The Given Sacrifice (36 page)

“You’ll do a good job of it, Rigobert,” Tiphaine said. “Better than I would. You’re
better at getting people to cooperate, especially in peacetime, but you’ve got an
excellent record in the Prophet’s War too.”

“And in my fifties, people have different expectations. I can delegate . . . certain
matters.”

Sir Julio laughed, a low sound that made Órlaith feel a bit shivery, and flexed his
sword-hand.

“Speaking of jobs,” Rudi said. “Lord Maugis, you did say most of the war damage has
been repaired on your Barony of Tucannon?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. The basics; only time will cure some things. My vassals and everyone
down to the very cottars worked like heroes, just as they fought during the war.”

“Good. Then I won’t be taking you away from your folk in their hour of greatest need.”

He produced two more parchments, and slid one to Lady Tiphaine and one to Baron Tucannon.
Maugis read his, frowning and then blurting:

“
Grand Constable of the Association?”

Tiphaine spoke simultaneously:
“Marshal-Commander of the High King’s Hosts?”

Her father threw back his head and laughed. “That’s squeal-of-complaint followed by
Your Majesty
, if you please, my lord, my lady.”

Maugis rose from his chair and went down on one knee, bending his head. Aleaume was
fighting to keep an incredulous grin off his face.

“Your Majesty, I am not worthy of this honor.”

“That is for your sovereigns to decide, and we have,” Mathilda said. “Do you accept
the office, my lord?”

T
hat’s
me-and-Da
‘we,’ not the other type of
‘we,’ Órlaith decided.

Maugis sighed, and looked at his wife. She nodded . . . after an instant’s hesitation.
“Yes, your Majesty,” he said.

“You needn’t look as if I’d sent you to the mines, Lord Maugis,” Órlaith’s father
said. “Get back up and enjoy your cake, for all love.”

Mathilda spoke: “I wanted an able man for this, one with a good war record in independent
commands, administrative talents . . . and one who was
not
heir to a Duke, which is why Érard Renfrew Viscount of Odell isn’t getting it, to
be blunt. Also I trust your liege Count Felipe to be sensible about it, given that
you’re not a tenant-in-chief.”

Maugis sat back down slowly, and Lady Helissent gripped his hand. “I . . . I will
do my best to fulfill the trust you have shown me, Your Majesties. Though it will
be hard, following such a Grand Constable as the one who led the Association through
the war.”

Tiphaine had been frowning. When she spoke it was slow and considering, her voice
even more cool than usual. “Your Majesty, you’re appointing me commander-in-chief
for Montival as a whole? Creating a new ministry and me to head it?”

“Exactly. You’re fit for the job, and you’re also the only Associate most of the rest
of the realm would accept. Being, as it were . . . unconventional.”

“But you don’t
have
a Host in peacetime for a Marshal-Commander to command. All you have is a Royal guard
regiment and some people the provinces send in rotation. You need a general the way
a bull needs a mandolin! It would be like calling me a Lord High Admiral because you
gave me a rubber duckie for my bathtub. If you and Matti don’t want me as Grand Constable
anymore, fine—the job’s routine now anyway and I’m tired of it and the Gray-Eyed knows
I’ve got enough other things to do. But this is make-work. I don’t need my feelings
soothed.”

Órlaith’s father raised a hand. “The job’s organizational, not operational, yes, but
none the less real for that. I need a staff structure that will be there and ready
if . . . when, alas . . . it’s needed and I call up contingents.”

Tiphaine started to nod, then glanced sharply at her Châtelaine’s carefully concealed
delight.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “This is an appointment by the High King.”

“And High Queen,” Mathilda put in.

“Both of you, yes. That
does
mean you could punish anyone who challenged me, have their head and forbid the encounter;
the High King’s ministers are immune, extraterritorial, even if they’re Associates.”

“That’s in the Great Charter, yes, Marshal-Commander.”

“I don’t need protection—” she began sharply.

“Shut up!”

Órlaith blinked; that was her mother, and she’d accompanied it by a cracking slap
of her palm on the table, and she was using the High Queen’s voice.

She wasn’t the only one surprised; she could see that all the grown-ups were too,
except maybe Lady Delia. Mathilda pointed a finger at the silent face of Lady Tiphaine:

“Look, d’Ath, you’ve been carrying water for House Arminger since you were fourteen
years old. You rescued me when I was ten. You saved Rudi’s life not long after. You
held the Prophet out of most of Montival until the Quest got back. You only killed
what’s-his-name’s uncle—

“Sir Vladimir. Minor Stavarov connection. The late young idiot who just bit it trying
to avenge his uncle was Sir Bogdan.”

“Sir Vladimir in the first place because it was politically convenient for my mother
to deliver a
pointed message
after the Protector’s War. Do you think that we—that
I
—am going to let Lady Delia and the children be left alone because of blowback you
earned serving
us
?”

“I’m not asking—”

“I’m not asking
you
. I’m
telling
you, Tiph. It’s good lordship to protect a vassal, and you’re going to get our good
lordship
whether you like it or not
.”

Tiphaine opened her mouth. Rigobert leaned forward. “Tiph, don’t be an ass,” he drawled.
“And if you think either of us has anything to prove at this late date, that would
be exactly the case. With gray fur and long ears yet.”

“Darling,
please
,” Delia added.

Slowly, Tiphaine subsided back into her chair and sipped her brandy. “All right,”
she said grudgingly. Then to Rudi and Mathilda: “I’ll do it. Your Majesties.”

Rudi sighed. “Thank you. And now, friends, why don’t we have another drink, and perhaps
some songs? And tomorrow . . . I understand the partridge are plump and plentiful
hereabouts this time of year, by the kisses of Angus Og MacDagda. And that Marshall
d’Ath has most excellent falcons.”

“Wow,” Heuradys whispered to Órlaith. “Your mom is
something
. I’ve never seen anyone tell Lady Tiph off like that!”

“Mom and Dad
are
really something!” Órlaith said.

A voice whispered not far behind her in a Mackenzie lilt: “And the pair of
you
are little monkeys.”

The horn tip of a bowstave rapped her behind the ear, just enough to sting a little.
Heuradys gave a small squeak, hastily stifled with a hand. Órlaith slowly turned her
head. Edain Aylward Mackenzie was standing there, scowling; she hadn’t even noticed
him slipping away from the table. Behind him was Dame Emelina, with her arms crossed
and a foot beginning to tap.

“Ooops,” Heuradys said.

County of Sonoma, Province of Westria

(Formerly central California)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

May 10th, Change Year 39/2037 AD

“D
ang, what a bargain!” Ingolf Vogeler said, looking out over the tal
l grass, brush and trees of the grant. “To think we got all this for
free
. Well, for free and a few years’ . . . twelve years’ . . . work.”

About a hundred yards away a wild gobbler stuck its head out of a berry thicket, a
bit longer-legged and a bit more buff-colored than the variety he’d grown up around
but with the same look of idiot turkey indignation. It cocked a suspicious eye at
the tents and horses and people and then dashed back into cover. Birds were tweeting
away in the giant oak overhead . . . and a tiger-skin was tacked to it for scraping
and drying preparatory to tanning. There were about a dozen arrow-holes in the skin,
which detracted from its value as a rug or coat, but had made acquiring it a lot less
nerve-wracking when kittie had tried to get into their horse-corral last night. They’d
turned a lantern on the green eyes and then cut loose.

Some people liked hunting tigers with spears; but then some people thought the sound
of bolts and roundshot going by their ears an inch away was invigorating. If he’d
had a catapult handy he’d have used
that
. In a ravine not far from here some coyotes were probably happy, and he wished them
a satisfying dinner.

“Ingolf, my esteemed brother-in-law, back where I was born there would still be
snow
this time of year,” Ian Kovalevsky said. “Whereas this land is green and pleasant
and, pardon the expression, fucking
green
already. There are
pomegranates
growing here, and grapes and figs and apricots and olives. I think there are oranges
around someplace. Stuff I’ve never seen before except in pictures. Some guys would
complain if you hung them with a golden rope.”

Ingolf put his thumbs in his sword belt and chewed meditatively on a long stem of
grass, enjoying the warm spring air and smells of wood smoke and horse and wilderness
and the blue arch of the sky. They’d landed at Sausalito Marina from the
Ark
, a Corvallan merchantman out of Newport, one that usually worked the Hawaii run but
came here occasionally. That had been more than enough room for the two-score Rangers
and their equipment and stock, and though the horses had been no happier about ocean
travel than usual they hadn’t lost any to equine hissy-fit hysterics during the week’s
cruise.

They’d hurried the wagons and livestock north through the zone of ruins as fast as
possible—there were Eaters there, though not many, the collapse in urban California
had been very swift—and made tracks northward. It wasn’t his first glimpse of the
grant, of course; the Dúnedain had been reconnoitering now for years, mostly in long
overland treks. And with his salvage experience before the war, he’d been a natural
to lead several of those expeditions. Those preparatory outings had updated the maps
and cleared some of the obstacles, so the wagons could get straight through with a
little effort. But this time they’d come to stay.

He had to admit it was a pretty spot . . . one of the reasons he’d picked it for the
Ranger station that would send out patrols to guard the road to the salvage fields
around the Bay and help with resettling this area. There was actually a civilized
holding a couple of days’ travel away, closer to the coast around Cape Mendocino,
one of the very few that had managed to pull through the Change Year. It was tucked
behind some low mountains and hard to get to, which helped account for its survival.

As far as he could tell from the signs, everyone had simply left this place in the
hills east of the Sonoma valley within the first few months. If bands of savage wildmen
had passed through since, they hadn’t left much trace.

“I’ve got to admit you picked it right, and not just for looks,” Ian said with farmboy
practicality; his family were well-to-do yeomen up in their fertile but frigid homeland.
“This stuff is going to save us a
lot
of work.”

Sonoma Mountain and the Mayacamas were behind them, with a few last wisps of sea-fog
dissolving as the morning warmed up. The rolling land about was a mixture of flower-starred
green-gold grass with scattered oaks and oak-groves—tanbark oak, live oak, black oak—and
ancient overgrown vineyards and orchards, and dense woods on the steeper bits of everything
from fir to eucalyptus to millennia-old redwoods in the west-facing ravines. Things
wild and those run wild tumbled together in a happy mélange, including all the usual
animals and some weird-looking African ones as well, beasts that had run from zoos
and parks and survived in this mild climate. The flowers were dense, everything from
California poppy to feral rosebushes that rioted over some thick ruined walls nearby
to leave them just a shape beneath green leaf and crimson blossom.

Besides the vines and fruit-trees—the surviving ones could be reconditioned a lot
faster than planting from scratch, and some were in flower now—the big plus had been
the buildings. There was a fair-sized H-shaped house built of lava boulders cemented
together, solid as the hills and even defensible against anything short of artillery,
with a long portico running out from the front on arches at right angles to the main
building. The roof was good baked tile, and had mostly held despite the years and
storms; fortunately someone had boarded up the windows before the house was abandoned.
The water damage inside was serious but not structural, and could be repaired before
fall.

“The house is almost modern,” Ingolf said.

“Yeah, but I’d say it was probably built seventy, a hundred years before the Change,”
Ian replied. “That was before they forgot how to do things properly. It’s a pity that
other one burned down, from the looks it was even better built and
huge
. This one will do for now, though, until Ritva and I can put up something and stop
crowding you. She’s talking about a multilevel
flet
in a redwood. Around a redwood, whatever.”

“That’ll keep you skinny in your old age!”

Whoever had built the stone house had liked books, too; unfortunately they’d all been
ruined one way or another, mostly critters tearing them up for nests and bugs eating
them. Whoever it had been that held this land had been called Jack and had probably
been English, because the word
London
regularly appeared around the place, and he knew that city had been the capital of
the British Empire before it perished in the Change. The King-Emperors of Greater
Britain reigned from Winchester these days, which was supposed to be quite the town.

Which I have no desire to go see. Ingolf the Wanderer has wandered far enough, thanks
very much. From now on I stay here and grow roots like a turnip, and leave only for
visits to places I’ve already been. My kids can go on adventures, the poor ignorant
little tykes
.

Almost as much of a prize were the stone barns, of similar construction, and what
Ingolf’s Kickapoo childhood had convinced him was what was left of an elaborate circular
piggery with two tall concrete-block silos not far away. His father might have been
a Sheriff, lord of broad acres with Farmers and their Refugees at his command, but
he hadn’t believed in letting his sons loll around without chores.

That experience was the reason Ingolf didn’t particularly like pigs, as animals, though
he was fond of dogs and horses, tolerated cats, and had nothing against cattle or
sheep in their place. Feeding and slopping them and cleaning out pens had convinced
him porkers were probably smart enough to know why people kept them around, unlike
sheep and cattle who thought you loved them, and left him absolutely dead certain
they were dangerous if you weren’t careful. But he
did
like ham and bacon and chitterlings and bratwurst and headcheese.

Which was fair, because pigs were certainly ready to kill and eat people if they got
the chance; he’d lost his cookies as a teenager after running across what they’d left
of a Refugee farmhand who’d passed out drunk where they could get at him, and that
had
put him off pork for a while. The great black bristly wild boar common in Montival’s
forests and marshes were far worse, like pigs in plate armor with swords in their
snouts. They swarmed like giant destructive rabbits around here, with nothing but
lions, tigers, bears or people willing to take them on. Good hunting and good eating,
though . . .

“That little lake is best of all. It gets really dry here in the summers, from what
the books say,” Ian said with satisfaction.

Someone long ago had made an earth and stone dam in the hills to the east, and it
stayed filled all year long. Run-down and a bit silted now, but with a little work
it would be full of catfish and perfect for a dip on a hot day with willows and redwoods
for shade. The kids already loved it, and they’d been here only ten days. There were
channels to bring the water to where it was needed and they were repairable, especially
with easy salvage for PVC piping and similar workaday stuff in the towns just to the
west.

“Yah, when we’ve gotten it into shape this place is going to make us all rich,” Ingolf
said with satisfaction. “Particularly when more settlers trickle in to the valleys
east and west. What with the wine, the fruit, good grazing and timber. And best of
all those dead cities on the Bay haven’t been worked over at all, hardly, and we’ve
got that nice juicy concession.”

“We’re a bit far away from anywhere to sell most salvage,” Ian observed. “Lot of big
ruins closer to the center of things, eh?”

“Oh, not bulk metals,” Ingolf said.

The economics of the salvage trade were something he knew inside out, but they were
different up in Drumheller where there were only two lost cities to be mined and both
had been thoroughly worked over under tight government supervision already.

He explained: “Sure, Seattle alone has enough rebar and girders to keep Montival in
swordblades and plowshares and horseshoes for a thousand years, but those places south
of us are stuffed with
real
salvage, stuff that repays long-distance transport. Optics, machine tools that can
be rigged to work on waterpower, rare metals, bearings, gears, not to mention artwork
and gold and silver and jewelry. There were a couple of things in San Francisco I
spotted on the second trip that are so pretty I’m going to keep ’em for myself.”

“And it’ll provide a nice non-blizzards-and-freezing place to spend our declining
years in comfort, surrounded by attentive grandchildren,” Ian agreed.

The Dúnedain were organized as something like an army, something like a feudal lordship,
and something like what lawyers called a cooperative employee-owned corporation: Dúnedain
Enterprises, Ltd., if you preferred English, or
Gwaith-i-Dúnedain, Herth
, which was what was printed on the checks from the First National Bank of Corvallis.
The business part was more important in peacetime. Everyone who was born into or accepted
as a candidate to the Rangers got at least one share, and there were ways to get more.
Being one of the Questers had proved to be worth a big chunk of common stock, for
example, not to mention other accomplishments like getting this grant from the Crown
for the Rangers. Theoretically all the Dúnedain lands belonged to the
Gwaith
, but they were leased out on a sort of franchise arrangement to the
stath
, which was Ranger-speak for stations and steadings.

It doesn’t hurt to be married to Lady Astrid’s sister’s daughter, either,
he thought a little complacently; he’d never come across a place where important
relatives didn’t count.

His eldest son and daughter ran up and started using him as an obstacle in a game
of tag; they were nine now, tow-haired Malfind and his black-haired sister Morfind
respectively as their names indicated. He’d learned to accept the names, after Mary
had sternly vetoed his suggestion of Harry and Ethel. Her family was prone to twins
on both sides, and they had two sets of fraternals now, boy-girl and two girls for
the second, Eledhwen and Finduilas, who both looked as if they were going to take
after Dad. Ian and Ritva hadn’t had twins, much to her disappointment—as she said,
it meant she’d had a third more work for two-thirds as many children so far—but their
boy Faramir made up for it in energy.

He danced around, darting and lunging at Ingolf’s twins while the adults raised their
arms and laughed, until Malfind said:

“Up!”

Her brother braced himself behind Ingolf, grabbing at the back of his sword belt for
an instant. Malfind ran up him and then up her father like a squirrel, leapt into
the lowest branches of the oak, and gave her brother a hand when he followed. Judging
by the speed and smoothness of the maneuver, they had a great future ahead of them
as special operations types . . . or possibly as burglars.

“No fair!” Faramir shouted up. “Dad, give me a boost so I can catch these
cheaters
!”

Ian was grinning as he looked up and shook his head. “I don’t need to. Take a look
at what’s above those two—and looking a lot like ’em.”

Ingolf looked up along with the others. This area also had monkeys, gray-brown critters
with naked pink faces and tails. One of the books called them
rhesus macaques
, and while they were funny as hell to watch they liked to throw things, their own
dung when nothing else was to hand. Quite literally to hand. Along with Ian and his
son he moved aside quickly, and laughed at the squeals of disgust as it suddenly started
to rain young Vogelers, along with twigs and monkey by-products.

“Look before you leap,” he called. “Pond’s thataway and get it all out of your hair,
both of you.”