Matti grinned. “If there is a book. . maybe Marching to Corwin. . your little sister Fiorbhinn will write it. And make up half the songs, and change the rest to make them more lively, and nothing anyone but an expert could sing or play.”

“And claim the credit for the whole, the scamp,” Rudi chuckled. “Mind, she does have the talent; to be just, for simple things as well as the high art. Odd that she and Maude are so unalike, in looks and nature both.”

Rudi’s two younger half sisters had both been sired by his mother Juniper’s second husband, Sir Nigel Loring. Maude was tanist of the Clan now-hailed as his mother’s successor-in-training by the Óenach Mór, the Great Assembly-and she was brown of hair and eye, steady and calm by inclination and very clever; Fiorbhinn was fair and slim and had the music and magic running through her soul strong and wild. Along with a good deal of wildness in other directions.

“If there’s one thing I always envied you it was having siblings,” Mathilda said.

Rudi raised a brow at her. “Ah, but I was lucky in mine, or at least the most of them. Your friends and your lover you can choose, most often: your blood kin you’re stuck with. And it’s. . how did Ingolf put it. . a crapshoot.”

She nodded. Their friend had spent a long time quarreling with his elder brother, or in exile; and then there was Fred and Martin Thurston to consider. Being born to power magnified the usual rivalries and gave them a malignant importance that ordinary folk didn’t have to take into reckoning.

Their path took them past the First Richland coming back to fill their quivers and head out again to sweep the western side of the valley. Ingolf saluted from their head. The volunteers were still young men-the war hadn’t lasted that long since they joined in as the Quest returned through the Midwest-but their gear was battered and their faces had an indefinable something that hadn’t been there when they were just gentry sprigs riding off heedless to seek adventure in distant lands, the sons and brothers of Farmers and Sheriffs back there on the Kickapoo.

They’d had the adventure and no mistake, and taken the measure of it. He’d be sorry to see them go when the High King’s Host met the army of the League and they headed home. No doubt Ingolf would be too; the older man was committed to Montival, and he’d left home as a youngster anyway, but his heartstrings would always be there. Having seen it, Rudi didn’t blame him; it was a fine fair land, fairer to his eyes with its rolling forested hills and winding river valleys than the endless flat, fat black earth of Iowa or the Red River. He’d liked the hardy, stoic, plainspoken folk who dwelt there as well.

“They’ll have a tale to tell, back on the Kickapoo,” Rudi said. “For the rest of their lives. Of mountains and battles and strange folk and stranger Gods.”

“Mostly lies,” Mathilda said, but with a smile. “And then sixteen Cutters and a grizzly bear had me cornered in a gulch! With my leg broken and nothing but a roast turkey drumstick to fight them off!”

“Whereupon I died,” Rudi finished for the hypothetical storyteller sitting before a winter hearth waving a mug of mulled cider while his grandchildren gaped. “The which is why I’m not here drinking this and telling the story!”

The easterners gave him and the High Queen a cheer, which was gracious in foreigners fighting for the sake of the thing, and went back to the jaunty marching song they favored, roaring it out loud if not particularly tunefully as they trotted along in an orderly column of fours:

“Instead of water we’ll drink ale

And pay no reckoning on the nail

No man for debt shall go to jail

While he can Garryowen hail!

We’ll break windows, we’ll break doors

The watch knock down by threes and fours-”

They passed Oak among the Mackenzies retrieving their arrows; the big blond man was laughing and exchanging a fist-bump with Lord Maugis, who leaned over with a gruesomely spattered war hammer held across his saddlebow. They both waved to him, well pleased with how the stratagem had worked, and he returned the gesture; now the Montivallan army could deploy unhindered in the broad open valley. Tomorrow would end the war, bar the mopping up and reconstruction. . which unfortunately might occupy the rest of his life.

And isn’t that a sight, to be sure, the two of them thick as thieves, when Oak marched in the War of the Eye against the Protectorate, and his first arrow sent in anger perhaps aimed right at the breastplate of Maugis’ father? And isn’t it a hopeful thing to see?

Mathilda caught his eye, and she knew that she shared the thought. It was natural enough, since their own parents had been bitter enemies once and their sires had killed each other in single combat.

“To work,” she said.

The first chore was visiting the wounded, those who weren’t actually still on the operating tables; a painful task, but something those willing to risk maiming and death for them and the kingdom had a right to expect. Mathilda did the same, and they went from one form to the next while the hospital tents were going up.

When he’d finished, Ingolf Vogeler was waiting outside, pacing and slapping his leather gauntlets into his palm. His nephew-cum-trumpeter Mark stood nearby holding the horses, a youth who looked much like his father’s brother, though lankier with hair of light sun-faded tow rather than brown. Right now he was looking a bit pale despite summer’s tan, as well. Ingolf was merely grim, but something in his eyes brought Rudi up.

“Couple of things you need to look at, bossman,” the Midwesterner said.

Rudi nodded. He trusted Ingolf’s judgment as to what was important. And the High King had a good staff, which freed him from administrative detail, as long as he remained reasonably available. Part of commanding was standing aside and letting your subordinates do their jobs; his was to concentrate on the big picture.

“You too, bosslady,” Ingolf said to Mathilda.

The enemy dead mostly lay where they’d fallen once the Montivallan medics had-carefully-checked for living men to be carried off; bitter experience had shown that some of Cutter wounded were given to pretending helplessness and then lashing out with hidden weapons at any who approached them. Policing up weapons and gear wasn’t the maximum priority, and burial could wait. Followers of the CUT usually cremated their dead, in any case. Rudi’s brows went up a little when he saw a dozen of the Sword of the Prophet laid out in rows, the lacquered leather and steel of their harness oddly bright in the midmorning sun. The smell of blood and opened bodies was fairly heavy, as it always was, though it was cool enough that they were spared the quick bloat and stink. He brushed aside flies; overhead the buzzards and crows and ravens were hanging, waiting, or descending to tear at the dead horses who’d been given quick mercy-strokes.

Oak and the Baron of Tucannon waited for them. The Mackenzie nodded casually, and the nobleman gave a Protectorate military salute, fist to chest in a clash of steel gauntlet on articulated breastplate.

“Take a look at their faces, your Majesties,” he said grimly.

The pleasure of doing a difficult job well seemed to have fled, and neither was a man to be easily upset by the miserable aftermath of battle.

“Aye, Ard Rí,” Oak said. “This is just a sample, mind, but it’s the same with most in the red armor. Save for some officers. It wasn’t until we went over the field looking for the wounded that we noticed the pattern.”

Rudi did too. At first glance along the row of battered, bloodied bodies he thought some were women. Which was vanishingly unlikely, since the CUT regarded females as a lesser creation and had strict rules restricting them to domestic tasks. Far more so than even Associates, and unlike them with no provision for exceptions for those too stubbornly bloody-minded to accept or work around customs they found grated on them. Then he realized. .

“Young, First Armsman Oak, my lord Maugis,” he said. “Very young indeed-too young to raise a beard, every one.”

“Yah,” Ingolf said. “They take them young from their parents, six or so, but I’ve never heard of them putting the cadets in the line before they’re full grown. That’s eating the seed corn with a vengeance, wasting all that training.”

“Tuili,” Rudi said flatly. “Bastards. They’re desperate, but even so.”

There were battlefield chores youngsters did; junior squires among Associates, eòghann in the Clan, military apprentices among Bearkillers. Some of those tasks involved danger, because there was no absolute safety in an environment full of flying metal and human beings in the mildly insane state of savage focus required for naked extreme violence at arm’s length. Tasks like pulling back the wounded, bringing up arrows or a fresh lance, carrying messages. Riding in the ranks to meet a charge of knights was not among the things that youths just learning their trade were fit for.

“There wasn’t anything we could do,” Maugis de Grimond said. “It’s unchivalrous, but there wasn’t anything we could do but cut them down.”

He seemed to be trying to convince himself, which spoke well for him. Rudi knew plenty, and not necessarily wicked men, who’d simply shrug and move on.

“Not if they were serious, no, there wasn’t anything you could do but strike,” Rudi said. “My lord, I slew my first man in battle when I was barely ten. It would have been fair enough if he’d killed me instead. Since I’d a blade and I intended to see his blood.”

That had been when a Protectorate deep-penetration squad led by one Tiphaine Rutherton kidnapped him and rescued Mathilda, who the Clan had in turn captured in an earlier raid, all part of the build up to the War of the Eye. Or the Protector’s War, as they called it in the north-realm. That was the feat that had won the future Grand Constable knighthood and the barony of Ath, though it wouldn’t be very tactful to mention the details right now.

The knight nodded, his eyes still haunted. “We. . we just thought it was one or two exceptions, some squire getting a rush of spirits, a boy pushing into a man’s work, that happens. They were out to kill, and for squires that junior they were very well trained. And they wouldn’t give up. Then just now we rode back over the battlefield and saw how many. .”

Mathilda put a hand on his shoulder. “Duty is hard, my lord,” she said. “And facing mere danger is not the hardest part of war, sometimes.”

The baron nodded, his face relaxing a little.

Rudi gestured agreement. “After years each in the House of the Prophet, I’m not surprised they wouldn’t give up. And a lad of fourteen can kill you dead as dead, if he’s determined enough and you don’t fight back with all your force. Weight of arm isn’t the only thing that matters.”

He turned back to Ingolf. “There was something else?”

“Yah, you betcha,” he said, the sing-song guttural of his native speech a bit stronger than usual in his voice. “The Dúnedain overran one of these farm things.”

“Temple-farms, I think they call them.”

“Yah.” Ingolf glanced at Maugis; they were good friends, if not particularly close ones. “You ought to come too, Maugis, if you can. I think you might feel better about this”-he indicated the enemy dead-“if you did.”

“What is it?” Mathilda asked.

“Better just to show you, and I wish I didn’t have to know it myself, Matti,” he said.

They cantered in his wake, a squad of Ingolf’s Richlanders added to the party leading the way. The path turned off the old highway and onto a narrower road, dirt but well maintained and covered in rolled gravel. Ingolf was closemouthed.

“I’d have planted trees on the roadsides,” Mathilda said, to fill the silence-something unusual for her.

“The Cutters don’t do anything just for nice,” Rudi said.

The headquarters of the temple-farm was a set of plain log buildings surrounded by an earth berm twelve feet tall, the wooden plank gate sagging open. Within were barns and grain-stores and the usual workshops essential to cropping and grazing, though there was far less machinery than in most places; the corrals outside were empty, which was logical-nobody left livestock to be swept up by an enemy. Storehouses trailed sacks of grain and potatoes, evidence of a hasty attempt to move the just-completed harvest as well, and a rather crude wagon lay with a broken wooden axle and crates and boxes spilling out of it. The traces lay before it, sliced and loose where someone had cut the team out of its rig rather than bothering to unharness.

Rudi’s lips tightened in a snarl. A pile of scrap wood and straw had been piled against one long low-set building that looked like a cross between a bunkhouse and a fort and set alight, with parts of it still smoldering and reeking. From the look of the shattered door someone inside had broken open the barred portal and then pushed through the flames.

“The Cutters killed the male slaves and pushed the rest inside that building, it’s only got one door, and then lit the fire,” Ingolf said, confirming his guess. “They busted out-which took some presence of mind.”

“Not something the Cutters would expect of women,” Mathilda said, a little white around the lips.

“Yah, well, stupid evil shits, fortunately. The Dúnedain came along about then, and signaled for us. Though damned if I know what they expected us to do that they couldn’t, just at a loss, I guess.”

There were other signs of haste as well. An X of stout timbers held the body of a man; his throat had been cut recently enough that the blood pooled at his feet wasn’t completely dry, but from the look of his body he’d been on the cross for some time. Several other bodies lay about, all men with lash-marks, sprawled naked where they’d been shot or cut down. They had arrow-stubs in their bodies, or just the wounds, and slash-marks from shetes.

So much is bad, but I’ve seen as bad or worse, in war, Rudi thought.

That wasn’t what made his escort swear until their officers’ barked commands for silence, or make signs against ill luck, or cross themselves if they were Catholics. Nor even the fact that all the dead men-slaves had been gelded, and had their right eyes burned out.

One whole man in a rag loincloth crouched beside a cage of poles lashed together with twists of iron-hard rawhide, a short but muscular fellow with bewildered eyes roaming about and his face slack. Two Dúnedain with spear and shield were in front of him, protecting him from a crowd of women. Most of them were naked too, and many were pregnant, had burns on their legs and hands, or both. A round dozen were trying to get towards the man, some of them with billets of firewood or rocks in hand. Others wandered about, or sat and wept, or stared vacantly, several score in all. One dangled from an improvised noose that ran out of a window, and he didn’t think that the Cutters had done it. A team of medics, Rangers and from Ingolf’s volunteers, was tending to the burns and other injuries of some of the women.

The sound the women-slaves all made was a thick gobbling, stammering through tears and moans. You could see why there weren’t any words when one suddenly screamed; her tongue had been trimmed and split. There was a hard stink in the air, manure and dried human waste.

Huon Liu started forward with a shocked exclamation, reaching for a flask from his saddlebags. Mathilda restrained him with a gentle gesture, her eyes the only things moving in a stony face.

“Slave-breeding farm,” Ingolf said grimly. “That guy the Rangers are guarding-look, you two, stop standing there with your thumbs up your asses and get that moron out of here before you have to hurt someone to stop them lynching him! Edain, get a detail to give them a hand, would you?”

Ingolf took a deep breath as a squad of the High King’s Archers attended to it, and went on to the monarchs:

“He’s the stud. Not really his fault, poor bastard, he’s just smart enough to know what to put where. They were breeding for stupid, for people just barely smart enough to do basic work and feed themselves.”

Rudi nodded soberly. He’d heard of this. Once you’d looked into the eyes of a High Seeker, it didn’t even seem very. . unexpected. Seeing it in person was different, though.

“I know,” he said. “And”-he touched the hilt of the Sword-“I’ve seen what this would end in, left unchecked. By themselves humans couldn’t do such a thing, if only because we can’t maintain a set purpose long enough.”

Though that vision of a possible future was so alien it didn’t have as much. . impact. . as this.

Mathilda crossed herself; for once she seemed at a loss. He could see where do we start? in her eyes. Lord Maugis was staring, blinking, looking away and then looking back. His area had been occupied for a while, but mostly by Boiseans in Martin Thurston’s service; the war there had been savage enough, but comprehensible. Young Mark Vogeler abruptly rode his horse around a wall and dismounted. They could hear him vomiting, then washing his mouth out from his canteen.

“What are your orders, Your Majesty?” Ingolf said formally.

He tactfully ignored his young kinsman when he returned, though a signaler wasn’t supposed to leave his commander’s side.

“We’ll have to care for these people,” Rudi said, taking out his dispatch pad. “Messenger! To Brigadier Nystrup, and would he please report here; and this to Lord Chancellor Ignatius, would he have the quartermasters attend to the matter of clothing and basic gear. Many of these ladies will be Nystrup’s people; he’ll want to see to identifying as many as he can. For the rest. . well, the Clan will take in any who wish, I think. Certainly if my mother has anything to do with it, and she will. There may be others who are willing.”

“The Sisters of Mercy,” Mathilda said. “I’ll. . I’ll talk to Father Ignatius. The Superior of their Mother House. . they have a unit with the medical train. . ”

“See to it, please, Matti,” Rudi said. “We’ll do what we can, but the first matter is to overthrow the ones who planned. . this.”

“Where are the children?” she said suddenly; there weren’t many, beyond some babes at the breast.

“You really don’t want to know, Matti,” Ingolf said softly. “Creches, most of them, but. . you don’t want to know.”

“By God. .” Maugis said, crossing himself with a hand that shook. “By God, I’d heard that the Cutters kept slaves, but. . is it all going to be like this, lord King?”

Rudi shook his head. “No. We’re close to their center, here. Elsewhere it’s bad, but on a more. . more human scale of wickedness. But it would have been all like this, in time.”

The baron’s face worked. “They’re. . they’re not human at all.”

Rudi felt his mouth twist wryly. There was a certain innocent vanity in that viewpoint, but he had to prevent it from spreading. The former Cutters would be his subjects too. He intended to see the headsman’s axe had some work, but a little of that went a long way. The Cutters. . former Cutters, they’d have to find a different term. . had to learn to live in peace with others. However, that implied just as much willingness in the other direction.

I cannot have a disgust with the folk of these lands persisting down the generations. That way would lay the groundwork for other wars-of less import to the Powers, perhaps, but just as deadly to humankind and our hopes and our homes.

He spoke carefully: “Alas, would that were so. The Power behind all this, yes, in a sense. But its instruments are all too human. At least most of them, and all of them to start with; and they are what they are because they’ve been mistaught, not because there’s any corruption in their blood, which is as ours. Do you understand me, Lord Maugis? For your own confessor will tell you the same-in somewhat different terms, but the same in the essence of it.”

The other man reluctantly nodded. “Yes. We’re all subject to Original Sin, that lets Satan whisper in our ears.”

Mathilda spoke: “Original Sin, as a wise man once said, is among the few dogmas which can be proven from experience.”

Rudi sighed agreement; occasionally Christians just had good points. Then he reined around.

“And now. . let’s go. Thank you, Ingolf. . Colonel Vogeler. I did need to see this, and not myself alone. I suggest men from each battalion be brought here. It’s a good thing to know why you’re far from home amongst angry strangers.”

“Yah.” Ingolf’s face lost a little of its pinched look, as if he was withdrawing his memory from a very bad place. “That’s a good idea. I’ll look up Oak, and Eric Larsson, and see to it.”

Another courier rode up as they cantered off. “Your Majesty!”

Rudi opened the dispatch. “Ah. Our blocking force caught the Cutters as they attempted to withdraw. Several thousand surrendered.”

Everyone looked baffled. “What blocking force would that be?” Lord Maugis asked, transparently glad to have something else to think about. “I didn’t think we could get troops much farther north.”

“It’s a case of. . how do you Christians put it. . bread upon the waters.”

• • •

“Major Graber,” Rudi said.

The former officer of the Sword of the Prophet dismounted and came forward with a brisk stride, a medium-tall man in his early middle years dressed in rough plainsman’s garb, looking as if rawhide had been wrapped around his bones and covered in weathered skin. The meeting was informal, but it still amounted to pacing between two rows of the High King’s Archers with the commanders and contingent leaders from the High King’s Host standing thickly behind them. Everyone who could had come flocking at the news.

There was a rattle and a small instinctive growl from the ranked Montivallan officers as he approached. Rudi smiled at it; just so did dogs growl at a stranger in their territory. Though Rick Three Bears was stone-faced and silent; Graber had personally threatened his clan when they sheltered the Questers. The silence itself was a concession, since it wasn’t in his people’s customs to forget such a thing.

The small group of Graber’s followers who followed behind him had a stiffness that spoke of nervousness.

Though in fact this is Graber’s territory, in a sense. And though Nystrup is looking pure murderous hate. Not that I blame him, but the needs of the Kingdom take precedence. Not to mention those of humankind, in the long run.

He turned his head slightly and murmured to the Mormon commander: “Why am I angry because of mine enemy? Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul. Do not anger again because of mine enemies.”

Nystrup glanced at him startled-that was from his people’s holy book-and angry. Then he nodded slightly.

The last sunlight was dying on the Gallatin peaks to the westward. Rudi stepped forward, pitching his voice to carry.

“This man was my enemy and hunted me and my comrades across the continent on the Quest. He was like a burr on our tail, never giving up, faithful unto death to his pledged word and his lords. Only when they betrayed him and he was shown that they were unworthy of a brave man’s loyalty did he renounce them.”

He put the palm of his right hand on the pommel of the Sword for a moment, reminding everyone present that he could detect any deceit.

“And when he did turn on them, he did so honestly and with a whole heart, for right’s sake and not for advantage. He risked death by torture and worse to oppose them here on their own ranges, when he might have returned to Montival with me and had a post of honor, because these are his folk and he wished to set them free to live as humankind should once more. Has any man or woman here done more?”

Silence, and the High King went on: “Not to mention he just removed. . what, twenty-two hundred riders from the enemy’s order of battle. Men we will not have to fight again tomorrow, and some of our warriors will live, or see their homes again whole of limb because of it.”

The almost-grumbling died away. Graber’s face was a thing of slabs and angles. He might have renounced his allegiance, but twelve years as cadet in the House of the Prophet had effects he would never shed entirely, not to mention the years as a warrior in Sethaz’ army afterwards. It wasn’t an accident that the Prophet had assigned him the task of foiling the Quest. Despite that masklike impassiveness there was relief and gratitude in the cold blue eyes. Graber showed unexpected tact when he reached arm’s length from Rudi; he gave a military salute, and then sank down on both knees with his hands held forward, palms together.

It didn’t surprise Rudi that the man had learned the etiquette used nearer the Pacific, but it was a graceful gesture. The subordinates behind him, his company commanders and staff, went to their knees as well; that meant they gave their assent through their leader.

The High King drew the Sword and planted it in the earth between them. Graber took the hilt between his palms, and Rudi enfolded the other man’s hands between his own; that was a new custom, the way the High King took fealty, and a guarantee of sincerity on both sides.

Graber’s eyes widened a little; touching the Sword of the Lady was never easy, though he had before when Rudi freed him from the bonds laid on his mind. His voice was steady as he spoke, a little harsh but confident:

“I, Justin Graber, pledge my faith and honor to the High King of Montival and to the heirs of his blood; I will be his sworn man in peace and war, with goods and with counsel, with aid and with arms, taking his foes and friends as mine, though my life be the price of this oath. This I swear on my honor as a fighting-man, and by whatever Powers watch over me.”

The which he will find, I think. This is a man of faith, and he will hunger for one to replace that which was broken.

“I, Artos, the first of that name, High King in Montival, Son of Raven, Son of Bear, accept your oath, Justin Graber. From this day forth I am your liege-lord. In peace you may hold secure all that is your own under my hand; in need you may appeal to me for aid; in war we shall be comrades of the blade, and I shall ward your family and children at need should you fall in my service. As you keep faith with me, so I will with you: I promise good lordship and fair justice, to you and to those who follow you-”

He added that deliberately, just to drive the point home that Graber’s folk-and all the dwellers here not in arms against them-were his subjects now too. He didn’t think there was anyone in the Host who still doubted that he meant what he said about things like that. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Mathilda nodding approval, which was reassuring; he had the most profound respect for his wife’s political judgment.

“-and I will hold your honor as precious as my own. This oath I will defend at need against all men, and any who do you wrong do also so to me, and at their peril. So I swear by the Lady of Stars and by the Lord Her Consort, and by all the Gods of my people; by Earth, by Sky; and so I bind the line of my blood and yours until the sky fall and crush us, or the sea overwhelm the land, or the world end.”

Most of the officers made formal greeting and left; a few came forward to shake Graber’s hand. All of the ones who’d been on the Quest did so, and Rudi led them to the open flap of his tent, with a quiet word to have the needs of Graber’s subordinates seen to.

“How many in your band?” Rudi asked, when they’d been seated and the plain stew and flatbread brought.

Graber ate with wolfish intensity; he and his were well equipped for the sort of war they practiced in these parts, as far as Rudi had been able to tell, but evidently they hadn’t been eating high off the hog. Or the rangeland steer, in this country.

Mind, with years of war levies and now fighting on their own territory, it’s going to be touch and go to keep famine out of this land as it is.

“Fifteen hundred, not counting about five hundred women and kids brought along because there wasn’t anyplace safe to put them.”

Out of the corner of his eye Rudi noted Ignatius making a note and handing it off to a staff messenger who stepped forward at his crooked finger. The quartermasters would be attending to feeding the newcomers by morning.

“Including both my wives and my children; friends helped to get them out before the hunt started. My wives are women of excellent character and acted quickly,” Graber added. “The. . High Seekers seemed curiously blind about what I was doing.”

“They would, my friend, after you were touched by the Sword; and they’ve grown careless about using ordinary means. It’s good that you rescued your little ones and their mothers. There are some prices that are steep even for honor; I’m glad you weren’t forced to pay so high.”

Graber nodded. That had been another risk he’d taken. “And about three times as many have taken up arms against the CUT here and there on their own, once I showed it wasn’t just suicide,” he said. “I’m in contact with their leaders; that’s not counting areas we. . the Prophet, that is. . overran in the last few years, they’ve just gone back to how they were before.”

“Not entirely,” Father-or in this context, Lord Chancellor-Ignatius said. “The CUT’s occupation has left many grudges, many feuds. And the reprisals going on right now against collaborators, or people who their personal rivals and enemies can paint as collaborators, will make for more. We’ll be long years settling them.”

Graber shrugged; those lands weren’t his affair. “A lot more of the Prophet’s levies have just gone home-or gone home to defend their ranches and neighborhoods-as they were driven back into the lands they came from. Not to defend from the invading. . liberating. . armies, so much, as from bandits and deserters and each other. And, ah-”

“From the Lakota, the ones who aren’t riding with the armies,” Rudi said ruefully.

He liked and respected the folk of the Seven Council Fires, but they had their own grudges to pay off-and raiding for horses was an ancient tradition with them, one they’d revived gleefully after the Change. Nor did what passed for their central government have all that much control over the individual tribes and clans or for that matter individuals. It operated by consensus, or not at all.

“I’ll tend to that, but there’re other things must be done first, and I’m afraid some damage will be done.”

Graber spread his hands in acknowledgment; it was a cost of finishing the job, and you did what was necessary for that.

Consideringly, Rudi went on: “Fifteen hundred riders. . that’s more than I expected.”

Graber gave a rare smile: “For a while I was hiding in the woods with about four men, two of them brothers of my eldest wife, while the Prophet’s hunters beat the bush for us and we put our hands over the children’s mouths to keep them from giving us away,” he said.

“You wouldn’t be the first to win back to power and fortune and victory from such a state,” Rudi observed. “When we’ve more time, I’ll tell you of a man named Temüjin. . it means The Iron One. . in a land far away, but not unlike this in some respects. Cold mountains and vast plains, at least.”

Graber looked interested, then returned to business: “But it’s been obvious for a while now the Prophet is going to lose the war, especially after news got back of the Horse Heaven Hills, and the Midwesterners started heading our way. The Church, the Church United and Triumphant, that is, got a lot of credit for the way they reestablished order right after the Change, but that ran out some years ago. What they had left was fear.”

“And fear alone is a chancy basis for a realm,” Rudi said; leaving unsaid that Graber and his ilk had been among the main instruments to instill that terror.

Mathilda nodded decisively. “Fear leaves you with nothing to fall back on when the bad times come,” she said, echoing things Rudi had long heard her mother say.

Graber inclined his head; apparently he’d overcome any feeling of shock at a woman speaking in a council. Or wearing breeks and boots, which Matti was.

“True, your Majesty. And I had some other good arguments. Not least, that if we wanted to have any say in how things are arranged here after the war, we’d better show we’re willing to fight for the High Kingdom now.”

“Good,” Rudi said. “A most cogent point. I’m going to need a commander here to keep order, and eventually to rule as my vassal. I’ve no desire to import battalions of unpopular alien bureaucrats, and more battalions of soldiers to enforce their writ at the sword’s edge, and then spend the rest of my days reading and annotating the reports of both. Montival isn’t that sort of realm. After things settle down here, the form of rule must arise from the folk themselves, as the years since the Change have shaped them in their hearts. For that I need a man born of these lands who also has a record the rest of Montival will respect, and I think I’ve found him.”

Graber looked blank for a second, and then astonished when Rudi leveled a finger at him; so did some of the others. Rudi chuckled.

“I’ll have to spend more time here than I wish, Major. . hmmm. We’ll come up with some title. . Range Boss, perhaps? Lord of the Eastern Mark? I’ll be wanting a man who understands the land and the folk, for I’ll have other calls upon my time, even though this will be Crown land. It’s not an easy job I’m offering. The lands long under the CUT have been badly harmed, not least in the minds and souls of those dwelling here. It’ll be a lifetime’s work to even begin to repair the damage. Will you take it?”

Graber hesitated for a second or two, then nodded decisively. “Yes,” he said. “It’s necessary.”

Then, shrewdly: “And having a local man in charge will make a lot more Ranchers likely to come over willingly-it’ll be a sign that bygones are to be bygones and that they won’t be excluded from power and office as long as they renounce the CUT.”

“Exactly,” Mathilda said. “And I don’t think anyone will doubt you mean what you say. . my lord. We found you a very determined man when you were chasing us!”

Rudi covered a yawn as the Questers all nodded. “First we must take Corwin. After that. . more work. But building is more enjoyable than tearing down, even when that’s necessary. Even when the building involves cracking a few heads!”