Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change (33 page)

“They both
will
like that,” Mathilda said with a laugh and nod. Then, thoughtfully: “Though I never did know exactly which of old Sam’s stories
were
true.”

“The grim ones, I think,” Edain said, and added: “Your Majesty,” dutifully as he remembered.

The head of the High King’s Archers was a few years younger than Rudi and a handspan shorter, around Mathilda’s five-eight, but thick in the arms and shoulders, with curly light-brown hair beneath the light sallet helm and steady grey eyes. The big square hands that gripped the yellow yew-wood stave of his bow looked strong enough to crack walnuts between thumb and fingers, scarred and already a little battered by hard use.

“Good to hear Dick’s in no danger!” Rudi said sincerely; he’d been in and out of the Aylward household all his life, and Edain had been his companion on the Quest as well as a boyhood friend. “They’ll be the better there for the letters.”

“Letters, Chief? I sent one, but Dickie’s not much of a writing man, even when his few wits haven’t been scattered with a mace.”

“I wrote to old Sam myself,” Rudi said with a grin. “Suspecting as I did that
your
letter would leave out a bit of this and that. An arrow in and out of the throat of a certain man standing over me with a spear, for instance.”

Edain scowled and blushed. “Just doing the job, Chief,” he said. “As the father would expect. I wish I’d been in time for Epona…”

Rudi rested a hand on his shoulder for a moment: “It’s fully aware I am that a battlefield is a dangerous place, brother, and what can and cannot be done. Didn’t your father train me to the bow as well, and to the hunt and many another useful thing? Besides the times,” he added with a grin, “he gave me a smack across the backside or later a clout to the ear, as needful.”

Edain grinned back. “Remember the time we were scuffling in the dairy like a pair of hound pups and got dung in each other’s hair?”

Rudi laughed outright. “And he took us each by an ear to lead us on howling tiptoe and pitched us into the Dun Fairfax pond and stood with his arms crossed while we scrubbed and scrubbed and all the folk laughed! Yes, I remember it, fearful
lèse-majesté
that it was.”

Then he went on in a professional tone: “All’s well here?”

“Good barracks and good rations, Chief, and we’ve got the guard rosters set up with the Lady Regent’s household men. Naught for you to worry about.”

Rudi shrugged. “Best to make sure. Carry on, then.”

Carrying on included detailing a half-dozen of the archers to follow the High King and Queen, but they tactfully stayed out of conversational range, if you spoke softly. All of them had a shaft on the string, and the last two took turns walking backward.

Mathilda frowned slightly. “Rudi…this is a pretty good place for the conference…isolating everyone from their hangers-on and factions can help…but why did you pick Timberline especially?”

She glanced at the Sword, and he shook his head. Still slightly damp, the darkened red-blond locks swirled around the shoulders of his jacket.

“Did the Sword tell me to, you mean? Possibly. Possibly not, the puzzlement of it, for it’s often difficult to tell what’s…that and what is my own soul’s promptings.”

He frowned as well; there were times when he didn’t feel like himself anymore. And other times when he did, but like a house that had had a whole new suite of rooms added. “I…just
felt
that it was right, somehow. There’s something here that I…we…
need
.”

O
ne ritual Sandra had brought over into the modern age was a cocktail hour before dinner; that was
not
a Society legacy, and the Corvallans had the same habit, so Rudi assumed it was some custom of the ancient world. He hoped it made them feel more at ease as he sipped his—it was in a conical glass on a stem.

This one was a mixture of whiskey, sweetened cream, coffee, anisette and absinthe, served ice-cold; tasty, and with a hidden punch like a war hammer you didn’t see until it hit you on the neck-flare of your helmet. His mother-in-law called it a
Moloko Plus
, and claimed for some reason that it was appropriate in a time of battle and war. He could see why. A few of these would certainly prime you for violence.

There were about a score and ten of folk attending, though some were swift replacements for those killed or wounded in the Battle of the Horse Heaven Hills; not enough to account for all the communities which now made up Montival, but some of the smaller ones let the Mackenzies or Mount Angel or one of the others they trusted hold a watching brief for them. Standing in the warmth of the towering hearths and chatting as folk nibbled on crackers topped with potted shrimp or pats of
spiced goose liver or slivers of smoked salmon and capers was pleasant, but he was sharp-set enough to be pleased when the gong sounded and the musicians struck up a slow march on viol and rebec and hautboy, and he gave Mathilda his arm and led her in in a flash of silk and jewels.

Though the Sword cradled in my other arm is a bit unorthodox,
he thought mordantly.
Still, I will not let it far from my grasp the now; not when Cutter assassins might crawl out from under the table or drop from the ceiling. It would warn me so, now, or guard me at least. Its usefulness grows. Also its presence is a reminder to the reluctant of what and Who stands behind me, and that They are Montival’s patrons.

Long, colorful tapestries covered other sections of the walls in the great dining hall, done with scenes of the forests and mountains or the hunt, in thread that caught the firelight and lamplight with glints of silk iridescence or with the gleam of gold and silver. Or modeled on dreams from some
romaunt
where ladies rode unicorns through fields of asphodel, with miniature dragons on their wrists in place of hawks.

His mother was in an arsaid now, the long wrapped tartan skirt and plaid that older Mackenzie women favored for formal occasions. She wore a green shift of fine embroidered linen with lace cuffs beneath it; both were of her own weaving. A headband bearing the Triple Moon was on her brow, confining her greying red hair, and she sat with some folk from Corvallis.

One was Ed Finney, an influential yeoman they knew well from long seasons of guest-friendship stretching back to the terrible years, and Juniper Mackenzie had known his father even before that. There were a few rather lost-looking Faculty types from the city itself, and she was putting them at their ease, something for which she had a gift; they were probably a bit spooked at the neo-feudal splendors all around. Corvallis kept up more of the old ways than most.

To an unhealthy degree, perhaps,
he thought.
That world is gone. If you try to hold to it, what you hold changes in your hands; its time is over, save as myth and legend. The past has its power, but it must give way to the future, and our memory of the past changes with the needs of the living.

One of the Corvallans was drawn a little apart, looking as if he was accustomed to a train of flunkies rather than a single secretary. He
did
consult the notes and files she offered rather often, not ostentatiously but as if it were a reflex born of long habit.

It was a good idea to get them all here, where there is an excuse to keep it down to the principals rather than hordes of hangers-on and minor players before whom the leaders must posture,
Rudi thought.
Hard enough to get a score of folk to agree on something, and them all men and women of power and place used to having their own way. Impossible if it were a hundred, not without taking time we don’t have right now, or without organization beforehand we haven’t had time for yet.

Chancellor Ignatius was keeping himself awake, but only by dint of extraordinary self-discipline. His monk’s tonsure showed occasionally when his head dipped a little, and the face above the plain dark Benedictine robe was gaunt as he gave his monarch a rueful smile; the golden chain of office looked a little incongruous against it. Being Lord Chancellor of a realm only a few months old in the midst of a major war was wearing on him harder than the Quest through frozen wilderness, battle and flight had done.

The more so as it was composed of contumaciously independent groups many of which had been—literally—at each other’s throats until a few years ago. Rudi suppressed a slight twinge of guilt at what he—and the man’s own iron sense of duty—was doing to his friend. The pile of paper he and Matti had had to wade through themselves was only a tithe of what landed on Ignatius’ head, and all of it life-and-death important to
someone
.

I’ve sent smiling lads and lasses to their deaths by the thousands already, or crippled them. I’ll use him up if I must; yes, and myself. That I don’t like it means little save to me, for I will do it nonetheless.

One of the Corvallans spoke, in a tone that hid aggression under a show of respect:

“Now that the enemy is defeated, ah, Your Majesty—”

“The enemy isn’t defeated, Professor. They’ve lost a battle, not the war, albeit it was a whacking great battle of unusual size,” Rudi said, a slight dryness to his tone. “’tis the end of the beginning, and perhaps the beginning of the end, but not the end itself, if you take my meaning.”

Professor Tom Turner was a plump and prosperous man in early middle
age, dressed in an expensive but understated jacket and trousers with an apricot-colored silk cravat and diamond stickpin. Rudi frowned—

Professor Turner
, he suddenly
knew
; the Sword was hanging from the back of his chair.
Chairman of the Faculty of Economics—the Guild Merchant, they’d say in most places. And a banker; in fact, he helped reinvent the trade after the Change, when things had settled down enough. One with his thumb in any number of pies. First National Bank of Corvallis, right enough. And Ignatius says we have to go through him for some of the loans we’re raising, this bond-issue thing. Otherwise it’ll all be done through Portland and Astoria, and that wouldn’t do at all, at all. Especially since those houses are so closely linked to the Regent. Men fear the subtle webs of the Spider of the Silver Tower, and not without reason.

“They’re retreating from our lands,” Turner said.

“That depends on the meaning of
our
, wouldn’t you say?” Ignatius replied. “They’re retreating towards the old Boise border. If we let them go, there’s nothing to stop them coming back later. I suggest reading the reports on the situation in the occupied CORA territories to illustrate what
that
would mean.”

“The tyrant of Boise is dead,” Turner pointed out. With a trace of unction: “Slain by our heroic leader.”

“He’s dead. The Prophet is not, and Martin was but the Prophet’s hand-puppet,” Rudi said. “I freed him as much as killing him…and the Prophet will be using another to control his realm. We must not let him consolidate his control there.”

Ignatius nodded: “It is their intentions towards us in the long term which matter, not their immediate capacity to carry those intentions out.”

Turner spread his hands. “Except that the League of Des Moines is attacking them too. We’ve been hearing how rich and powerful they are off in the Midwest; let them have the rest of the fight.”

Ignatius shrugged and went on: “And the High Kingdom claims Boise, New Deseret, Montana, and the lands of the Seven Council Fires of the Lakota
tunwan
…the Sioux.”

“Well, that’s another matter. Defending ourselves when we’re attacked is one thing. Going out to annex foreign territory is another. I thought the High Kingdom was supposed to establish peace?”

Rudi chuckled; there were more types of fencing than the sort you did with a practice sword in the salle d’armes. His voice was calmly reasonable as he went on:

“Lasting peace, my friend, is not the same as
beating off an attack
. We’re no longer facing the prospect of being overrun and destroyed, but we’re a very long way indeed from winning the peace and establishing the kingdom securely. Half-done is well begun, but only if you go on to finish the job. Our children will have their own problems; I will not leave them mine as well to solve all over again.”

Ignatius nodded. “In fact, Professor Turner,” he said dryly, “The People and Faculty Senate of Corvallis haven’t formally
joined
the High Kingdom of Montival at all. Just…acted and talked as if they had.”

Edward Finney grinned; he was a sixtyish man with a farmer’s weathered face and a still-strong body the shape and texture of an oak stump. His family’s knowledge and aid had helped dozens of others set up their own steadings in the years after the Change. They were well-to-do and often chosen to represent their rural district in the city-state’s popular assembly, in which they spoke for the rural interest as a whole. In Corvallan terms that meant he was part of the Faculty of Agriculture. Though without the mystic power of
tenure
, which meant something like
mana
in Corvallan dialect, and marked the inner circle of power. Oddly, it was usually restricted to people who studied things rather than the ones who actually did them.

“Some people, and I won’t name names, like for example Thomas Turner, keep putting off the formal declaration,” he said. “Last time it was because so many of our citizens were away fighting…which is chutzpah,
I’d
say.”

The guests were seated at an oval table, hollow-centered. It was quite new, and deftly avoided the too-provocative Association habit of dividing upper and lower ranks with a ceremonial salt-cellar. Rudi cast an eye down at it, and Mathilda inclined her head very slightly towards her mother, who in turn waggled her eyebrows even more infinitesimally.