The Tears of the Sun (36 page)

Right now the armor seemed to be squeezing at him, and he made himself control his breathing. Ogier de Odell was the other Royal Squire now. He was in a suit of plate—he was also a year older—and he'd already relieved Mathilda of the shield and drill sword. Huon lifted the helm and padded cap off her coiled brown hair, transferred them to the armor stand outside the door-flap of the tent and began on the buckles and straps and the slip-knots in the laces of the arming doublet as the High Queen stood or moved to ease their task.

Ogier grinned at him as they worked; he was a good sort, and didn't presume too much either on his years or his birth; of course, he was very much a younger son of the Count of Odell, not his Viscount-heir. With two sets of trained hands at the task it went quickly. He still felt a little reverence as he handled the suit. It was made from arcane pre-Change alloys that were usually too refractory to work, matchlessly light and strong, the sort of thing only a monarch could afford because it involved a team of highly paid specialists for a year or more using technology right at the limit of the possible.

“You're in my position right now,” she went on to him as the plates came off.

A page came with a T-tunic to replace the doublet, and Huon handed her the sword belt with the live steel. In the field you wore it even when you were sitting down to eat.

“Your Majesty?” he said, as he knelt and cinched the tooled leather.

“You're fighting opponents with more weight and bulk. There are ways around that, and it's a good idea to know them. You'll be bigger than me soon, but you're never going to have the High King's inches, or even Ogier's.”

“Odard wasn't a very tall man either, my lady,” Huon observed.

About your height, in fact,
he thought; Mathilda Arminger was very tall for a woman, maybe a thumb's-width over average height for a man.
Odard was medium-sized, but he was quick as a weasel.

“No, but he was very bad news in a fight,” Mathilda said. “I saw him kill a lot of bigger men. Including a Moorish corsair in his last fight who, and the Virgin witness that I'm telling you the truth, was the size of Lord John Hordle and had at least as much muscle. He used a brassbound club I could barely lift one-handed.”

Huon blinked; the Dúnedain leader had beheaded an enemy's warhorse with a single stroke of his greatsword once, and taken off the knight's head with the next, chopping right through the bevoir plate. It wasn't the only legendary feat that hung around his name. The thought of his brother's end brought a familiar rush of mingled pride and grief; also a twinge of doubt that he'd ever be able to live up to the legend.

Mathilda grinned. “Don't worry, you've got years to do that.”

He bowed, and flushed at her good-natured chuckle.

“Now disarm and come join me at table.”

Ogier helped him, though the squire's kit he wore was a lot easier to shed than a knight's outfit. He suppressed a groan of relief as the armor and padding came off and the hot dry air dried the sweat. This area had plenty of heat and dust, and only just enough water for drinking. The smell wasn't too bad; everyone went down to the Columbia and washed once or twice a week and you got used to rankness in the field.

We wash once a week whether we need it or not, as the saying goes,
Huon thought.

“Perceptive, our liege-lady, isn't she?” Ogier murmured. “Sometimes you suddenly remember who her mother is.”

“She's kindhearted, though,” Huon said, also quietly, since the implication was that the Lady Regent was
not
. “
And
she's good with a sword, too. I thought maybe it was troubadour's spin, but it wasn't, was it?”

“Nope. She's no d'Ath or Astrid Loring, but she's pretty good, definitely better than the average man-at-arms, the speed and skill makes up for the bulk. Especially in
this
armor. They're thinking of marrying me off to Anne of Tillamook, you know?”

“I've met her. She's very nice,” Huon said, wondering at the segue. “My sister spent some time there and she says Anne's a good mistress.”

“She's very
smart
,” Ogier said. “And pretty, too; and our children would be heirs to a County, even if it's a bit of a damp, remote one. But I won't have to worry about my wife knocking me off my horse at a tourney, if you know what I mean.”

“Neither will the High King,” Huon pointed out. “Sweet St. Michael, have you ever seen the man spar? I did just a couple of days ago. He makes the Protector's Guard knights take him on two or three at a time so he'll have to really work.”

Ogier nodded and gave a grunt of agreement. “And he deals with them like he was stropping a razor,” he said. “He may be a pagan, but by
God
he's a fighting man!”

Then he clanked off to take up his duties; he was in charge of the inner guard this watch. A bell rang from somewhere nearby, and was echoed across the encampment. The royal pavilion wasn't very large, but it had a tall flag post with the banner of Montival at its peak; now that was lowered, and respectfully folded by a detail. From here you could see a dozen separate encampments, the contingents of the gathering host. It was six—just time for the Angelus—and a haze of woodsmoke lay over the rolling hills and their coat of golden sun-dried grass, with here and there a patch of reaped wheat.

The bell rang again, and the household all knelt except the guards on duty. Chancellor Ignatius had come in today with a wagonload of paperwork, and he led the Angelus. Huon sank to his knees with the others, his crucifix in his hands, and let the comforting familiarity of the words roll over him:

To the final
Amen.

Varlets set up the folding tables and chairs. Mathilda looked up suddenly at the beat of hooves. Her face was no more than ordinarily pretty with youth and health. But as she smiled she suddenly looked beautiful for a moment.

That's what the troubadours sing about,
Huon thought; and suddenly felt a little ashamed about fumblings with servant girls.
Will I love someone like that someday?

The High King and his escort reined in; Huon hurried over with the others to hold the horses. He was in Associate-style tunic and trews, and he leapt down with a foot-over style that kept his back to the horse. Then he caught Mathilda up and whirled her around, despite a laughing protest.

“There'll be time enough for state and pomp, sure and there will,” he said, and kissed her. “In the meantime, I've brought guests to the bounteous epicurean feast we're laying out this eve.”

Huon had already seen Yseult, riding beside the old warrior Abbot. At her he
did
grin, and then made a little game of handing her down highcourteous-wise.

“Fine manners you're picking up at court,” she said.

He snorted. “Bruises black and blue are what I'm picking up,” he said pridefully. “Her Majesty beat me up and down the exercise yard, and when it isn't her it's Ogier. They're merciless.”

A shadow of concern flickered through the tilted blue eyes, and he smiled and shook his head slightly, giving her his hand to the table. The camp cook served out bowls of the evening's variation on what the army spread through the western fringes of the Horse Heaven Hills seemed to eat every day about this time.

“Ah, yes, the old soldier's superstition,” Dmwoski said.

Everyone looked at him, and he went on: “The stubborn belief if the sun rises in the east it is an omen predicting stew for supper.”

“And that would be funny, if only it were funny,” the High King said, without looking up from a stack of papers he was editing with quick flicks of a pencil;
no
or
yes
or
investigate this.

Huon helped to hand the bowls around—page-work, but Mathilda hadn't had time enough for any squeakers yet, appointments like that were delicate political balancing acts anyway—and sat. The stew was mostly beans and peas, and chunks of an extremely salty dried sausage that had probably been mostly pork at some point, and whatever vegetables were available, fresh or starting in a sun-dried state. There was a stack of flat wheat cakes fresh from the griddle as well, and a rock-hard Sbrinz-type cheese to grate on the stew, and a bowl of raisins for dessert.

Yseult was eating hers willingly enough, but she raised her brows at the way Huon shoveled down his bowlful and went back for seconds before she said, “It just occurred to me that Odard probably ate like this all the way to the lands of Sunrise, on the quest for the Sword. And, well, he was sort of picky about food and clothes and keeping state. If I'm remembering him properly.”

Rudi Mackenzie . . .

Or should I just think of him as High King Artos or simply Artos or what?
Huon thought.

. . . snorted and handed the papers off to an assistant who seized them as if they were a precious relic and dashed off virtually dancing with glee. Huon jumped slightly; Mathilda was acute, but the way the High King could concentrate on several different things at once was
disturbing
.

“Your recollection is entirely correct and true,” Artos said to Yseult. “He would haul that set of court dress for himself and Matti all the way to Iowa despite all our mockery—and it's well that turned out. It helped him charm the Bossman there.”

“And my cote-hardie did the same for the Bossman's wife.”

“Yes, and whose idea was it to bring
that
? His. The which was worth hearing him swear he'd run wild and chew on trees if he had to have scorched stew of stringy venison one more time. Though he did say
I told you so
about it after Iowa more than was comfortable or right. He could have a tongue like a needle. Sometimes he'd stick the needle in just to make the person in question screech and jump.”

Mathilda looked off, a rolled up wheat cake in one hand. “When we didn't have
anything
to eat he'd joke about that, too. Laugh that it was the first thing we'd had in weeks not fried in grease.”

She smiled at Yseult. “He was the worst camp cook! Sometimes he'd trade off and do the scouring and washing instead just to avoid eating food he'd prepared himself.”

“Or desecrated himself,” Rudi agreed. “I swear by Brigid that the raw materials were usually more tasteful than the end product, uncooked meat included.”

His face had changed, becoming more approachable somehow as he reached for a flask of wine covered in woven straw.

“Now you,
a ghràidh
, got to be quite good at making whatever we had edible. Better than this, to be sure.”

“Oh, this stew is savory enough,” Mathilda said, wiping her bowl with a piece of the flatbread.

“By
savory
you'd be meaning
thick, brown and salty
, no doubt.”

Huon blinked. It was a little difficult to imagine the fastidious brother he remembered slaving over a campfire. Much less the
High Queen
, not to mention the heir to the Protector's position, scrubbing out pots and dishes with sand and ashes.

“And here we are, already hashing over the past like withered elders sitting in the sun and dwelling on their youth,” Rudi said.

“Sometimes the past is key to the present,” Dmwoski said. “This mission of mine has proven that once again.”

Mathilda used her eyes in a quick commanding flick, and most of those present withdrew; the trestle tables were taken down. Lamps were coming on throughout the sprawling tent-city, but most would go to sleep with the sun sinking westward.

“Go on, Most Reverend Father,” Rudi said to Dmwoski.

“I will; some of this I learned from the Grand Constable, and some from Lord Huon and Lady Yseult, and other parts from the records. I think I have put it together accurately, but let them correct me if I err.”

He looked down at his hands, his strong-boned furrowed face underlit by the coals of the fire.

“The Lady Regent and the Grand Constable acted quickly when the news of the enemy prisoner and Sir Guelf's defection reached Portland. The Grand Constable had alerted Sir Garrick Betancourt to hold himself in instant readiness . . .”

The solar was quiet, quiet enough that the
tick
of a needle piercing cloth was loud. Yseult was curled up in the window seat, restlessly staring out the eastern window of the tower, across the Five Great Fields of the home manor, sunlight glinting on the almost glassy stems of the reaped wheat and the nearly motionless leaves of the Lombardy poplars in the rows separating the fields. The air was warm and drowsy, smelling of slow-flowing water in the moat beneath the pads and blossoms of the lilies, and of the warm stuccoed concrete of the castle walls themselves. It was much better than winter, when they soaked up the dank chill and released it again to keep you in the right mood for the Black Months.

She'd pulled her fair braid over her shoulder and was nibbling on the end. Huon was out east, serving at Pendleton as a page in the fighting train of Sir Chaka Jones, Baron of Mollala. Odard was even farther east, in Boise, Idaho, the guest of President pro-tem Lawrence Thurston, according to his last letter. Which was dated a long time ago, so he might be anywhere now.