Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change (2 page)

Above them a glider turned in a greater circle with a glitter of aluminum and Plexiglas; one of his, a pre-Change craft that needed no engine to fly, catapult-launched over the Columbia cliffs and riding the updrafts like a great-winged bird. His eyes turned grimly to the wheeling circle of living carrion-eaters below the human machine, ravens and buzzards tilting lower as the living humans withdrew. Comrade or foe, all the dead waited for them alike.

She nodded, following his thought. They’d been friends—
anamchara
, oath-bound kin of the soul—from the age of ten, though their parents had been at war then; and they’d been from Montival all across the continent to Nantucket and back together. Though they’d only been handfasted a bit more than a month, their minds operated with the sort of smooth unison he’d seen in couples forty years their senior.

Tiphaine d’Ath, Grand Constable of the Association, looked exhausted but grimly satisfied. He’d given her the task of delaying the enemy onset, and she’d managed a fighting retreat all the way from Walla Walla without letting the enemy trap her force.

And as is the usual case, I shall reward her good work with more work.

“Lady d’Ath, your field force is hereby dissolved with accolades for good service; I wanted you to screen us while we massed and you’ve done just that. The
arrière-ban
of the PPA has mustered and you’re in command of that, of course. You’ll deploy the Association foot to the right wing of our position and the chivalry will be part of our general reserve.”

“Forward base is at Goldendale, Your Majesty?” she said.

“Yes, and our field hospitals and supplies will stage out of there. Mathilda has been overseeing our buildup in the area. Matti, you’d better brief the Grand Constable.”

She nodded and d’Ath scrubbed at a spray of blood across her long stark-boned face.

“I’ll get there and see about slotting people in, then,” the Grand Constable said. “Her Majesty can brief me on the way back.”

Rudi nodded. “I’ll be there by dawn tomorrow; we’ll have everything
up within two days except the rearguard. There’s enough forward to hold, but I don’t expect the onset until then.”

She nodded back. “They’ll want to have everything in place; they have the advantage of numbers, after all.”

The High King of Montival grinned starkly. “Yes. And we’ll see what we can do about that.”

R
udi had been inclined to think the final ball a waste of time and resources, one of the peacocking Associate habits that he had to put up with for the sake of harmony and which the north-realm nobles insisted upon even on the eve of battle. And perhaps there
was
an element of sheer vanity in it.

But on second thought, who should say how a man prepares his innermost self to die? Or a woman, sure. They have to be here, and the most of their ladies too, for they’re working in the field hospitals or managing the supplies or something of that sort, waiting for their lovers and brothers to be brought back on their shields. The only real burden is that they’ve brought their party clothes…garb, they call it…along this far; and we’re close to the river. There’s a certain mad gallantry to it, a defiance of fate; my
foster father says the Duke of Wellington’s officers did the same on the eve of Waterloo.

Torches and fires of pinewood in iron cages and strings of softly glowing paper lanterns lit the interior of Castle Goldendale’s bailey-court, the broad paved expanse at the heart of the inner keep. The Great Hall and the Chapel and the quarters of the seneschal and his officers surrounded it in an irregular circuit of roofs and balconies, spires and pointed-arch windows; candles glowed in the church, through the rich colors of stained glass wrought in saints and angels.

Mathilda and some others had had their Mass there, though most of the host had used household chaplains and field priests in the encampments. A lingering scent of incense mingled with burning conifer sap and the cool night air. Sparks drifted heavenward.

The narrower slits of the solars and guard-rooms in the high round towers of the keep were bars of yellow against the half-glimpsed soaring heights, as much sensed as seen where their dark bulk blocked out the stars. Folk more humble crowded some of them; the castle staff, maidservants and men-at-arms, watching the gaudy flower-petal brightness below as a show arranged for their entertainment.

Black-armored spearmen of the Protector’s Guard stood at intervals around the enclosure, motionless as statues of gleaming dark metal, with the visors of their sallet helms down and leaving nothing to be seen but an occasional glint of eyes behind the vision-slits, the gleam echoing the yellow and scarlet of the Lidless Eye on shields like four-foot elongated teardrops. Kilted longbowmen of the High King’s Archers shared the duty—and honor—with their great yew bows in the crooks of their arms.

The walls enclosed the sound of the players as well, shawm and lute and recorder and viol, the sweet tinkle and buzz and fluting notes of Portlander court music. The tune ended, and the dancers turned and bowed or curtsied to politely applaud the musicians on their dais; several of them had the jeweled dagger that denoted Associate status or even the golden spurs of chivalry on their heels, for a troubadour might be a gentleman by Protectorate standards. The tale of the dance would be woven into that of the battle to come, for they’d be fighting in it too.

“Five minutes,” the Mistress of the Revels said; she was Dame Lilianth of Kalama, who did something administrative for the Grand Constable most of the time. “Then
The Knights of Portland
, gentlemen, chevaliers, demoiselles and ladies.”

Her shrewd eyes took in the situation, and she made an almost imperceptible gesture; everyone except the two nobles with whom he’d been talking business withdrew enough to give a degree of privacy as Mathilda came up to him.

She was wearing a dark chocolate cotte-hardie with tight sleeves that showed rounds of her pale flesh between each button and a headdress with two low peaks in warm dark gold silk and pearls. It made a striking contrast to the tone of her sleek brown hair where it showed at the sides in elaborate braided coils, and she was laughing as she extended a hand to him.

“I need a partner for this one, darling,” Mathilda said as he caught it in his and raised it to his lips. “And if you won’t dance with me, it’ll have to be Tiph here, and that would be a scandal.”

“Delia can make me dance in public, but only at home on our own barony and when she’s not nine months pregnant,” Tiphaine d’Ath said. “Besides, how did our Lady Regent put it…”

She nodded towards the spot where the Lady Regent and a few other dowagers and lords with a good deal of gray in their hair sat, with pages offering tiny crystal glasses of liqueurs or brandy snifters on trays.

“…ah!
Modern Protectorate culture doesn’t handle gender confusion well.
Which reminds me, since it’s from her private stash I could use another cognac. Lioncel…no, serve His Majesty first.”

A tow-haired young squire slid forward noiselessly and poured for them both. Lady Death, as she was commonly known, was dressed to fit her nickname tonight; her tight hose were onyxine black, as was the sleeveless neck-to-thigh jerkin of soft chamois, fastened up the front to the throat with ties of black silk and jet. Her soft Court shoes were chamois as well, and the toes turned up—moderately. The loose black knee-length houppelande over-robe had buttons of some dark mottled tropical wood so hard it seemed metallic carved like black roses, and a collar open at the front and ear-high behind; the lower hem was dagged, and so were the turned-back sleeves that hung almost as low, showing a dark forest-green lining. Only the links of her belt and the buckles at the ankles of her shoes showed brighter colors.

“I wear hose and houppelande fairly often too, Tiph,” the High Queen replied.

“Yes, but not at formal dances, Matti…Your Majesty,” Tiphaine said. “Delia has to arrange it carefully even at Montinore Manor, or people
end up turning and bonking heads and knocking each other over when they should be switching line, trying to figure out where I fit.”

“Now you’re drawing the long bow!” Mathilda laughed. “Young gentlewomen learn who’s on the right and left by dancing with each other.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Tiphaine shrugged, deadpan. “I spent my teenage years as your mother’s assassin.”

Mathilda gave a chuckle that was half a wince; that was a joke, and the more effective for being literally true, which was how Tiphaine’s rare excursions into humor usually worked.

“Half the time in a youngster’s dancing class it’s all girls anyway,” Mathilda said.

“Yes, but it would be fun if it all seized up like that, wouldn’t it?” Tiphaine said, her face expressionless as she sipped her brandy.

Sure and the prospect of a battle relaxes her
, Rudi thought, amused.
I’ve rarely seen her so whimsical.

“I would be honored to dance with you if all else fails, Your Majesty,” Rigobert de Stafford, Baron Forest Grove, said gallantly with a low bow, sweeping off his round chaperon hat with its rolled brim and dangling liripipe tail.

“Yes, but you’d outshine me totally, my lord Forest Grove,” Matti said with a smile and a little mock-curtsy in return.

“Or, since he’s wearing a skirt, I could dance with His Majesty…”

“In your dreams, Rigobert,” Rudi said genially. “And it’s a kilt. Calling it a skirt has been known to turn Mackenzies berserk.”

De Stafford was a ruggedly handsome man in his forties, with a short-cropped golden beard and bowl-cut hair too fair to show the first gray strands, broad shoulders, thick wrists and large hands that were shapely but scarred where they rested on his belt of golden flowers. His court dress emphasized gold and scarlet down to the parti-colored hose—nothing too gaudy by northern fashion, but still a blaze of color and jewelry, including the chain of office that marked him as Marchwarden of the South.

For height and coloring, he and d’Ath could have been siblings, though he was six or seven years older. His wife Delia was Châtelaine of
Ath, an arrangement which suited all three of them very well indeed for a multitude of reasons.

Mathilda’s teasing manner dropped away. “This one’s a little political, Rudi,” she said. “The High King has to participate in the last dance of the evening. Sort of a fealty thing.”

“I haven’t even been crowned yet and already there’s protocol!”

Mathilda nodded, entirely serious. “It’s a
chant du Brabant
step, but with a new lyric. Or so Mother told me. One of her troubadours came up with it, modifying some old Society piece, I think. She says they hardly need to be prompted anymore.”

“Yes,” Tiphaine said, in her ice-water voice. “Apparently a genuine monarch blessed by a visitation of the Virgin—”

“That was Father Ignatius…Lord Chancellor Ignatius, now,” Rudi pointed out. “I’m a pagan and
I
had a vision of the Threefold Goddess.”

“Ignatius was one of the Companions of the Quest,” d’Ath said. “In propaganda terms, the Lady Regent assures me you each bask in the other’s reflected glory, but it shines more strongly upward.”

Is that irony, or is she just copying the way Sandra usually speaks?
Rudi thought.

The Grand Constable of the Association went on:

“— a High King married to our Princess, accompanied by signs and wonders, with a magic sword gained on a heroic Quest, gets their artistic juices flowing to the point where they barely need a subsidy from the Crown.”

“She used the phrase
creaming their hose
, in fact,” Rigobert said. “Archaic vocabulary, but expressive.”

Rudi sighed gently and set his brandy snifter on a low round table of polished granite. His mother-in-law had always been shrewd enough to know that song and story were as much tools of power as hoarded gold or castles and catapults and men-at-arms. Sometimes he suspected that she didn’t really know quite
how
powerful they were, though. A glance in her direction brought her up to her feet and then down in a curtsy, spreading the pearl-gray silk of her skirts and sinking gracefully, her smooth middle-aged face smiling and revealing nothing except her usual catlike satisfaction as he bowed slightly in return.

Sometimes when she’s sitting with a white Persian in her lap, it’s downright eerie how similar they look
, he thought whimsically.
And I will never know precisely how much of what’s happened hereabouts these last two decades was by her plan and will, and what wasn’t, and what wasn’t but was fitted and shaped to suit her afterwards behind the screen of her wit, like my blood-father killing her husband…the end result of which is that her grandchildren, and his, will rule all of Montival. So who was the victor and who the vanquished, on the Field of the Cloth of Gold?

“All right, acushla,” he said to his wife. “I will be most honored and pleased to lead the dance.”

“And I’ll be back in a moment.
Don’t
discover an emergency elsewhere, my love, or I will challenge you to a joust
à l’outrance
with sharpened lances.”

Their eyes met, and for a moment he lost himself in the warm brown depths of hers.

“Get a room, you two…monarchs,” de Stafford said.

Rudi laughed. “The palace isn’t built yet, my lord.”

The Sword of the Lady was hung in his quarters, with a score of the High King’s Archers as an honor guard—not that he thought any human agency was much threat to it. It had been hard enough for
him
to come to it undamaged. But that absence let him pretend he was simply a man among his own kind tonight, and such chances were rare enough to relish.