Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change (34 page)

Well, yes, of course I thought of that,
it said, as plainly as words.

The staff brought out the first course, also without the flourish of
trumpets usual at a banquet in the Protectorate, something he’d always considered a prime example of what
his
mother considered folderol. It was hot beaten biscuits and butter and bowls of soup made with chicken sausage simmered with wine, broth, garlic, tomatoes, spinach and tortellini. However grand in scale Timberline was basically a hunting lodge and didn’t go in for the fantastic elaboration of court cuisine that you often got in Portland or at Castle Todenangst. Rudi was thankful for that too—in his experience, the pasties in the shape of castles and complex sauces full of spices from oversea were as much a matter of status and appearance as genuine appeal to the taste.

And all that was somewhat wasteful, which made him uneasy, particularly right now; the Mother-of-All wanted you to enjoy Her bounty, but that didn’t mean she would appreciate a spendthrift treatment of the good things won with the toil and sweat of Her children. A wise man didn’t court bad luck, or tiptoe around the borders of hubris.

Everyone made their own small ritual; which in a few cases was none at all, apart from a polite pause while the others finished. Rudi made the Invoking pentagram over his bowl and murmured:

“
Harvest Lord who dies for the ripened grain—

Corn Mother who births the fertile field—

Blessed be those who share this bounty;

And blessed the mortals who toiled with You

Their hands helping Earth to bring forth life.
”

Then he picked up his spoon eagerly; the talk died away for a while. He finished the soup with relish, ate another biscuit, sipped at the glass of dry white wine, and spoke cheerfully:

“Now, we
have
won a whacking great battle. The enemy’s in retreat; we have to harry them out and pursue them to their home over the mountains and there scour the CUT off the land and bring the folk into the kingdom. They aren’t the enemy, just his dupes and tools, to be rescued as much as fought. To do that, we need different arrangements. We’ve been using an emergency levy of the whole. That won’t do for a long war fought far away. We can’t take that many hands away from the land and workshops forever; we need to trim each contingent to those
willing and able to campaign for some time, staring at snowmelt, which means preparations must start
now
.”

“A standing army,” someone said.

“For now. And it’ll be necessary to make my position a matter of settled law and make sure that everyone contributes as they’re able, now that the most desperate part is past. The burdens must be fairly shared, and seen to be such. Nor can a war be run by a committee. Not well, at least. I will consult and seek advice, but decisions must be made without trying to sit in the middle between everyone’s opinions, and they must be made in good time—by me.”

“Ah…” Turner cleared his throat. “Ah, Your Majesty, there
is
the problem that Corvallis has always been attached to, ah, the heritage of Republican government…”

“Odd that you should say that,” Sandra Arminger said, delicately patting her lips with a linen napkin, speaking in a clear conversational voice that carried to the whole table without seeming loud. “As I remember it, Professor Turner, just before the Protector’s War—”

What everyone else calls the War of the Eye,
Rudi thought, hiding his amusement as he broke another biscuit and spread butter to melt into its steaming interior.
Everyone who isn’t an Associate, or at least everyone who lives outside the Protectorate.

His mother-in-law’s glee was even better concealed, but he knew her well enough to see the sheer artist’s pleasure in her bland brown gaze. She had always felt outmaneuvering a political opponent was among the rarest of life’s pleasures; if you could destroy him at the same time, that was the whipped cream on the blueberry tart. Best of all if you could demolish him with his own words. Rudi didn’t share the catlike joy she took in it, but there was no denying the technique was useful or that she was the mistress of it.

Juniper Mackenzie sighed slightly and rolled her eyes even more inconspicuously; she and Sandra had shared the raising of Mathilda and Rudi for more than a decade and cooperated at need as heads of State, but you couldn’t really say they were friends and most certainly not soul-mates. The smooth voice continued:

“— we, that is Norman and I, had a little conference with you in Portland in the ninth Change Year, and you were
most
willing to consider accepting Chartered City status for Corvallis, within the Association, under my late husband’s protection. Eager, even.”

She sipped demurely at her wine. “I have the notes of the conversation in my files, as a matter of fact.”

When Sandra Arminger mentioned
my files
, strong men blanched, and for good reason; perhaps the fabled mystic Internet of pre-Change times had been more thorough…and then again, perhaps not.

“That’s a misrepresentation of my position at the time!”

She went on, with a little cat smile of amused malice:

“Including a signed letter from you to that effect. Paper and ink are so inconveniently lasting, aren’t they?”

Turner wilted a little as glares shot at him from up and down the table. However much enthusiasm there was for the High Kingdom, everyone remembered the wars against the Association and the desperate fear they’d bred in the old days, not to mention those who’d lost kin and friends. Sandra had slipped the knife in at the most opportune moment, too; early enough to discredit him with many of the others, but late enough that the shock of it would be vivid for the next little while.

She could have used it to blackmail him out of opposition beforehand…but then again, that wouldn’t have been as effective in the long run. The problem with coercing an enemy into acting like a friend was that it didn’t stick longer than it took them to find wiggle room. Putting your boot on his neck did
solve
the problem for good and all, rather more often.

Of course, it’s far from the most final of Sandra’s solutions. She’s fond of that
When a man causes you a problem, remember, no man, no problem
maxim. I most surely do not altogether like this public flaying of even such a man as this; but then, I don’t like putting men to the sword on the field of battle either, and something like that is the alternative. Should Sandra be powerless against her enemies just because she hasn’t my reach or weight of arm? She’s spent the last twenty-five years ruling men of violence, wrapping them in nets of wit and wile they can’t cleave with cold steel.

Mathilda leaned close and murmured in his ear:

“
And she’s even making use of the way everyone else felt about the Association then
without
it injuring her position now. Go Mom!
”

Turner cleared his throat, ignoring the mutter of quiet conversation around him:

“Lady Sandra, I was always interested in seizing any chance of peace,” he said with a creditable attempt at dignity. “Unfortunately, your
late
husband was not a man with whom any real accommodation could be reached. I found that out to my regret. But I’m not ashamed that I
tried
to find a way to a negotiated settlement.”

Not bad
, Rudi thought.
Or to put it another way, you thought Norman was going to win the war that was obviously coming then and wanted to be on the winning side. You’re too clever to try any such thing with the CUT, though, having seen what their word’s worth. It won’t hurt to make everyone think you
might
do just that.

He went on aloud: “I hope you’re not suggesting we negotiate with the Prophet Sethaz, Professor.”

“Well…no, Your Majesty,” the Corvallan merchant prince said. “But we’ve already made great sacrifices in this war. Next year’s crop will be light even if the weather’s perfect.”

There were concerned nods at that; it was a valid point. Far too many strong young hands and backs had been under arms when they should have been plowing and sowing the fall wheat and barley, and far too many teams of oxen and horses had been hauling supplies or catapults instead of plows or reapers. And parts of the kingdom had been fought over instead of cultivated, including many of the richest grainlands north of the Columbia, which hadn’t been planted at all. The herds had suffered, too—all the politics in the world couldn’t make cattle and sheep breed or grow faster.

Nobody who’d grown up since the Change took the land’s yield for granted. Those who’d lived through it…well, he’d known some of them who couldn’t help compulsively hoarding pieces of bread in odd places until they went hard and moldy. Less extreme cases of obsession with food were too common to note.

“Sure, and we’ll survive without famine, or even much dearth, if we all
pull together,” Rudi said, smiling. His face went stark an instant. “As I’ve promised many who’ve suffered most, we will
all
help. Montival is a great and wide land, and much of it hasn’t been harmed.”

“Our allies…the strong allies who Your Majesty has so brilliantly brought to our side…surely they can take more of the burden now…” Turner said.

Eric Larsson and Signe Havel, the Bearkiller leaders, made identical grunts of derision; the near-unison wasn’t surprising, considering they were fraternal twins. Eric actually coughed a little biscuit into his second bowl of soup. He rapped on the table with the steel fist that had replaced his left hand after it was smashed by a Cutter war hammer fighting east of the mountains during the Pendleton campaign, a big scar-faced blond man in his early forties, with a look of ageless strength.

There was neither liking nor respect in the glance he gave Turner. The Outfit had always resented the way the city-state used them as a buffer during the wars against the Association and then skimped on help as well. They’d been founded by Mike Havel, who was Rudi’s blood-father, common knowledge though never officially acknowledged. Havel had been honest, and not a man of blood by his own choice, but iron-willed and at need a very hard man indeed. From his example the Bearkillers had inherited a ferocious straightforwardness to the way they approached the world. It was something which made them very good friends…as long as you were faithful in return.

“Yeah, right. Professor—” Eric made it a term of contempt “— you may have noticed our High King managed to persuade the Iowans and the others to march into Montana, fight the CUT and then to
just fucking go home
. Rather than deciding,
hey, don’t we deserve some of this territory for our trouble?
”

“The CUT helped there,” Rudi said mildly. “What with their killing the bossman of Iowa and encouraging a revolt in Des Moines. Matti managed the politics of it, sure and she did;
and
she made a good friend of Anthony Heasleroad’s wife.”

“Kate needed help and appreciated it,” Mathilda said modestly. “Besides, they’ve got their own internal disputes in the Midwest and a lot of
the Iowan nobility…Farmers and Sheriffs, they call them…don’t want their central government to have the sort of power a bigger standing army would mean, so they’d just as soon keep Iowa within its borders after the war. It’s not as if they’re short of land—they’ve got far more good black earth than they can cultivate. All that was obvious once I’d investigated a little and talked to the principals. The way we worked it they could say they wanted a clean exit strategy because they were altruistic.”

Her mother beamed pride at her and made a little silent delighted clapping motion. Rudi winced slightly at the sight. He admired Mathilda’s political talents—and relied on them—but her mother…

There are people whose approval fills you with disquiet.

Eric nodded agreement, but went on: “We leave them to do all the heavy lifting from now on, and remember they haven’t
seen
us do any fighting at all, and how long do you think they’ll stick to that unless they do see it? They’re helping us fight this war, but it’s
our
war. We’re the ones the CUT invaded. It won’t stay our war if we don’t follow up with an invasion of the enemy’s heartland.”

“And if it isn’t our war, we don’t get to shape the peace,” Signe said.

Rick Three Bears was glaring too. “And the Seven Council Fires were promised the protection of Montival when we agreed to join the kingdom,” he said. “You know, we Lakota get sort of antsy when you white-eyes break treaties. Leaving us with our asses swinging in the breeze out on the
makol
—the high plains—would bring what you might call some bad memories to mind. We agreed to fight with the League of Des Moines and let them base forces in our territory and fix up the railroads because we were promised we wouldn’t be left alone to face them afterwards. We’re relying on
you
to help us against
them
after the Cutters are out of the way. To fight with us against the Farmers from the square states, if it’s ever necessary.”

“God forbid,” Sandra Arminger said unctuously, and crossed herself with ostentatious piety. “But in that event, the Association will of course be behind the High King to the last lance and the last rose noble coin. We place our resources unquestioningly at His Majesty’s disposal for the remainder of this war and for the establishment of the kingdom.”

There were winces up and down the table.
Nobody
wanted the Protectorate to have a hammerlock on the new kingdom. It had too much land, wealth and power for anyone else’s peace of mind as it was.

“So do we,” Juniper Mackenzie said. “Sure, and isn’t this the fulfillment of the vision I had when I held Rudi over the altar in my Nemed and gave him the name of Artos? The Clan stands by the Lady’s Sword, who guards Her sacred wood and Her law.”

“Us too,” Eric said.

Signe nodded—not enthusiastically, as she’d never liked him much, but with grim determination.

“And the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict,” Ignatius said. “In this I speak for the Abbot-Bishop.”