The Tears of the Sun

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

COUNTY OF THE EASTERMARK CHARTERED CITY OF WALLA WALLA PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION (FORMERLY EASTERN WASHINGTON) HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA) AUGUST 23, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

G rand Constable Tiphaine d’Ath nodded and looked at her watch once more, eyes narrowing with calculation as her mind returned to business after the brief family digressions:

“Now he is due. Let’s see if we can get this crowd of cow-country yokels organized. The Count should be-”

A harsh chorus of trumpets from the city’s gate-towers made her look up.

“Speak of the Devil and-” Rigobert murmured.

The north gate of the city was open, though heavily guarded. Wagons were pouring in over the patched, faded asphalt, mostly loaded with grain and produce; livestock on the hoof added its own pungencies. The crossbowmen were diverting refugees who couldn’t work or fight or who had young children in tow, off to holding camps where they’d be shuttled east, and sometimes that required explanations. Occasionally of the sort that you administered via a smack with the metal-shod butt of the weapon, but not too many. Even the peasants knew how highly relative the safety of Walla Walla was and were unwillingly willing to see their most vulnerable moved farther from the path of the invasion.

“-and de Aguirre appears,” Tiphaine finished.

The brassy scream came again from the gatehouse, and a file of foot soldiers double-timed out to make a lane by holding their pole arms horizontally and pushing. Everyone who could moved off the double-lane roadway. The lord of Walla Walla rode out from under the teeth of the portcullis and across the drawbridge in a rumbling drumbeat of hooves, threading his way through with a mercifully small entourage of household men-at-arms and hangers-on. They spurred over to the command group by the railway siding at a round canter and reined in a respectful fifteen paces away before they dismounted.

Spraying dust and gravel on someone afoot was bad manners.

Felipe de Aguirre Smith, the current Baron Walla Walla and Count Palatine of the Eastermark was in his early twenties. His father had been one of Norman Arminger’s recruits from the rougher side of society. A gangbanger, in fact, what the euphemistic family histories churned out by tame troubadours and the College of Heralds called a freelance man-at-arms -but he’d adjusted well.

It had helped that he was more than intelligent enough to realize that when you were the government you sheared the sheep rather than skinning it; Norman hadn’t promoted many stupid hard cases to high positions and those few hadn’t lived long enough to breed for the most part, given the high turnover in those days. And he’d married a prominent local woman too, named Smith of course, which had eased matters considerably. Like others in their position they’d both taken up Society customs, at first to curry Norman’s favor and then with a convert’s zeal. The world right after the Change had been gruesome enough that pretending the previous eight hundred years hadn’t happened or didn’t matter had real and broad-based appeal.

The first Count had also died in the early stages of this war, during the battle of Pendleton nearly two years ago. She had known his son slightly for years on a social basis, since the Association’s higher nobility wasn’t all that large, and dealt with him fairly often since in her professional capacity. Tiphaine’s private judgment was that he was quite good as a knight, and at least competent as a commander. But a bit of a worrywart and inclined to dither while trying to cover every possible contingency, when the weight of overall responsibility came crashing down on his shoulders. Which was unfortunate, since even a bad decision was usually better than no decision at all.

So don’t put him in situations where he has to make strategic decisions at the quickstep, she thought. He’s fine at tactics and has plenty of experienced advisers on his staff. Just point him in the right direction and tell him what to do and he’ll keep trying his best until the ax hits where the chicken gets it. And his vassals respect him, which is the important thing.

Count Felipe swung down from his courser, a fine sixteen-hand black. He was in civilian dress but the daywear version of it, what a nobleman wore when he was out hunting or traveling in warm weather; turned-down thigh boots with the golden spurs of knighthood on the heels, tight doeskin riding breeches, baggy-sleeved linen shirt beneath long T-tunic with his arms on an embroidered shield, cinched by a broad sword belt of studded and tooled leather and a round chaperon hat. A little taller than Tiphaine, and with something of the same leopard build, male version. His square face was clean-shaven but with pale olive skin and the blue jowl of a man who needed the razor often, his eyes dark brown with green flecks, his thick bowl-cut hair a black so complete it had blue highlights.

“My lady Grand Constable,” he said, sweeping off his hat and making a bow.

That was tactful. As a Count, he greatly outranked her status as a mere baron, albeit she was a tenant-in-chief like him rather than the vassal of some higher nobleman; but as Grand Constable she had the pull on him, particularly since the arriere-ban had been called and martial law declared.

“My lord Count,” she said, matching the gesture with a microscopically lesser bow, which was tactful but firm; then they shook hands.

“And my lord de Stafford,” de Aguirre said.

This time the bows exchanged matched; a Marchwarden and the Count Palatine of the Eastermark were precisely equivalent, though one title was hereditary and the other wasn’t.

“It’s extremely good to see you here, my lady… and the army you brought, frankly. If you and my lord the Marchwarden could accompany me to the City Palace, we’ve arranged a dinner.”

At her expression he smiled, looking tired and dogged. “A working dinner, not a banquet, my lady. No jugglers or musicians. We’ve been. .. very busy. I’ve invited those most crucial to the defense of the city and County.”

She nodded. “By all means, my lord. That would save considerable time, in fact; I’d planned on calling you and your chief vassals together for something similar tomorrow.”

He turned to de Stafford. “Baron Tucannon arrived yesterday and has been giving me a lively account of your doings, my lord.”

“The regard is mutual, my lord. A fine commander and true knight.”

De Aguirre turned back to Tiphaine: “And if it won’t offend your well-known martial hardihood, my lady, one night in a place with hot water and soft beds might provide a pleasant memory in the coming campaign.”

This time she smiled, at least with her eyes. “By all means, my lord Count. Hardship when necessary, but not necessarily hardship.”

That startled a laugh out of him, as squires brought up their horses; also coursers, not the precious destriers they rode into a formal battle.

The only thing lacking will be Delia. But I have to set an example and she’s not mobile right now anyway. And she is at least far, far west of here and right next to a castle.

She turned her head to Rigobert as they rode under the gate, after the usual glance most people made at the barred fangs of the welded-steel portcullis above. The groin-arched tunnel stretched ahead, loud with the metallic echo of horseshoes on asphalt; overhead just beyond the reach of a mounted man’s lance the grillwork of the murder-holes gleamed, where men waited with cocked crossbows and cauldrons of hot oil and hoses that could spray napalm.

“Barony Tucannon,” Tiphaine said, calling up the files in her head, mostly from last year’s edition of:

Fiefs of the Portland Protective Association: Tenants In Chief, Vassals, Vavasours and Fiefs-minor in Sergeantry.

After a moment she went on: “Tucannon… That’s Maugis de Grimmond, isn’t it? Youngish, red hair, ears like a bat. Vassal of the Count, rights of Low, Middle and High Justice, thirty-six thousand acres, twelve manors, held on standard service terms for fifty men-at-arms, fifty light cavalry, spearmen and crossbowmen in proportion and the mesne dues and public service things, and the usual forest rights in the Blue Mountains… and he has that beautifully placed castle. He’s not much at Court though he did the Battle Staff course at the University in your bailiwick, I’ve only met him a few times in passing. Is he capable?”

“Very,” de Stafford said. “Wasted rusticating in that arse-end of nowhere barony, I’d say, but he likes it there. That and his family are all he really cares about. He’s been a great help so far, though. And could be more of one, if things turn out as badly as we expect. Quite crucial, in fact.”

COUNTY OF THE EASTERMARK BARONY OF TUCANNON MANOR OF GRIMMOND-ON-THE-WOLD (FORMERLY SOUTHEASTERN WASHINGTON STATE) PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA) AUGUST 19, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

Ingolf Vogeler woke, yawned, stretched comfortably and for a moment just enjoyed feeling clean and reasonably well rested between linen sheets and snuggled close to his wife. Then another knock came on the door and he realized the first one had woken him up.

He was wearing drawers and Mary was in a long shirt that would do for a shift. From what he’d seen, the Association folk were about as modest about skin as his own people… which wasn’t something you could just assume when you traveled far. Places had started out different before the Change and gotten more so, fast, when the world closed in again and each area was isolated from the other’s ideas and customs. And some were left to stew in whatever lunacy had bubbled to the top when a charismatic madman took charge. He’d seen places where you’d get attacked for taking off your shirt-men would.

“Come in,” he said.

The door opened and a servant girl came through with a tray that held a steaming pot of something aromatic. Probably not coffee or real tea this far from the coast, and not chicory either from the smell; after a moment he identified it as peppermint tea. A moment after that he really looked at the shadows cast through the window.

“Holy… holy things, what time is it?”

The servant girl smiled. “It’s eleven of the clock, my lord,” she said. “Lord de Grimmond said that we should let you sleep, you’d been fighting for us and then working hard with the troops and the wounded late into the night.”

She was unremarkable in every respect, and dressed in a plain good outfit of a short knee-length tunic over a long ankle-length one, with a shirtlike shift underneath and a kerchief on her head and stout shoes. The smile was welcome, though; late though it had been everyone in the little town of Grimmond-on-the-Wold had turned out to help with the wounded by torch and lantern light, and they’d pitched in for the Richlanders and Sioux just as hard as they had for their own folk. It was nice to be a valued ally, even if it was mainly because they were scared spitless at what was coming at them.

I would be too. Hell, I am scared. I was a prisoner in Corwin, even if I don’t remember all of it-and don’t want to. I know what the Cutters are, and Boise’s in bed with them. Not so sure about God being the way Mom thought, but the Devil? You betcha.

“Thank you,” he said, accepting the polished wooden tray.

Mary sat up and murmured thanks as well, reaching for a cup.

“Luncheon will be in an hour, my lord, my lady; en famille, in the gazebo court. Lord de Grimmond said to tell you that everyone you want to contact immediately will be there.”

“Lord de Stafford?”

“He’s gone, my lord. He left his regards and said he had to get back to his main force to make sure everything was ready. He didn’t say ready for what, my lord.”

She bobbed a curtsy and left, with the quick step of someone who has important work waiting.

“What time did we get to bed?” he said, rubbing his face, doing it carefully because of a couple of bruises. “I feel indecent, lying up this late. There’s a lot to do.”

Mary made an indelicate slurping sound as she sipped the hot tea; he followed suit. The acrid-sweet liquid seemed to clear the cobwebs from his mind, enough for him to notice that there was a bandage on his right forearm, and from the dull ache underneath a couple of stitches, not quite sharp enough to be real pain. It was a familiar feeling, and a familiar place-that was the most vulnerable part of a swordsman’s anatomy and he had the white scar lines on his skin to prove it, this would just be one more. You could wear a vambrace, but he’d always thought the minute loss of speed wasn’t worth it most of the time.

He worked the fingers, testing the feeling in his arm and the degree of play; nothing serious, and he could use it hard at a pinch, though ideally he’d wait a few days before putting any strain on it.

“When did we go to bed or when did we get to sleep?” Mary asked, working her eyebrows and grinning. “As I recall, you weren’t that tired. At first.”

“Well, a soldier learns to-”

“Sleep and eat and whatever, whenever he can. I am a Ranger, darling. Same saying. C’mon, they’ve got showers here. Solar heating system, all the hot water we want on tap.”

“Didn’t we shower last night?”

“How often do you get the chance? Without waiting for the water to heat, even?”

“Point,” he said. “Very definite point. Have to keep this bandage dry somehow, though.”

“I’ll soap and rinse and dry you again. Thoroughly, very thoroughly. And whatever.”

When they came out again, dressed for the day in a clean set of the rough clothing you used when traveling or fighting, the bedding had been stripped from the four-poster and their own kit was on the bare frame, neatly strapped up into their saddle-rolls. Ingolf looked around the room again, this time by daylight. An experienced eye told him that nothing except the double-glazed sash windows was pre-Change; he’d worked for years running a salvager outfit making trips deep into the wildlands to loot the dead cities. It hadn’t been that different from his previous job as head of a troop of paid soldiers; in fact, they’d included a lot of the same people.

That lack of old-world goods was a little rare; most places had a mixture, with more new-made as the years went on. The rest of the room was just a big rectangle with pleasantly shaped wooden furniture in the rather twisty PPA Gothic style, armor-stands for their harness and weapons, exposed but smoothly planed and attractively carved beams above, a floor of polished western larch, and a couple of alpaca rugs patterned in vivid geometric patterns of black and red and off-white. A fireplace was built into one wall, a closed model with a metal door in its tiled face, empty now with summer. The only fancy touch was a Catholic prie-dieu in a corner, with an image of an armored woman with a halo in the central panel of the triptych facing it.

“St. Joan,” Mary said, making a reverence with hands pressed together before her face. “She’s their patron here, and a powerful one when you’re fighting invaders.”

He was still figuring out the Dunedain attitude towards religion. It seemed to include cheerfully stealing everything from anyone; sort of like the Old Religion of Rudi’s bunch but with different names. He’d been brought up a conventional but not very intense Catholic himself, and gotten careless about it in his wandering years. Since Nantucket, he’d become increasingly unwilling to be skeptical about anyone’s approach to the supernatural, which caused its own difficulties. He didn’t feel comfortable with treating faith as a buffet lunch, either.

He also noticed the windows were deep-seated, confirming his initial impression that the manor was built by ramming moist earth down hard between frames and then letting it air-cure, what some called pise. The natural texture of well-made rammed-earth pise was like a coarse porous stone, often with the impress of the framing still visible, but the interior here was smoothly plastered and the outside whitewashed. One of the advantages of the material was that it was no great trouble to make it as thick as you wanted; at this second-story level it was over a yard through. They had fittings for steel shutters, too, and the wall surround on the window wasn’t square, it was beveled in. That would let you step up to a slit in the shutter and shoot an arrow or crossbow bolt through it easily at any angle under full protection.

Uh-huh, he noted. Wall all around the manor gardens, too. Nothing to a siege train or field catapults, say twelve-pounders, or even just regular troops with assault ladders, but you could put the whole village in here for a while and stand off bandits or a casual raid easy. Rammed earth’s not quite as strong as concrete, but it’s more than halfway there once it’s had time to cure and it’s a lot cheaper and easier to come by. Good stuff, as long as you can keep too much water off it.

They passed more people stripping and bundling and crating things outside, turning what had been a big rambling comfortable house into an empty shell, and dodged a string of eight men with a long rolled-up rug or major tapestry. He found the sight oddly melancholy. One of the crew working at removal was the girl who’d brought them their tea.

“Taking stuff up to the castle?” he said, as she passed with a big basket full of linens.

“Oh, no, my lord. The castle’s much too crowded with more important things. This is all going up into the mountains.”

The gazebo court turned out to be part of the gardens at the rear of the house, which covered several acres. The gazebo part was a long arched wooden trellis, overgrown with a great sheet of green vine thickly starred with trumpet-shaped crimson flowers; the table was underneath. The rest of the gardens were a spectacular blaze of flower beds and blue oaks, copper beeches and poplars, with the odd stretch of lawn. Terraces and wandering paths paved with basalt blocks stepped down from the higher terrace the house was built on, with water channels running down stonelined troughs to a swimming pool not far away. The leaves of espaliered fruit trees shimmered green against the whitewashed surface of the perimeter walls, alternating with fragrant deep blue Chinese clematis twined through trellises.

The warm air was heavy with sweet scents, drowsy with humming bees; a flock of birds with light gray bodies and bright yellow bellies and underwings went by, swooping after insects. A terra-cotta fountain of descending bowls tinkled nearby, welcome in this arid heat. Baron Maugis was already at the table, along with an older woman in a dark green cote-hardie and white wimple and lace shoulder-veil who was probably his mother, and a younger one with pale tilted eyes and a slim build, dressed in a riding habit with a divided skirt, who was certainly his wife. She was just handing an infant to a nanny and setting aside a broad hat. Her hair tumbled like a black torrent down her back through a light wimple, hardly more elaborate than a kerchief but bound with silk cords. Two other children were there, a boy of about six guiltily wiping his face with a napkin and a girl half that age sitting on her father’s lap.

Mary sighed, and Ingolf nodded. “You know, I could get used to having a place like this,” he murmured to her. “They do look all-’round comfy, don’t they?”

His wife gave a slight rueful chuckle. “I think you could get the land out of brother Rudi after the war, lover, but I doubt he’d hand you a few thousand people to develop it with, the way the Lord Protector did our host’s father. For that matter, there aren’t big bunches of people around… loose… anymore. Arminger just culled them out of the ones running from the cities and they were glad to get the chance.”

“Well, we can have the kids on our own, when we finally get the time and quiet, and our own homeplace somewhere. Anywhere but a city, eh?”

She nodded agreement with a shudder; both of them had seen the great cities of the world, Portland and Boise and even distant, mammoth Des Moines. They were country folk to the core and the thought of living all their lives in one of those ant-heaps-Des Moines had over a hundred thousand people-was loathsome.

The baron and his lady looked up and rose to make them welcome as the servants led the children away. Mary put hand to heart and bowed.

“Mae govannen,” she said. “Well-met, my lord, my ladies.”

“Uh… hi,” Ingolf added. “My lord, my ladies.”

“My wife, Lady Helissent de Grimmond, my lord, Your Highness,” Maugis said.

Ingolf knew enough to bow and kiss the ladies’ hands when they were extended to him palm-down, taking them gently in his. They both started to curtsy to Mary; as the new High King’s half sister her status had to be stratospheric, not to mention that her father and mother had been and were respectively the sovereigns of the Bearkillers and her aunt led the Dunedain.

“Please,” Mary said, with a graceful gesture. “I’m just a commander of Dunedain Rangers for now.”

Maugis nodded acknowledgment of the courtesy as she exchanged kisses on the cheek with the women of his family, and bowed over her hand.

“And my lady mother, the dowager Baroness, Lady Roehis de Grimmond.”

“Originally Jenny Fassbinder,” the older woman said; she was in her sixties but looking very healthy for it, with a worn gentle-looking face but an ironic quirk to her mouth. “A long long time ago.”

Helissent gave her a look of fond exasperation and gestured towards a buffet laid out on the side table. “We’re not keeping any state today, Lord Vogeler, Lady Mary. The staff are far too busy, I’m sure you understand.”

“Uff da, of course! There’s a war on, no need to apologize, my lady.”

“Do help yourself. The others will be here soon.”

He did, feeling sharp-set as he lifted the anti-fly gauze over the various dishes; he’d done hard work all day yesterday and as far as he could recall dinner had made lunch out of his helmet look like a banquet. There was a ham, and what they called a mutton-ham here, which was a leg of mutton pickled and cured the same way as ordinary ham and surprisingly good; cold fried chicken; some salads; half a dozen types of bread and rolls. And all the fixings, rather like a very good picnic. Mary constructed herself several large sandwiches and filled a plate with the green salad; she had a passion for those.

To his pleasure there was also a decent potato salad, creamy with well-made mayonnaise and with flecks of peppers and onion, something which he’d had trouble getting on this side of the continent. Few people outside Richland and its neighbors really seemed to understand what could be done with potatoes.

“Delicious,” he said sincerely, when he was back at the table.

There was also a crock of beer; only moderately cold, but quite good, well hopped and nutty. He didn’t like the prospect of wine in this heat even if he was sitting in pleasant shade, or this early in the day for that matter. Mary and the Association nobles sipped very slowly at small glasses of it, between draughts of fruit juices.

“Dang, but this is good!” he said. “You’ve got a good cook!”

“He was chef in a restaurant in Seattle and my husband Lord Amauri found him in a group of refugees,” Lady Roehis said. “Quite able, but given to temperaments. And he drinks, sometimes. His children are just as good and they don’t, not that way.”

Maugis rolled his eyes slightly in an agreement that hinted at crises over the years.

His wife went on: “Aleaume-our eldest son-was complaining about there being no French fries. For the last month, they are all he wants to eat.”

Mary laughed. “My aunt Astrid’s daughters Hinluin and Fimalen are five, and they were like that for a while, only with them it was noodles. Nothing would do but noodles. And nothing on the noodles but butter. I love them but they drove me and my sister crazy while we were living in Stardell Hall.”

“You have to be crazy to be a parent,” Lady Roehis said confidently. “But it’s a rewarding insanity, in its way.”

Everyone chuckled, but Ingolf thought after an instant that it was a rather odd way to talk about it, though it was funny. But strange, as if having kids were a hobby you could choose not to have. As far as he knew it was just something you did, like growing up. Unless you couldn’t, which would be like being born with a clubfoot, a terrible and pitiful calamity.

He searched for something to say, not wanting to leave the whole burden to Mary; he’d left home at nineteen, and at that age you ignored younger kids just as hard as you could, being falsely convinced you were a man now. His life afterwards hadn’t been very domestic. But he did like flowers.

“Ah, these are lovely gardens, Lady Helissent.”

Helissent nodded towards her mother-in-law. “Lady Roehis did those, starting from nothing. This was bare pasture when she arrived in the second Change Year, and thin pasture at that! I wouldn’t have believed it possible until I saw it, and you’re right, it’s lovely. I’m from Barony Skagit originally, myself-my elder brother, Sir Adhemar de Sego, is a knight there, and holds Sego Manor as vassal of House Delby as my father did while he lived. Flowers are easy in Skagit. I was used to things being green naturally.”

“Including the people,” Maugis said with a smile. “Skagit’s on Puget Sound, my lord Vogeler. Where they think it’s a drought if the moss on their north side dies.”

“As opposed to places where the rabbits starve to death if they don’t run between blades of grass,” she said tartly, and they both laughed.

Mary’s hand stole into his beneath the table and squeezed. It’s true, when you’re in love you see it everywhere, he thought.

“My father picked this land when this county was shared out among the conquerors, and his comrades in arms thought he was crazy,” Maugis said. “My lady wife is quite right; there was no settlement here; we have photographs. Nothing for miles but a few farmhouses, and thirty miles north to the nearest rail spur. But he saw the possibilities, and so did my lady mother.”

“We wanted to get as far from Norman Arminger as we could,” his mother said suddenly; she’d been looking a little abstracted. “Somewhere he’d never think of visiting. That was worth living in tents for a year, and dugouts for another, and the castle until this place was ready. Anything was worth getting out from under his eye. Court was a cesspit then. Dreadful man, absolutely dreadful. When I knew him in the Society I thought he was just an asshole, as we said then, but after the Change he blossomed into a monster.”

The other two nobles stiffened in alarm, looking around reflexively. Lady Roehis nibbled on a biscuit and smiled at them, irony and affection mixed.

“He’s dead,” the older woman said. “He’s long dead. Good riddance. And nothing would delight his evil heart more than knowing that fifteen years later he could still frighten people, ones who’d been children when he died. I think I’ll take a nap before we go up to the keep, dear.”

“Ah-” Ingolf said, as she nodded politely and left.

Mary spoke: “Lord Maugis, she’s perfectly right. I say it, and my husband and I are good friends of Princess… High Queen Mathilda. And here’s the others.”

Ingolf breathed a well-concealed sigh of relief; at least he thought it was, until he caught Mary’s sideways glance and smile.

“Captain Jaeger,” Maugis said.

Mark was with the other Richlander, but looking a bit shaken, almost certainly from memories of the fight surfacing. That happened after the insulating rage and fear burned out of your blood. It was worse when it happened at night when you were half asleep.

And the captured Boise commander. “And Captain Woburn… Rancher Woburn, I believe, too; your father is a Sheriff as well, isn’t he?” Maugis went on. “Please join me and my family for luncheon. As a Montivalan I say, let us put aside the war for a little; as a soldier, I say, welcome, comrade.”

Woburn looked as if he’d been having those night-thoughts too. It was worst of all when you’d lost, and were lying alone blaming yourself for it.

Jaeger filled half his plate with the potato salad and took a tankard of the beer; evidently Richland’s foodways bit deep. The Boisean ate as well, but kept silent; he was limping and had a couple of bandages and his left arm was in a sling, and no doubt he was hurting for his men. Ingolf sympathized, but he had business to do. Fortunately it was all stuff the Boisean already knew, or which he wouldn’t at all mind the enemy knowing if by some unlikely chance he got loose.

“I’m promoting you to Major, Jaeger.”

That got a blink and a smile, but not a big one; which said that Jaeger’s priorities were good.

Kohler thought he was sound, and Kohler was a good judge of men.

“Pick your own replacement for your command and run the name by me. What’s the state of the regiment?”

Since I’m now going to have to be more hands-on. Dammit, Kohler, I needed you! I’ve got half a dozen jobs to juggle! I only took the Colonel’s post because you needed someone whose father was a Sheriff as a figurehead!

He’d led them to victory more than once, led from the front, and his latest plan had let them give the enemy a lot more of a world of hurt than they received. That had probably kept the men reasonably happy with him, even though he was busier than he liked with other things half the time. It wasn’t that he couldn’t run a light cavalry regiment; he’d done it before, and pretty well. Time, time…

Jaeger flicked his eyes aside at Woburn while he chewed hastily; Ingolf nodded very slightly. Let him know how light we got off; can’t hurt, might help.

“Three more of the wounded died overnight, Colonel,” Jaeger said when he’d swallowed.

He had medium-brown hair and was whippet-thin despite the way he was shoveling in the potato salad and mutton-ham and something very like kielbasa, and tomatoes and onions dressed with oil and vinegar and crusty rolls and butter, and eyeing the pastries. He’d eaten that way every time Ingolf saw him have an opportunity, but he wasn’t surprised at the man’s looks. From what older people said now and then, fatties had been common before the Change even among farmworkers, though that was difficult to imagine. You certainly weren’t going to get that way doing what a horse-soldier did these days.

“Richter and Smith died of internal bleeding, the doctor tried, but too much was sliced up. They had to stop transfusing them, there were men who might recover who needed it and only so many donors.”

Ingolf sighed. There were places that could store refrigerated blood for a while, but they were few and far between. Triage was an ugly fact of a fighting-man’s life, but it was a fact. You weren’t doing anyone a favor if you let a man who had some chance to live die just to keep someone who didn’t have a chance going another half hour. There were times when the only favor you could do a comrade was a quick knife-thrust; at least they’d been spared that.

“The third?” he said.

Can’t recall anyone else who looked that bad and it’s too early for infection to show up.

“Sir, Olson got hit on the head hard enough to dent his helmet in, but he was doing fine and then… he just started breathing funny and died, real quiet.”

Ingolf nodded. Head wounds were tricky that way; there was no way to see inside a head, of course, and nothing much the doctors could have done if you could see inside. They could pick fragments out of a depressed fracture or trepan for pressure on the brain if you were lucky, but that was about it. He’d been knocked out once and had had blinding headaches at intervals for six months afterwards; sometimes men never did entirely recover from a clout to the skull; and sometimes they just died, like Olson.

Three more dead made ten too many, but fewer than he’d expected. Ten dead altogether and thirty non-walking-wounded of whom only half a dozen would be crippled for life was a light butcher’s bill for an engagement that size, but then winning always made for a lighter payment. The Boiseans had taken five times that. Still, you died just as dead either way.

“The rest seem to be doing well. The doctors here are excellent, that’s what our Doc Jennings says. One of them went to the same school his own teacher did. And uh, Lord Rigobert left some of his medics too, and more medical supplies, so we’ve got enough morphine for the bad cases. He pulled out at dawn, couldn’t have slept more than a couple of hours, that’s one busy man. The Tithe Barn thing we’ve got all the wounded in is as comfortable as you could expect, sir, it was just used for a grain store, pretty clean.”

“I’ll drop in on them again today,” Ingolf said. And it won’t be quite as bad this time. “The rest?”

“Camp’s pitched in the reaped fields about a half mile out of town. Still putting up the tents.”

Which wasn’t urgent; in weather like this it was probably more comfortable to just roll in your blankets than sleep in a stuffy tent. Most men preferred them if they had a choice, though. Probably because they gave an illusion of permanence, of home, in the enforced nomadism of a soldier’s life. They were a shell you could take with you.

“There’s a good well of clean water we can drink straight, plenty of it and a wind-pump, and the distance might, ah…”

“Make it harder for bored troopers to come into town and get drunk and cause too many problems,” Ingolf said.

The younger Richlander nodded. “Yessir. And maybe we should provide working parties to our hosts, sweat some of the devilment out of them once they get over the fight and start feeling bored and randy again. Uff da, this officer’s job, it’s like being a nanny, isn’t it, sometimes! I figure that’s why Three Bears put the Sioux even farther out.”

Says the graybeard of twenty-four, Ingolf thought.

“That, and they don’t like being crowded; and he’s scouting out to the north right now. Supplies?”

“Plenty, sir, we don’t have to touch the reserves. Lots of firewood ready cut. Lord Maugis here gave us a bunch of the sheep.”

Maugis shrugged and spread his hands. “Sheep and battles go ill together, and the meat won’t keep in this heat. That was my demesne herd, too.”

The Richlander nodded. “And all the vegetables and fresh bread and fruit we can use, which is making the men happy, and some pretty good beer, I’m having that carefully rationed. We paid, of course.”

“Of course,” Ingolf said gravely.

He and Mary glanced at each other. They had permission to draw on the Crown accounts through Sandra Arminger, but Rudi was still fairly heavy with gold-the friendly new government of Iowa had given them a substantial going-away present to mark the alliance. As it turned out, gold was relatively more valuable here in Montival. Ingolf knew why. There were more ruins in the east, particularly more big ones, and the big ones were where most of the precious metals could be found. You had to have a grasp on the economics of the trade to succeed as a salvager. The difference in purchasing power was about two-to-one for gold, a little less for silver.

But it’s going to run out someday not too far away. Wars are really expensive, and then Rudi’s going to be dependent on his mom-in-law for an allowance. Which will make everyone else unhappy or even get them thinking she’s taking over using him and Matti as a false front, and I’ve noticed other people in this neck of the woods aren’t too fond of the PPA. Or he’s got to get them all to pay him taxes so he can be independent, which will also make them unhappy, and he’ll probably have to borrow a lot from the bankers too. The Destined Prince with the Magic Sword is wonderful, but less wonderful when he asks you to cough up every tenth bushel and piglet and takes out a mortgage on your farm.

Maugis smiled. “Cash is always useful, Esquire,” he said; Jaeger blinked a little at the unfamiliar title. “But note that my bailiff is selling you fresh produce.”

It took a moment for Jaeger to get the implications; Mary snorted a little under her breath, but Ingolf thought the man wasn’t slow, just deliberate.

I’m not selling anything that would be useful in case of a siege, in other words.

The captured Boise officer had been eating with concentrated attention; probably they’d been on thin rations for a while. The enemy army was so big it was straining their logistics just by being all in one place, and they’d also probably looked forward to getting somewhere they could forage from the enemy. Ingolf waited for him to slow down and make a second trip for dark red Shuksan strawberries and cream. He could ease himself by thinking of it as plunder.

“Have your wounded been treated properly, Captain Woburn?” Ingolf asked, a formal note in his voice.

The man nodded, equally correct as the saying went.

“Yes, Colonel Vogeler. I wouldn’t be here, otherwise. My medical officer survived, he’s been working with yours, and he tells me that they received the same care as your men. I’ve visited them and they’re as comfortable as possible. The rest of us have been well treated and well fed, and the guards are no rougher than necessary.”

He swallowed; he was an unremarkable-looking young man, medium-brown hair and blue eyes, with a rather long bony face and weathered skin, not big or small but hard-looking and very fit, with large hands and wrists. He forced those eyes back to Ingolf.

“Thank you, sir. It’s… not exactly what I’d expected.”

“You’re welcome, though technically you’re Lord Maugis’ prisoners.”

“Thank you as well, then… my lord,” the Boise officer said.

Maugis nodded gravely. “You are welcome, Rancher Woburn. It’s an obligation of chivalry to care for the defeated.”

That brought an odd look; he wondered what sort of propaganda Boise pumped out about the PPA. Boise went in for propaganda a lot, posters slathered all over the place, he’d seen that traveling through its territory on the way to tell Rudi about the Sword, and then again when they all came back heading east; they’d returned by the northern route, through the Dominions. He doubted General-President Martin Thurston had stopped the practice when he took over from-after killing-his father Lawrence. He’d certainly put out enough lies about his brother Fred being responsible for their father’s death; Fred had been one of the Companions of the Quest, and Rudi intended to see him in charge in Boise when things were settled.

Assuming we win, of course. And “ assume”…

Boise’s posters never said much that was good about this part of the world, and probably a lot of it was deserved, though not as much these days as in the past. There were still barons who would have been a lot rougher than de Grimmond, though, even with the High King issuing orders.

Ingolf spoke again: “Your men fought hard against odds when we surprised you, no panic. And they’re very well drilled. When you reversed front on us after that arrow-exchange it was like one man moving; it’s a difficult maneuver and I’ve never seen it better done. If we hadn’t had an ace you’d have gotten away and hurt us badly in the process.”

“Ah… thank you again.” Bitterly. “Those sheep were a trap, weren’t they? Bait.”

“Yup,” Ingolf said, and ate a bite of honey cake with whipped cream.

“And I led us into it and lost half my command,” the younger man said with soft bitterness, looking down at his bowl. “Lost all of it and me, too. It’d be easier all around if I’d taken an arrow in the eye. And I’m supposed to be a trained officer!”

“Son, if something looks too good to be true, like a nice tasty flock of sheep just begging to get put on the grill, it usually is. If it’s any consolation I got sucker punched pretty much the same way back… when I was younger than you are now and had a command I deserved a lot less that you did yours. Training does only so much. Experience you have to get the hard way. You pay for it, and your men pay for it, and that’s just the way it is in this screwed-up world.”

Woburn looked up, eyes narrowed in thought. “You’re not from around here, are you, sir? I can’t place your accent.”

“Nope. I’m from the Free Republic of Richland… the Richland in Wisconsin, not the Richland over near Kennewick on the Columbia.”

The other man’s eyes widened. “The Midwest? Then-”

He shut up quickly. Ingolf ate another forkful, before he said judiciously: “Yup. It really is true that Iowa and the others are marching. On Corwin, for starters, but they’re going to keep right on going as far as Boise and they’re not likely to be in a real good mood by then. Hell, after the way the Cutters killed their Bossman on his own ground, the Iowans aren’t in a good mood now. Iowa’s run by his widow these days, you know. I was there when they mustered outside Des Moines. Must have been seventy, eighty thousand men-and that wasn’t counting the ones who were joining ’em later. They’ve got more if they need ’em.”

“That’s a large force,” Woburn said, a little white about the lips. “Still, numbers aren’t everything.”

“They’re mostly pretty green, except for a few from Fargo and Marshall who were in the Sioux War,” he added honestly. “But there are a hell of a lot them and their gear and logistics are good. The Sioux are coming west too, and they’ve got blood in their eyes and scores to pay off. You had some experience with them yesterday.”

Woburn was silent for an instant, then doggedly returned to his food. “And thank you for… stopping those… Sioux.” He’d probably been about to say savages. “They’d have killed us all.”

Ingolf nodded. “They’re not what you’d call fond of the CUT,” he said mildly. “They’ve got good reason, and there weren’t a lot of rules when they fought ’em the last time, out there on the High Plains east of the Rockies.”

That brought the other man’s head up. “We’re soldiers of the United States, not that f-… not the Prophet!”

What everyone else called the United States of Boise called itself the United States of America, and some of them actually meant it. Ingolf chuckled slightly. “Captain Woburn, have you ever been out of Idaho before?”

He opened his mouth, closed it, then said with stubborn honesty: “No. Never even as far as Boise until I did the Officer Candidate School course.”

“Well, I’ve been all the way from Nantucket to the Willamette. More than once. And young feller, the United States is deader than.. . than Rome. Than f-… freaking Babylon, come to that, or those other places in the Bible, Nineveh and Egypt and whatnot.”

“All the way… are you that Ingolf Vogeler?” Woburn blurted, his eyes going a little wide.

“Yup.” Ingolf nodded towards Mary. “And that’s the Mary Vogeler, formerly Mary Havel. Rudi’s sister. High King Artos’ sister, Mike and Signe Havel’s daughter, Astrid Loring’s niece.”

She smiled charmingly. “My mother and father met your father a long time ago, in Idaho. The Camas Prairie, isn’t it? Just after the Change.”

Woburn took a deep breath. “Well, that’s, ah, startling. Yes, I remember Father telling me about that.”

“I’m sure he told you about the fight against Iron Rod,” Mary added.

Yeah. Mike Havel saved Woburn the elder’s bacon back then. We won’t mention the fact that Arminger was backing Iron Rod by proxy.

“And Captain Woburn?” Ingolf went on calmly. “Just for your information, I was at the Battle of Wendell, when old general Thurston died. He was wounded by the Prophet’s men, but his son Martin killed him, your current ruler and the one who came up with this alliance with the Prophet and the CUT. I know Fred Thurston didn’t do it, Martin did. I was there.”

“So was I,” Mary said crisply.

“Is that the truth?” Woburn said quietly.

Ingolf shrugged. “Either my word’s good, or it isn’t, and you’ll have to be the judge of that for yourself.” He held up a hand. “Just think about it.”

Woburn gave a jerky nod. “May I ask what’s to be done with my men?”

Maugis nodded in turn, smiling politely and slipping in a small needle: “The High King’s orders are that all Boise prisoners are to be kept separate from the Prophet’s men… I trust that’s satisfactory?”

Woburn flushed, and the nobleman went on: “You’ll be taken to Walla Walla and then on the rail line to Wallula, and down the Columbia by barge to join the others; we’ve got over three battalions’ worth of your comrades by now. The High King has also commanded that Boisean prisoners are to be treated strictly according to the laws of war. Enlisted men may be required to work, but nothing excessive, officers to keep their sidearms and be allowed to give parole, prisoners will get the same rations our men eat, and no degrading punishments. Perhaps he’ll talk to you himself.”

The Boisean was silent for a moment. “I should return to my men, my lord.”

“By all means. If you have any needs, please inform my guards and they’ll relay the message to me. We’re rather busy and stretched thin here, defending our homes, but I’ll consider anything within reason.”

Then he went on to Ingolf: “Come walk with me, Lord Vogeler.”

Mary caught his eyes and nodded very slightly; Mark gave a slight yelp as if someone had kicked him under the table and subsided, and he didn’t think Lady Helissent missed any of it. Captain Jaeger stood and gave him a salute and then headed back to the buffet one more time before he’d have to get back to the regiment.

The two men strolled out through the busyness of the manor, down the front steps and toward the heavy steel-strapped timber gates.

“Getting your stuff out while the going’s good?” Ingolf asked.

Maugis shrugged. “Yes. Though in the end, things can be replaced.”

He gestured at the big house. “This is earth and stone and timber; I love it because of the memories it holds for me of my childhood, and because my own children were born here, but it’s not… not something that can really die. We can rebuild if the enemy wreck it, though losing the labor that went into it will hurt. But it’s the people that are the core of it.”

They walked out the front gate of the manor gardens. The outer wall of the great house grounds formed one side of a town square paved with squared blocks of basalt, with a big fountain in the center, one of several where the folk could fill their buckets as they pleased.

Trees ringed it, maples and oaks, and other buildings; the tall church, a bathhouse-cum-laundry, a tavern with a creaking sign that read The Hawk and Bear showing a very large eagle fighting a very small grizzly and right now doing a land-office business. There was a potter’s shop too; a wheelwright’s long sheds; and several stores selling things, rather than relying on peddler’s carts or passing Tinerant caravans. This was a baron’s seat as well as the village of a manor.

Everything was built of the same materials as the great house, tile roofs over whitewashed pise walls on knee-high foundations of mortared basalt stone. The square was thick with activity, some of it preparation for a big public feast; there were a row of fire pits with whole carcasses of pig and sheep and ox roasting over them and giving off clouds of savory smoke as grease dripped on the coals, and women were setting up trestle tables and a series of stands that would hold barrels.

“I will be giving an address to my people tonight,” Lord Maugis said. “One way or another.”

Ingolf’s eyes were shaped by a lifetime’s campaigning; they rose to the heights eastward, the first time he’d done that here in daytime. He stopped still for an instant and whistled. He’d known that Castle Tucannon was on a hill over the town. And it was, but that was like saying that the ruins of Chicago were large or that Iowa had a hell of a lot of people.

This whole range of low mountains had obviously been a plateau once, and then been cut up by water action far in the past into a maze of ridges, peaks and canyons that got steeper as you went farther in. This looked like a lot of the ridges on the edge of the high country. Only the end of the ridge had fallen off somehow, leaving better than a hundred feet of nearly sheer basalt in a horseshoe shape with a tangle of huge rocks at the base.

The castle had been built atop that; it was the usual basic Association design, doubled as they sometimes were to enlarge it-what they called a mirror keep. But the outer walls were at the edge of those cliffs, and the builders had improved them by chopping out any projecting spurs. Mounted on one of the towers was a tall Ponderosa pine trunk, about a hundred feet tall with a ladder up its side and a small platform on the top. He tried to imagine what sort of a vantage it would give you, and failed. And it probably put Castle Tucannon in connection with the heliograph net all the way to Walla Walla, which would mean all the way to Portland and beyond.

Say what you like about this Arminger guy, he knew how to get things built, not just how to kill people.

“There was a solid path in from the other side; my father’s builders used that, then cut it away afterwards and put in a bridge that could be brought down quickly, as well as the drawbridge,” Maugis said, as they resumed their walk. “My sire always did have a good eye for ground.”

“Water?” Ingolf asked, and Maugis nodded respectfully.

“You do see the essentials, my lord Vogeler. The rock is basalt, but there’s limestone under it. Water drains down from the mountains through the strata and breaks out as springs there, at the base, plenty even in high summer like this. We run the town’s water in from there through pipes, and there are deep tube wells and reservoirs under the keep. And we use chambers in the rock for bulk storage after the harvest… a bit cumbersome, but it means there’s a four-year supply there at any one time.”

Maugis smiled, a hard expression. “And besides getting away from the Lord Protector-quite true, by the way- that is a reason why my father picked this place for his stronghold. A major one. He told me he was looking carefully all the time the Association was pacifying these lands. Most of the poor harried starved wretches welcomed overlords with real weapons who could give them peace to plow and plant.”

Light wagons and packtrains were heading upslope; the jagged peaks of the Blue Mountains lay dreaming and purple there to the eastward. Some of them bore the goods he’d seen coming out of the manor, others bundles of weaponry or farm tools or things less readily identifiable, still others household furnishings more humble than the baron’s.

“Not all going to the castle,” Ingolf said; it wasn’t a question.

He estimated that the tall stronghold could be held securely by about two hundred men at a pinch, and three or four hundred would be ample. If they had their families along, it would be pretty tight quarters. Build small and high was a good rule for a fort, and that one was high and no mistake. Ingolf couldn’t think of any way to storm it at all, offhand, as long as the garrison stayed alert. Even getting close to it would be dangerous, given the vantage it provided for catapult fire, and shooting back would be a joke with that elevation.

“No, not even most is going to the castle. The mountains were another reason my father took seisin of this grant, and not just for the water and timber, though that’s why my manors are all in the foothills. There are caves up there, and old buildings from before the Change-ranger cabins, and so forth.”

“Hmmm.” Ingolf scratched at his beard. “And you’ve been working at them since your father’s day?”

Maugis nodded. “For the last twenty years, and there are hidden storehouses underground we’ve been filling since the war started last year. Good grazing, too; it’s not all forest and rock, there are flat areas with plenty of grass, and there’s the devil’s own lot of game, boar and bear and deer and elk. Not to mention tiger and wolf and cougar. We use the high country in dry years for summer grazing; my folk know those mountains. I’m not sending any to Walla Walla to be shipped down the Columbia… and possibly never come back.”

Ingolf nodded understanding. The baron was being forethoughtful for his people, and for his own family’s interests as well. There wasn’t any serfdom anywhere in Montival, or slavery. Fifteen years ago the treaty at the end of what everyone but the PPA folks called the War of the Eye, what they termed the Protector’s War here, forbade any law that limited the right to emigrate. Anyone who wanted to leave could, debts or no. But that meant leaving the only home they had, with nothing more than the clothes they stood up in, and no skills but one particular type of farming.

Few would face that if they weren’t impossibly badly treated at home. However, if you’d been shipped to a distant city anyway, with the government footing the bill, heading home away from the bright lights might not seem very attractive at all. Or at least some would stop on a manor where a holding was available from a lord greedy for workers; there was more good land everywhere than there were hands to till it.

“That castle could be held by a corporal’s guard, my lord,” Ingolf said thoughtfully. “Well, them and some catapult crews.”

“And I could do it that way,” Maugis agreed. “Keep a minimal garrison and the most vulnerable noncombatants in the castle. Everyone else in the hills, and then raid out of them with the barony’s fighting men when the enemy occupy the lowlands… which they will.”

“Yup, they will,” Ingolf said; he wasn’t going to lie to this man. “Hopefully, not for all that long, but for a while, yeah.”

“Tell me, Lord Vogeler, how many men would you need to comb these mountains against me and my neighbors if we took refuge there? How long would it take?”

Ingolf’s professional reflexes kicked in. He looked up at the peaks to the east-one of them still had a little snow on it and must be around seven thousand feet-and ran what he knew of the terrain through his mind.

“At least five thousand men and a lot of equipment, if you gave me a year,” he said. “Not counting the ones you’d need to besiege the castles around here, or at least solidly invest them. Maybe two years to do a thorough job. Ten, twenty thousand and even more gear if you wanted it done quick and dirty. You’d need good troops you could trust to get out there in small units and get stuck in whenever they could, not just go through the motions when someone higher up was looking. And some engineers to build roads and fortified posts, plus labor. And it’d cost you, money and blood both. That’s natural ambush country, looks like.”

Maugis nodded quietly. They walked on through the town, the baron nodding response to bows and curtsies and salutes; nobody was going to interrupt him, of course. Grimmond-on-the-Wold had something like eight hundred folk in peacetime and many more now. That was big for a village, but not a place that had wholly made up its mind to be a town either, and certainly not even the smallest city.

“I could raid from those hills and tie down that many troops or more,” Maugis said. “I could make trying to move supplies through this country… anywhere between here and the Snake River… a nightmare of endless harassment. Ambush convoys, kill foraging parties, cut off patrols, burn outposts.”

He turned and gestured to the town and the lands beyond. “I know that this doesn’t look like much to a traveled man,” he said.

“Actually it looks pretty good,” Ingolf said sincerely. “Mary and I were just now saying that we envied you. Well, would envy you if it were peacetime.”

Maugis smiled; it was an oddly charming expression, and made his rather ugly face handsome for a moment.

“Thank you,” he said. “This is my… my world, if you know what I mean. My own particular world.”

Ingolf dredged his memory for a word he’d heard; his family were mostly Deutsch if you went back far enough, along with a slew of other things including a lot of Norski. They had preserved a few bits and pieces of that heritage, and not just recipes for bratwurst.

“Heimat,” he said. “An old word. Your heimat is… your little country, the first homeland of the heart. The place where your roots are.”

Maugis nodded quickly. “Exactly. I’ve enjoyed my times at Court in Todenangst and Portland, the university in Forest Grove, visits to Walla Walla, tournaments and meetings of the Peers, theatre and concerts, but this place is my home. All of it, and the people are my people.”

Most of the folk of Grimmond-on-the-Wold were peasants, who tilled the little garden tofts around their three-room-and-a-loft cottages that gave off the tree-shaded streets. They had their strips in the big open fields of wheat and barley, canola and sunflowers and clover westward, their stock in the common flocks and herds. From that they paid a share to the lord, and worked two or three days a week on his demesne land; that included a long south-facing slope of goblet-trained vineyards green and bushy with summer and the orchards around the irrigation furrow beneath. Some of the little houses were neatly kept, with flowers planted around their doorways. Others had patches flaking from their whitewash and chickens walking in the door.

None of them looked truly miserable; the people in them certainly weren’t underfed, or very ragged, or too smelly. The toft gardens all had abundant vegetables and a few fruit trees; there were chicken coops and the odd pigsty or shed for a milch cow down at their far fence. There were Refugees in Richland who lived worse. The upper part of the town held larger houses as well, from the reeve’s and the bailiff’s up to those of the household knights.

“Heimat,” Maugis repeated, rolling the word around his mouth to taste it. “I like that. It… fits.”

Since this was a baron’s seat, it also had two or three of the things the ordinary manorial village had one of, bakeries and blacksmith’s shops and some full-time weavers. The blacksmiths had the usual piles of bundled scrap metal around their doors, and they were working too hard to notice their overlord walking by; metal hissed viciously with a vinegary smell and a spearhead was quenched, with a grinding chorus of metal shoved against spinning honing wheels beneath. Most of the other craftsfolk looked about as busy.

“War wears things out,” Maugis said, nodding at them. “Things and people.”

“God knows it’s worn holes in me,” Ingolf said ruefully, touching the dent where his nose had been broken.

Down at the end of the single street were a set of huge barns, long work sheds, a tall windmill and a tangle of corrals. Those were swarmingly busy too.

“I could turn these mountains into a running sore when the enemy come… as they will. Or I could put up a single fight on the plains for honor’s sake, and then just defend the heights, giving a bloody nose to anyone who pokes it in and hoping to deal as best I can with whoever has the victory in the end.”

“You could do that, my lord,” Ingolf said carefully, as he might to a horse he wasn’t sure might bolt. “But you’d be making it that much less likely we win the war.”

“Yes,” Maugis said calmly. “And I have obligations to the Count, whose vassal I am. He’s a good man who does his best, and even his father-who was a jumped-up thug with a veneer of courtesy, as my father said-gave us good lordship, mostly, which is as much as a vassal can rightly demand. The question is, can the Count protect me and mine in return for my service if I throw everything into the scales for him? I’m not a household knight who can fight with no thought but to die at his lord’s side. There are more than four thousand people living in this Barony, Lord Vogeler, commons, clerics and gentles alike. They’re my vassals; they look to me for protection in return for their service and obedience, and I have sworn to provide it. For that oath I must account before the very Throne of God.”

He crossed himself. “Most of the time being a baron is a fine thing, the wealth and power and glory of it. There comes a time to pay for everything, though, if a man’s to be a man indeed and not just a wolf that walks on two legs with his sword for fangs. And only the lesser debts can be paid in cash. These decisions are mine to make here, and that is my burden.”

“There’s more involved than the Count Palatine,” Ingolf said. “Or Walla Walla and the County of the Eastermark in general.”

“Yes; there’s his overlord the Lady Regent, and the new Kingdom. Lady Sandra I know a little, and she is very able, she’s led the Association well. But she’s colder than the dark side of the Moon. A ruler must make sacrifices, and balance this loss against that, sometimes ruthlessly; I know that from watching and listening to my father work, and my own experience. But she would sacrifice my barony and its folk without even a moment’s hesitation if it served her aims, as if it were an entry in a ledger or a cutting bar in a hay-reaper. I cannot give fealty to a machine or a mere form of written laws. It must be to a person, someone who respects my honor, who loves it, even if he sends me to death and condemns my lands to the fire for a greater duty’s sake.”

“She’s not the big boss anymore, Lord Maugis.”

He stopped and looked at Ingolf Vogeler. “I don’t know Rudi Mackenzie,” he said. “Or Artos the High King. But I do know you, a little, Lord Vogeler. We’ve fought together side by side, and I’ve seen you at work with your own troops. And I flatter myself that though I’m young yet, I’m a fair judge of men. So tell me about Artos. Tell me if he’s a King worth risking all this”-he moved his arm about-“for. Is he a man who loves his vassals’ honor as much as his own? Is he worthy of true fealty, that I can ask my followers to lay down their lives and risk their homes for him?”

Ingolf stood rooted to the spot. Hell, how do I answer that? he thought desperately. OK, I know Rudi pretty damned good. We were together through two really stressful years and a lot of… wait a minute.

“Lord Maugis,” he said. “I could tell you what I think of Rudi.. . the High King… but that would just be words. My opinion at most. Let me tell you what I’ve seen him do, these last two years and more, since I rode into Sutterdown with the Prophet’s men on my tracks. Words are cheap, but a man is what he does.”

When Ingolf finished, he found his throat unexpectedly dry. And the sun was much lower, low enough to make him blink in surprise. They were sitting on a stone horse-trough with a spigot above it. He turned it on, and drank a double handful of the cold mineral-tasting water, shaking out his hands afterwards. The air sucked the moisture out of his beard in moments, but it was a little cooler now.

Lord Maugis stood looking westward for a long moment, his left hand on his sword-hilt. When he turned he bowed.

“My lord de Stafford said that all the barons of the County Palatine were summoned to a conference in Walla Walla by the Count, to consider our strategy in this war. If we could be spared from our domains. I think that I can be, now.”

A bell began ringing; the big one in the church, going a slow deep: bong… bong… bong… a dozen times.

“And it is time to return to the square,” he said.

They did. The bustle there was still going on, by the light of steel baskets of burning pinewood that lofted trails of sparks like little scarlet-yellow stars. The fire in the clouds westward was dying down, and the sky over the mountains was dark blue, a few first true stars showing. The moon was nearly full, shedding a silvery light almost as bright as the fires. And a timber podium had been set up in front of the manor gates, a simple thing that would raise a few people to about head-height over the pavement. The ground sloped away from there; it would give everyone in the square a view.

More and more people summoned by the bells were pouring in, until the area was packed. Lady Helissent and her mother came out, and her children. Her glance crossed that of her husband; he nodded to her. Ingolf could see something pass between them, knowledge and decision; Helissent’s eyes closed for an instant, and then she took a deep breath and opened them and smiled bravely at the father of her children.

“If you would accompany me, Lord Vogeler, and your good lady?” Maugis chuckled at the look on the older man’s face. “No, I’m not asking you to speak, just to… be present.”

The local priest went up the stairs first in his vestments, and intoned a prayer. Nearly everyone crossed themselves and kissed their crucifixes, then joined in the last part of it:

“… Dignum et iustum est. Amen.”

Then the lord of Tucannon and his family and guests climbed up. Looking down, Ingolf saw a sea of faces, and at first was conscious mainly of the eyes. The gaudy haughtiness of the knights and their families and households were in the first row, shading backward into the shaggy dun mass of the commons, straw hats and kerchiefs and shock-headed children. There were a scattering of Richlanders and Sioux; even a few of the Boiseans were there, officers who’d given their paroles. Captain Woburn was one of them, his face impassive. The crackle of the fire-baskets ran beneath the sough of breathing.

Almost-silence fell as Lord Maugis stepped forward; then a bow swept through the crowd. The soldiers behind the podium came to attention, thumping their spearbutts and the metal-edged points of their four-foot shields down on the paving blocks. Maugis doffed his hat with a flutter of liripipe and returned the bow, not so deeply but a definite gesture.

“My people,” he said. “My brothers and sisters-for any who fights beside me for this our home I call my brother-we are here tonight to celebrate and to mourn. We fought and beat those who threatened our land, our homes and our families-”

The crowd burst into a long rolling cheer, calling the baron’s name. Maugis stopped for an instant; Ingolf could see him blinking in surprise. Beside him Mary murmured very quietly, but pitching it to carry to his ear: “I sort of like our host.”

Ingolf nodded; he saw her point.

“-and that we celebrate. We mourn the loss of fathers, brothers, husbands. We pray that God will receive their souls, who died bravely fighting for the right.”

He crossed himself. “Holy Mary-”

The crowd murmured with him, like wind through trees: “-mother of God, pray for us, now and at the hour of our deaths.”

Maugis waited again. “I wish that I could say that this was the last battle we must fight. But it was not. The enemy is numerous and strong. He will come again, and we must fight, for he comes to kill our loved ones, to take the land that feeds our children, and to destroy our holy faith. The way will be hard, and many of us may fall. Pray to God and to our patron St. Joan for the strength to endure all that we must suffer and do.”

Well, that’s telling it straight, Ingolf thought. Hope he knows his audience.

Into the silence Maugis continued: “But we do not fight this fight alone! Not only all the Association, but all of the High Kingdom of Montival is fighting this war with us. Our High King, Artos, leads them; and he bears the Sword that was forged in Heaven and given to him by the Lady of Stars, the Queen of Heaven herself! If God is with us, who can prevail against us? Artos and Montival! ”

The cry was unfamiliar, but the crowd took it up willingly; stories of Artos and the Sword had been circulating for a while now, even in out-of-the-way spots like this. Many of the faces looking up were exalted and rapt now.

“And we have strong allies. You see some of them among us now. More are marching against the enemy from north and east. A cheer, my people, for the allies come from far away to risk their lives beside us!”

Maugis laid a hand on Ingolf’s shoulder for a moment, and the Richlander fought down an impulse to fidget and blush at the roar of acclaim.

“Already a great army gathers at Walla Walla, many thousands strong and led by the Grand Constable of the Association, and by our own Count Felipe, who is my overlord as I am yours. He has called me there to consult with him.”

This time the silence had an edge to it. Maugis lifted his hands again.

“In the short time I shall be gone, I name my own good wife, the well-loved Lady Helissent, as deputy in my place. To assist her, our allies will remain here until I return in a few days. Give her your loyal service, your strong arms and wise counsel, as you have to me.”

There were more cheers. Mary’s lips moved close to his ear: “Pointing out his wife and children are staying right here,” she said. “That was a smart move.”

When the sound died down, Maugis’ arm went to the trestle tables. “And now let us feast and dance, my brothers and sisters. Whatever storms come, let us remember this day, and that we are one, and that one with the strength of many. Here, and in lands we have never seen.”