Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change (35 page)

More winces; the Mackenzies and the Bearkillers and the warrior-monks had been the core of the resistance to Norman Arminger. If you threw them in
with
the Protectorate, they completely outweighed everyone else put together. The other Corvallans were glaring at Turner now, for isolating them.

“No treaties will be broken,” Rudi said decisively. “Nor will any other promises I’ve given; to the New Deseret men who are still fighting, for example, or to those of the Thurston family and their followers who’ve come over to us and fought by our side at great and constant risk. I’ve given my word on that,
and
bound it to the line of my blood by the Sword of the Lady.”

There was a long thoughtful pause at that; even Turner gave the crystal pommel behind Rudi’s shoulder a considering look. The second course came, a hearty dish of horseradish-crusted roasted venison, with seasoned grilled potatoes, late asparagus and a winter salad of pickled vegetables, accompanied by warm breads. Rudi took a bite of the meat, chewed with enjoyment, and waited; you should never interrupt an enemy when they were making a mistake.

“Keeping large armies in the field will cause a lot of hardship,” Turner went on doggedly after a moment. “If the enemy can’t defeat us, it’s not so…so
urgent
any more.”

He wouldn’t have accomplished all he has if he wasn’t stubborn
, Rudi thought.
I
can use this man to the kingdom’s good; he’s very able, not to mention very rich and very influential with his equivalents elsewhere. I just have to make it plain that it’s to his advantage to help me and very much the opposite if he sets his will against mine. I don’t have to
like
him, or he me; I’m a warrior and he’s a merchant and that quarrel is as old as wolf and dog. When you have to move manure, you use a dungfork.

The banker continued: “We’ve all made sacrifices—”

“Oh,
yeah
,” Eric drawled.

Signe elbowed him in the ribs. “Corvallis
has
made sacrifices,” she said. “If their Sixth Regiment hadn’t held at the Horse Heaven Hills…we wouldn’t be here. Unless we were forting up. We
had
to win that battle; our army would have come apart, and every contingent would have gone home to make a last stand if we’d lost.”

“That’s true,” Rudi agreed. “They
stood
, and died where they stood. I couldn’t give them any help for far too long. They bought me time, the which on a battlefield is a gift more precious than rubies. Bought it with their blood and lives. I’m going to have
We Stood
embroidered on their standard. And presented by Peter Jones, if he lives.”

Edward Finney laughed again, without mirth; several of his kin had carried pikes or crossbows with that regiment. “Yeah,
Corvallis
has made sacrifices. One of my sons-in-law took an arrow through the throat there. That’s three young kids without a father. But that
sacrifices
doesn’t include all of us in Corvallis, if you know what I mean.”

Turner flushed. “My children aren’t of service age. I’ve financed two whole battalions’ worth of equipment out of my own pocket besides paying my taxes, and taken in and employed hundreds of refugees from the Bend country!” he said.

“Putting them to work in those factories you have interests in, you mean,” Finney said. “The ones you were always bitching about being short of labor for in peacetime.”

“You have refugees working on your farm!”

Another grunt of sour laughter from the landsman. He began to count on his fingers:

“Yeah. I’ve got…let’s see…
three
nursing mothers and their babies,
six
kids under twelve and their moms,
two
amputees, and a guy who’s older
than I am and still has screaming nightmares about the Change and isn’t too tightly wrapped when he’s awake either…wets himself sometimes…and the rest of their families are all away fighting. Anyone who can walk can tend one of those water-powered spinning machines you’ve got filling those fat government contracts, Turner; no wonder you’re not anxious to get the enemy out of Bend so they can go back to their ranches! Farming isn’t like that. My refugees aren’t even doing enough work to meet the cost of their food; they
can’t
, even though they push themselves hard. My sons—and a daughter—are with the army and I’m back on the farm trying to make bricks without straw and Gert’s milking cows again until she has to put her hands in bowls of ice water for an hour before she can sleep, which I doubt your wife is.”

“My wife is chief accountant for the First National Bank,” Turner said huffily. “First National is crucial to the war effort.”

“Yeah, I’m
sure
that makes her wake up crying when she turns over. So I want to get this war finished. Finished as quickly as can be while doing it
right
. And we need to put it on record that we’re part of the kingdom. Which, now that Rudi…that Artos the High King just
beat
the Cutters, is going to be pretty damn popular back home, Turner.”

“I’m sure everyone will make their fair contribution,” Rudi said, and added to himself:
Provided they have no choice, some of them
.

“But,” he went on, “deciding such matters is for Montival as a whole; and I myself am the symbol and agent of that unity, together with the Queen. Hence we need an acknowledgment of what the High King’s rights and duties are; and a ceremony of acknowledgment. Of allegiance.”

That produced a lot of talking. Most of it was positive, but unfortunately positive in a dozen separate ways. Everyone had his own ideas of what a coronation ceremony entailed, which was precisely what he and his closest advisors had anticipated. He cleared his throat.

“Brothers, sisters, I obviously can’t satisfy you all! And sure, satisfying one of you would offend others—if I were to have the Cardinal-Archbishop of Portland crown me as the sole ceremony…I don’t think Corvallis would enjoy it.”

“We have separation of Church and State in Corvallis,” Turner said,
and Finney nodded solemn agreement. “They do in Bend, too, and a couple of other places.”

“Your Majesty, I’m afraid that’s doubly true of the United States…of Boise,” Fredrick Thurston said, making a concession; most of that country would have added
of America
, for all that it ruled only a chunk of old Idaho and a few bits adjacent. “The whole concept of hereditary monarchy is going to be a tough sell without getting religion into the mix. Any hint of an establishment of religion would be a gift to…to the present regime.”

Meaning, your late elder brother’s henchmen,
Rudi thought compassionately.
He tried to kill you too, and then to blame you for your father’s death. His closest followers cannot turn back, not when they went along with that. And they’ve probably discovered that their bargain with the Prophet was the sort of deal a house-cat makes with a coyote.

The tall, dark young man spoke politely but firmly. Rudi and he were good friends—they’d gone all the way to the Atlantic together and back after his father’s murder. He’d always been brave as you could wish in a fight, but the High King was glad to see that the last traces of youthful diffidence had faded. Being head of a taut little army of twenty thousand men rather than a refugee living by charity was adding powerfully to his self-confidence.

“The Clan wouldn’t approve either, boyo!” Juniper Mackenzie said, grinning. “And we don’t have separation of covenstead and anything whatsoever.”

“You
have
to have a Catholic coronation ceremony, Rudi,” Mathilda said, her brows knotted in thought. “I don’t think there’s any alternative there.”

“Indeed, and I wouldn’t deny it,” Rudi said cheerfully. “I’ve no objection at all.”

He thought Ignatius winced slightly. Applying the holy oil to the brow of a pagan King was going to stretch his faith’s standards a little, though it wouldn’t be the first time. His Church had a very long history and had learned the value of patience a very long time ago.

I feel some sympathy, my friend,
he thought.
But only some!

From the way the other man’s shrewd dark eyes looked at him under a raised brow, he thought the cleric understood him perfectly. They’d been in each other’s company for years now and in circumstances that revealed the soul. He went on more seriously:

“So since I can’t choose
one
, I’ll choose
all
,” Rudi said, which had everyone blinking at him, except those who’d been in on it. “After the war I’ll made the rounds and go through
everyone’s
chosen ceremony. Religious, secular or a mix, just as they please. For each land…each little homeland of the heart; and in those I will be the suppliant, the suitor courting favor from the spirits of place and their folk. Which in some places, Boise for one, may be more like making a treaty.”

“Well…that will take a while,” someone said.

“Arra, I’ll need to get to know every district and they me, anyway,” Rudi said. “But for the present we need one ceremony that
is
for the whole of Montival and an acknowledgment of the same when it’s over. And
that
ceremony is between the High King and Queen and the realm as a whole.”

Turner remained silent, which Rudi deliberately took for assent, nodding as if pleased…which he was, more or less. The Grand Constable of the PPA mopped her plate of the last of the juices of the rare venison, ate the heel of bread, poured herself more of the red Pinot Noir—it was from her own estates, Montinore Manor to be precise—and spoke:

“Whereupon you can get back to the real business at hand. Your Majesty. They lost three, four to our one at the Horse Heaven Hills, and it was even worse for them during the pursuit, but they can afford it better. And the League of Des Moines isn’t going to get much farther out on the High Plains until snowmelt. The weather there…”

“Ah, you farmers are all wussies,” Rick Three Bears said.

Rudi grinned at her. He liked Tiphaine d’Ath, very much as you might a tiger that you were sure was on your side; she’d been a big part of his training in the arts of war, from handling a sword to deploying a regiment. But though very able, she was also very…

Focused
, he thought.
Tightly focused on one set of problems, which is a good thing for a specialist, but a ruler can’t afford too much of it. I have the Sword of the
Lady, but chopping folk up is not the universal answer to the problems of kingcraft, essential though it may be at times.

“A King is more than a war-leader, needful though that is,” Rudi Mackenzie said. “You could do that as well as I.”

“No, I couldn’t,” d’Ath said flatly. “I’m a better than competent general, but you have a gift for it—the way both of us do for the sword-in-hand. And I can lead professionals because they respect my record and I frighten them, but you can spend five minutes with a bunch of levied peasants fresh from the plow who’ve just been handed their first pikes and are scared out of their wits, and they’ll be ready to storm Olympus. And they’ll expect to
win
, which they may very well do
because
they expect it.”

“Perhaps,” Rudi said, though he was uncomfortably certain she was more-or-less right.

It wasn’t a power he was altogether happy with, though he used it.

“War is only part of a King’s trade. And he’s more than an administrator, too,” he added to Chancellor Ignatius.

“That he is,” Juniper Mackenzie said. “For the King is the land and—”

She found herself speaking in unison with Ignatius, her words interweaving, more like a counterpoint than an interruption as he said:

“Just so, Your Majesty. Kingship is a sacred thing, from the day when David danced before the Tabernacle of the Lord, a thing which links—”

The Witch-Queen of the Mackenzies and the priestly Knight-Brother of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict stopped and looked at each other, and Rudi threw back his head and laughed. After a moment they both joined in, and the others more gradually, though Ignatius did shake a reproving finger at Juniper and then at her son. The pages who were serving the royal party and their guests stayed solemnly intent on their duty, but Rudi thought a few of them were mildly shocked.

Ignatius inclined his head towards Juniper. “I defer to the Mackenzie. I’m not a man of eloquence, and far too tired to try right now.”

Juniper smiled abstractedly at him and then went on when the laughter had passed, frowning, her leaf-green eyes intent:

“A King is a symbol, one that unites us all when we believe in it and
makes us part of the same story, part of each other’s story. And by
us
I’m not speaking merely of the human beings walking about at any particular moment, for we but borrow the Earth for a little while, by permission and in trust. There’s the living land itself, its memories and tales in layer upon layer around every rock and stream and trail, the ghosts that haunt it and the beasts and birds and plants and trees that share it with us, with rights of their own, and the larger meaning of the Powers, however we name Them.”

“My mother is right,” Rudi said decisively. “There’s a part of the kingship that is between me and the land itself and those Powers that ward it. That’s…more of a thing for me and my Lady. The folk, all our peoples, are there, but through us. One family to stand for all families bound by history and blood.”

“Under God,” Ignatius said, politely but firmly.

“And did I say otherwise?” Juniper said in a guileless tone.

Mathilda swallowed a little uneasily, and their hands met and gripped beneath the tablecloth. That
did
touch a little on her faith, to which she was devoted.

But if putting it in another form of words helps her, well, I’ve no objection to that. We’re more…flexible about such things, we of the Old Religion.

“What are you grinning about?” she said quietly as the table dissolved into a more general conversation.

“I was thinking of something our good Chancellor said once; that debating theology with a Mackenzie was like trying to cut fog with a sword.”