Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change (6 page)

“Well, no. I mean, Dolores was nice about it. She didn’t try to pretend I’d
made
her do it which
could
have gotten me into trouble and her out of it; my lady my mother and Baroness d’Ath are both really strict about good lordship. Mom laughed at first, but…then she
teased
me about it. She’s still at it, and that was months and months ago.”

“Oh, ouch, ouch,” Huon said sympathetically. “Totally
ouch
.”

And I mean it. It would be bad enough having a
brother
tease you about something like that. Having your
mother
do it…you’d want to turn into a vole and crawl into a tunnel and never come out.

“And then Lady d’Ath just
looked
at me and said that if Dolores’d gotten pregnant, the compensation money would have come out
my
allowance for the next three million years. And then I had to confess it to Father Lailard and got this
unbelievable
penance. And I didn’t even
get
that far! I just had my hand under her outer tunic! And Dad…my lord my father…he killed himself laughing.”

Huon laughed himself, but slapped the younger squire on the shoulder to show it wasn’t unkindly meant.

“They probably think embarrassing you is the best way to keep you on the straight and narrow,” he said.

Lioncel laughed too after a moment. They fell silent as they turned off the rural lane and through a gap in the row of trees onto a trail that meandered through rocky grassland northward. The mountains were much closer now, and they were leaving the settled zone where people were omnipresent. Which meant…

“Time to arm up,” Huon said.

They both stuffed their hats in the saddlebags and put on their helmets, coalscuttle sallets with flared neck-guards, but the lighter open-face type without visors. The felt and leather pads closed around his head. He’d adjusted them carefully, but you still got a headache if you wore it all day; though that was better than getting your brains spattered by a mace. The chin-cup and straps had to be just right too, so he swiveled and tossed his head to make sure everything was firm without being too tight. They half-drew their swords and daggers and re-seated them with a slight hiss of steel on wood and leather greased with neatsfoot oil. Lioncel slipped the crossbow off his back, worked the lever set in the forestock to cock it and clipped a quarrel in the firing groove. Huon preferred a saddlebow, and he pulled the horn-and-sinew recurve out of the boiled-leather scabbard at his knee and set an arrow on the string.

They were coming up through meadows to the Little Klickitat River and a thick scattering of trees along it, big cottonwoods and willows, pale-barked white alder, the odd elm or beech someone had planted since the Change and a thick understory of bush and saplings. Their trail led down to the water and up the other side, and from the tracks was made
mostly by cattle and sheep. The water was shallow, gravel and riffles showing as often as pools, but the rainy season had started in the Simcoes to the north and it was rising from its summer lows.

“You first,” Huon said; it was his mission, so he was in charge. “Cover! Move!”

Lioncel crossed as Huon brought up his bow and covered him, eyes flickering along the edge of the riverside woods for any telltale sign of movement. There wasn’t any, save for a badger trundling off with a ground squirrel in its jaws, and the usual birds, including a bald eagle perching on a lightning-killed pine and ignoring them. Once he was across the blond boy turned his horse right and dropped the reins on the mount’s neck. The well-trained animal stood stock-still, not even bending its head to crop at the green grass that grew in clumps by the river’s side.

“Cover!” Lioncel called, bringing the crossbow up to his shoulder. “Move!”

It was a heavy weapon for someone the young squire’s age, but he kept it steady. Huon let his weight shift forward slightly, and Dancer walked into the water, placing his feet carefully and raising his knees high. He wasn’t using a knight’s saddle, which cut you off from contact with the horse for the sake of locking you into a standing position. This was a light pad type, and of course he’d trained in all the equestrian arts under experts since he was old enough to walk.

The water was still low; at the deepest spot it came up to the bottom of his stirrups, and he could feel cool wet on his woolen trews where splashed drops hit. He smiled as the horse muscled its way up the slope on the other side. This
was
a lot more fun than waiting around the tent.

Beyond was a savannah with scattered lodgepole pine and rather shrubby Garry oaks, probably stinted communal common-pasture for whatever manor held this area. Then they were into the hills with the pines thick around them, steep trails—steep enough to make them dismount and lead the horses at times—and jays scolding, squirrels running up the tall trunks in gray chattering streaks, bright sunlight spearing down. The air smelled a bit damper here and full of the sweet scent of
the wood. Once Dancer shied a little; a tree nearby bore long parallel gouges and there was scat on the ground by it.

“Cougar,” Huon said, pointing at the gray hairs caught in the bark, and Lioncel nodded.

“Not nearly big enough for tiger and that’s the wrong color,” he said.

“Lots of deer sign too, and elk, I think.”

“And sage hen and grouse. There’d be good hawking here, and some most excellent hunting. But no boar,” Lioncel added.

“We get lots of boar near Gervais,” Huon said animatedly. “In the marsh along the river, mostly. I’m looking forward to that when I’m older!”

“Me too. Ours are in the Coast Range forests, except that my lady d’Ath says they spend every night in our vineyards and gardens, eating.”

They shared a nod at that. Swine were smart; their wild cousins were wickedly intelligent, making nothing of fences in their raids on crops, and they hated men. Hunting them was part of a lord’s obligation to protect his lands and dependents, as well as fine risky sport and a useful source of meat and hides. Lioncel went on enthusiastically:

“My lord my father took one that weighed
five hundred pounds
last year! Lady d’Ath got one nearly as big that afternoon too, I was her spear-bearer. Dad let me have a tusk.”

He rummaged in his belt pouch and proudly brought out nearly six inches of polished ivory threat, like a curved dagger. Huon whistled appreciatively and handled it for a moment.

“I’m going to have it worked into a hilt for a hunting knife when I get the time,” Lioncel added.

“That
will
be cool.”

Neither of them had the years or heft for hunting boar yet; you took the beasts by getting in their way when they charged and letting them spit themselves on a broad-bladed spear. One with a crossguard forged into the base of the socket, so the prey couldn’t run up the shaft and rip you open with their tusks. Usually the nobles waited while dogs and beaters flushed them out of thickets, though some preferred a lone stalk. The boars came out on their own fairly frequently too, like huge black projectiles shot from a catapult and armored in bone and gristle. Some
thought them nearly as dangerous game as tiger or bear, and every year a few reckless or unlucky men or ones stupid enough to go hunting drunk were killed.

That’s how a troubadour gets rid of an inconvenient character if it isn’t time for a battle or duel,
Huon thought.
‘Ripped up by the boar.’

They swapped hunting stories for a while and discussed horses and hawks and hounds. Hoof-beats carried farther than quiet voices, so it didn’t make them any more conspicuous. Then they fell silent as Huon held up a hand, looking around; he could feel eyes on them. It was a relief when two crossbowmen stepped out from behind trees and demanded the password; he’d begun to think he must have missed the trail. The grim graying man-at-arms in command of the outpost took the sealed envelope with a salute and grunted:

“My thanks, young sir.”

Meaning, get lost, kid
, Huon thought, returning the gesture and nodding gravely in reply.

He didn’t mind, since he was fully aware of how young he must look to the scarred veteran. Being a squire was supposed to teach noblemen humility, among other things.

“No return message,” the man added.

The next two were the same. The last had something different; only one soldier on guard, to start with. When they pushed their horses through a screen of brush into a sloping meadow of ten or fifteen acres Huon’s eyebrows went up as he saw why. His bow did for a second too; there were about twenty men there in the gear that Boise’s light cavalry wore. Just leather breeches and mail shirts, but unmistakable in detail, along with their helmets—sort of an understated sallet they called a Fritz, which together with the stars-and-stripes flag emblem were their inheritance from the ancient world.

But they were disarmed and dismounted, under the guard of the outpost’s complement and a couple of
conroi
of men-at-arms led by a knight Huon recognized. None of the enemy were wounded, so they hadn’t been captured in the course of ordinary fighting. That probably meant
they’d come over of their own wills. Being a royal squire meant you heard things; among others, that a lot of people in the United States of Boise weren’t happy with their General-President Martin Thurston, especially now that the story of how he’d murdered his own father to take over the position had gotten around.

Especially now that his own wife and own mother and own sisters escaped with the aid of the Dúnedain and are telling the truth to everyone. Not to mention his brother Frederick is the High King’s friend and one of the Companions of the Quest, so there’s someone for soldiers to go over to. Boise will be part of the High Kingdom too, and under the High King’s peace!

“Sir Ogier!” Huon said, dismounting and saluting; high politics weren’t his affair yet, but that didn’t stop him thinking.

The young knight looked up; he’d been a royal squire too, until the High Queen gave him the accolade on the field of honor not long ago, and was still a fairly junior household commander of the High Queen’s
menie
. He was a little over two years older than Huon and around six feet, probably his full height though he was still lanky with late adolescence; his hair was a very dark brown-yellow, like barley, and there was a spray of acne across his cheeks and nose—something Huon had been spared so far. His smile was genuine and warm beneath the raised visor; they’d served together, after all. And though Ogier of House Renfrew was a son of the Count of Odell, one of the great Peers of the Association, he was the
youngest
son, with two elder brothers, not to mention three sisters who’d be needing dowries.

“Good to see you again, Huon,” he said, taking the dispatch, looking at the address and handing it over to the signal detachment commander. “And you too, Lioncel.”

“I noticed you’d been sent on a mission, Sir Ogier,” Huon said.

The knight nodded. “I was out meeting these fellows, they slipped a message across the lines that they wanted to switch sides, and Her Majesty thought a man of rank should meet them, being tactful and so forth.”

A snort. “And thirty lancers with me, to make sure they were honest about it.”

He turned his head to Lioncel: “Any news from your brother?”

“Not lately, Sir Ogier,” the blond youth said. Then he grinned: “But my lady my mother is delivered of a daughter, who’ll be christened Yolande. Your lady mother the Countess and the ladies your sisters were there at Montinore manor for the accouchement.”

“Excellent!” Ogier said; he seemed to be happy with the world today. To Huon: “Lioncel’s little brother Diomede is paging it with Countess Anne in Tillamook off on the Pacific shore.”

“Don’t let him hear you say
little
brother, Sir Ogier,” Lioncel said, grinning.

It was all part of the network of fosterage and service that tied the great houses together. There had also been persistent talk of a marriage between the Countess-regnant of Tillamook, or the County on the Edge of the World, as it was also known, and Count Conrad Renfrew’s youngest son. Marriage was another part of the network.

He went on to Huon: “I just got this from Her Grace.”

He tapped a knot of ribbons in Tillamook’s colors on his shoulder, gray and green and silver around an embroidered rose. Wearing a lady’s favor wasn’t precisely a pledge of marriage, that depended on circumstances. But it did entitle you to fight for her name and fame, and it was a serious matter, where the honor of each depended on the other.

“I sent a letter by heliograph after the Battle of the Vanguard, telling my lady Anne how I’d been knighted by the High Queen on the field of honor and begging leave to send her my first spurs and dedicate the deeds to her glory. This came in this morning with the couriers, and this.”

He pulled out a locket strung on a silver chain, shaped from an oval of walrus-ivory as long as a man’s thumb and half as wide, carved in delicate filigree and clasped with granulated gold. When he clicked it open there was a portrait of a striking fair-haired young woman, with his own on the other side.

“It’s beautiful, Sir Ogier,” Huon said. “She is, I mean, your lady the Countess; most fair and gracious, fitting for a Peer of the Association. She gave my sister Yseult shelter when it was, ah, awkward. We’ll always remember that with gratitude.”

He spoke quite sincerely; that too was a bond. The locket was fine
work, and Anne of Tillamook was lovely…though also several years older than the young knight. And Ogier had been a good companion to work with, not stuck-up or birth-proud at all.

So I wish him all good fortune in his marriage, and her too, when and if. His son will be a Count, after all.

Huon stepped back so that Lioncel could take a look as Ogier beamed at the picture. That let him pivot at the first shout of alarm, and his bow was still in his hand with a nocked arrow resting in the cut-out. One of the not-quite-prisoners had ducked under a guard’s horse, slashing the girths as he went, and he was throwing himself headlong at Sir Ogier with a long glitter of steel in his hand, dodging the rider’s draw-and-cut as the man toppled onto his own sword with a yell.