by SM Stirling
Two women near her walked forward with a big jar held between them, cloth wrapped around the handles. The contents smoked and seethed; a third woman unbolted and lifted a trapdoor. The first pair lifted and poured in careful unison. The boiling tallow poured in a translucent torrent, and war cries turned to shrieks below. Others were doing the same, or lifting the traps and throwing javelins and rocks downward.
Ritva shot once more and then dropped the bow and stooped for her shield. As she rose she saw a face appear over the parapet, grinning in a rictus around the knife held in his teeth; a steel hook was deep-sunk in the timber to hold the rope he climbed. The women with the pot took a step and jerked the ceramic container forward. A double cupful of hot tallow was left in the bottom; the Cutter had just enough time to jerk a hand up before his eyes and begin to fall backward before it hit.
“Thanks!” she shouted, though they probably couldn’t hear her.
Then she snatched up the spear and shrieked the Dúnedain war cry:
“Lacho Calad! Drego Morn!”
She thrust through the firing slit, stabbing blind towards where the rope must be hanging. The point met something solid but soft; there was a bubbling shriek that faded away as the weight jerked off the point. Then she tried to pry the rope hook out of the timber, jamming the point beneath it and working back with all her weight and both hands. It started to yield, and then something hit her very hard in the shoulder. She staggered and then started to fall as her injured leg buckled. A light flashed in the corner of her eye.
Blackness.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DOMINION OF DRUMHELLER
(FORMERLY PROVINCE OF ALBERTA)
JUNE 2, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
Artos looked through a slit to the car ahead of him and grinned. Garbh was sitting on the roof of it, her mouth open and her tongue and ears flapping and fur rippling in the breeze of their passage, a look of exultant pleasure on her face and her tail beating hard on the curved plywood.
Edain followed his gaze and grinned. “Looks happy,” he said.
“Looks like a thirsty man on a hot day who’s just for the first time discovered there’s such a thing as beer in the world, drawn cool from a jug kept hanging in a well,” Artos said.
The horses were considerably less happy about their mode of travel, particularly Epona, which was why she was here with a whole car to herself. She crowded against him again; it was for reassurance, not with any intent to harm . . . but when a seventeen-hand, twelve-hundred-pound animal pressed up against you, with an unyielding surface waiting behind, harm could result.
“Stop that!” he scolded, slapping her on the shoulder. “You great pouting baby of a creature, mind your manners! You’re a middle-aged horse and a mother, for Her sake!”
She sighed—it was a sound in proportion to her deep chest—and turned her neck to nuzzle him, her grassy-musky smell as familiar as the straw-horse-piss-and-dung scent of the bedding beneath them. That was part of the fabric of life from his earliest memories.
Make it stop and let me out! was as plain as words in her nicker.
He stroked her nose and made soothing noises, reflecting that he’d never been in a traveling stable before either, but that it was probably much harder for her. It might have been better if the compartment was completely dark, cutting off a view of the countryside passing by as fast as Epona could have covered it at a round canter, but you could see the prairie through the boards that made the walls.
Each of the trains in the convoy that bore his force had four cars; the forward hippomotive where eight horses walked on inclined treadmills to drive the wheels through gearing; two more each holding eight resting horses—each was big enough to take about forty men, at a crowded pinch—and a fourth bearing copious spare parts for the temperamental mechanism and fodder for the animals. It was a very fast way to transport horses, since with teams spelling each other you could average a hundred and forty or fifty miles a day even allowing for the frequent infuriating breakdowns. That was five times what horses could do on their hooves for any length of time.
Unfortunately it really wasn’t a practical method to transport anything but horses given the coddling the mechanisms needed; the beasts were slower but much more efficient pulling cargo along the rails on their own feet. His troops were pedaling along themselves, and having no problem keeping pace with the horse-powered vehicles. The whole thing depended on having water and fodder available at close intervals too, since the horses were mostly hauling horses.
Artos felt the fabric of the wagon jerk a little. He looked around; it was Mathilda, with a worried frown on her face. She’d dropped off one of the cars ahead, and jumped up to snatch the handholds.
“The Canuk commander wants you to see something, Rudi,” she said through the boards. “I don’t think it’s good news.”
“Is it ever?” he sighed. “I’ve been feeling . . . prickly myself. As if lines of might-be were gathering here.”
He could feel the hippomotive slow; a set of whistle signals spread down the long awkward chain that stretched for miles across the prairie. Epona snorted and stamped in approval, assuming this meant a break to drink and graze and roll. The train of cars lurched and then ground to a halt as the brakemen threw their wheels with a squeal of steel on steel. Artos and Edain opened the door just enough to let themselves out, ignored the great black horse’s indignation and trotted forward through the rustling prairie grass.
The human-pedaled railcars were stopped nose-to-tail ahead of this, the first of the hippomotives; their doors were open and men peering out curiously, but discipline held them within. His staff—which was to say his friends—were waiting for him, along with the commander of the redcoat escort.
“There,” Inspector James Rollins said. He was about Ingolf’s age and height, and similarly brown-bearded and blue-eyed, but slimmer. “It’s gotten higher since I called the halt.”
He took the offered binoculars and looked. The plume of smoke was distant, but it was visibly rising. And it was absolutely red, in a way normal smoke rarely was, probably with something added to the fire to make the message clearer.
“That’s the Anchor Bar Seven Ranch, all right,” Rollins said. “And that’s the under attack by superior force, help urgent signal. It’s a strong Ranch headquarters—”
By which he means fort or stronghold or castle, I would say, Artos thought absently. He’d seen enough of them in this trip.
“—one of the strongest southern ranches, with a well-trained militia company. And the McGillverys don’t scream at the sight of a mouse. They wouldn’t use that just because of a minor border raid.”
Artos tapped a thumb on his chin, an old habit with him. His right palm caressed the hilt of the Sword, a new one.
“Could the Cutters have sent an army over the frontier without your knowing it? It’s not far, no more than three days’ ride, and unfortunately they’re probably aware of your impending declaration of war against them, the black sorrow and misfortune.”
Rollins shook his head. “Not an army. A big raiding party, possibly, especially if they didn’t really plan on getting most of it back; a thousand to two thousand men, absolute tops. The smoke will be visible to riders on every neighboring property, and they’ll have the news to the militia HQ and the Force soon.”
“Reinforcements to this ranch?’
Rollins nodded. “And blocking forces to the border. We’ve had raids before, it’s often more effective to try and catch them as they retreat with the stock they lift.”
“But this is not just a raid,” Artos said gently. “It’s a war, and they’re here to kill, not to steal cattle merely. They’re after me; and failing that, destroying this ranch would tear a hole in your southern boundary that could not quickly be put right.”
The redcoat nodded jerkily. Artos stood for a long moment. Father Ignatius cleared his throat.
“We could retreat faster than they can pursue, until reinforcements arrive,” he po
inted out, his voice carefully neutral. “They may well outnumber us, and their aim is definitely to attack you, Your Majesty.”
Rollins nodded unwillingly, though obviously every fiber of his body longed to rush to the rescue; he knew that war meant hard choices. The warrior-monk continued:
“Undoubtedly they had intelligence of our route. As I understand it, their mundane means for that work as well as ever. And if they harm you, we are no better off than we were when this war began.”
Artos smiled, but the negative gesture he used was brusque; he knew that the argument had to be made, but he very much doubted Ignatius either thought he’d listen to it or really believed it himself.
“I’m not likely to do well in this war if I refuse to engage whenever the enemy has more numbers,” he pointed out. “Also we have the advantage of a fortress to serve as anvil to our hammer—while it holds out, the which it may not do for long unless helped.”
And to be sure Ritva is there, probably. It would be a world less merry with her off to the Summerlands. And I would dislike to see that branch of my blood father’s line cut off.
Mary had carefully said nothing about her twin. Everyone on both sides was someone’s brother, sister, husband, father; a King had to keep that firmly in mind, whatever his own feelings were, if he was to keep faith with his subjects.
“And besides,” he went on easily, “there’s the using of the lovely gifts my mother-in-law-to-be has sent.”
Messages and light cargo had been passing over the border with Drumheller since that realm decided to commit itself some months ago, even before the snows melted in the passes, for which he had Sandra Arminger to thank, and Abbot-Bishop Dmwoski. Besides letters, they’d found several boxed suits of plate complete waiting for them as they advanced, neatly tailored to their measurements and made of the most refractory alloy steels modern armories could work. It was the sort of gift only a monarch could make at such short notice, and a rich one at that.
Say what you like about Sandra, she’s not petty.
Ingolf spoke over his shoulder to his nephew; Mark went running to alert the Richlander cavalry regiment.
“Now this will be a careful matter of timing,” Artos said. “The problem being that it takes so long to get the horses off the hippomotive-drawn trains and deployed.”
He looked behind him at the long, long line of vehicles on the rails. In point of fact they’d be helpless as sheep in a pen if they were attacked thus, and the riders not much less so than the horses. Which meant he had to get them down and deployed at a considerable distance from the enemy, while the Norrheimer foot could spring out of their pedal-carts and be ready in instants.
Ingolf caught his eye, and he nodded curtly; their minds were running on the same track. It was the only one available in this situation, if you knew your work.
“Major Kohler, get them deployed,” his brother-in-law said. “Company columns of march. Extra quivers slung to the bow-cases. Tell the troop-leaders to prepare for a meeting engagement.”
“Inspector Rollins, the map,” Artos said.
Kohler took off at a run, bawling orders as he went; presumably the men would be waiting already, with Ensign Vogeler’s warning. Artos bent over the paper, though he didn’t need it himself. He’d always had a good eye for terrain, and now he could see, as if hovering over it on hawk wings. But physical images were still the best way to explain to others. He could trace them on the map with his finger, and to his mind’s eye they became real.
“Father Ignatius, you’ll take both field artillery batteries with the footmen, under Bjarni’s overall command. Edain, you’ll command the foot-archers, our war band and the Norrheimers both; Bjarni, you’ll be in charge until I arrive, but I’d advise listening carefully to both of them—and then making your decisions. Here’s what we’ll do—”
When he’d finished, the fleece-lined sacks with the leaders’ plate-armor were open at their feet, and attendants were stripping off their clothes. Then they helped them into the black padded undergarments, with mail insets at vulnerable points like the underarms and grommet-laces for fastening to the armor. The steel carapaces went on swiftly as they spoke.
Bjarni’s plain Norrheimer hauberk was a lot less trouble to don; he shrugged into it and grinned at Artos’ plan.
“This is like the story of the sheep, the cabbage and the wolf, and how the man had to get them across the river in a canoe,” he said cheerfully. “Still, the landwights and the High One willing, we can do it if Wyrd will have it so. You don’t want me to reinforce the burg?”
“No; you could make it too strong to storm, but then the enemy will just ride away and hover about, making a nuisance of themselves and delaying us, the creatures. The railroad is too vulnerable and we can’t do without it, we don’t have the time. It’s squashing them like a roach under a boot I’d be doing, not swatting them aside like a buzzing fly that comes back to drive you mad.”
Bjarni nodded wholehearted agreement; there were reasons his folk had named him Ironrede, hard-counsel.
“It’s not too complex, at least,” he said. “The timing will be tricky, but then it always is, eh?”
Not a word on how he and his will all die if I don’t manage the other part properly, Artos thought. I didn’t misjudge this man’s quality.
Mathilda handed him his sallet; Sandra—or more likely Tiphaine d’Ath or someone in her service—had had the new one also scored and inlaid in niello in imitation of Raven’s plumage. The black feather crests over each ear rustled as he settled it on his head, buckled the chin-cup and flicked the visor up and down; with the plate suit’s bevoir covering his neck and chin, that left no gap for a point to use. He bent, twisted and stood again. The suit’s joints worked with marvelous fluidity, as if they moved on jewel bearings like a fine watch; the articulated lames that made up the back and breast gave him nearly as much flexibility as mail, with far better protection. It was a bit lighter, too, though even hotter than chain links since there was no movement of air through it.
“Now go,” Artos said. “Your Gods go with you.”
Bjarni turned and trotted over to his railcar, gave a brief explanation to the chiefs of his tribal contingents, and then they were off again.
Artos spoke quietly to Mathilda, in the moment when they could be private: “If I fall, you must take up the Sword, mo chroi.”
She went a little white with shock, but when she spoke her voice was quiet and controlled: “Have you seen something?”
“No,” he said, and shook his head. “If anything, victory is likely, and myself surviving it. But it’s not certain. An arrow at the wrong time . . . and if that happens, you must take the Sword. It would be . . . hard, for you. It’s made for me and my descendants. But I’ve never known you to shirk a task because it was hard; not even when you were a prisoner, in the War of the Eye, and you and I washed dishes together!”
She stared at him for a moment, then ducked her head. “Your Majesty,” she said.
His mouth quirked. “You needn’t be quite so formal as that, acushla.” More seriously: “I wouldn’t demand this of the Princess Mathilda as my vassal. That would be stretching a lord’s authority too far. I ask it of my friend.”
A brief pressure of the hand: “Of course, Rudi.”
The First Richland Volunteer Cavalry fell in with commendable speed. Artos made a stirrup of his hands for Mathilda to mount, lifting her and the armor without much effort. Then he went to one knee for an instant, taking up a clod of dirt and touching it to his lips, the warrior’s acknowledgment of mortality.
He rose and murmured with his head against Epona’s saddle. “Lady Morrigú-Badb-Macha, hear me. Great Threefold Queen, Red Hag, Crow Goddess, Dark Mother, She who is terrible in majesty amid the clash of spears. On Your earth will the blood be spilled; to Your black-wing host I dedicate the harvest of the unplowed field whose crop is the skulls of men. Be with me now, and know that when my time comes I will go willingly to You, joyful, as to a
bridal feast.”
Then he put his hand on the high cantle of Epona’s war-saddle and took a skipping step and swung up. Someone handed him his lance, and he rested the butt in the ring on his stirrup. Beside him, Ingolf grumbled:
“Yah yah, the armor fits, but I’m less mobile than the rest of my command,” he fretted. “Bad practice. A single unit should have uniform equipment.”
Artos grinned. “Your function is to command, not dash about shooting your bow,” he said. “And that gear will let you shed most arrows.”
Which is what’s bothering you—the desire to share more of your men’s risks, he thought. Commendable, to be sure, but I’m not going to let you deprive me of such a man as yourself to soothe your feelings, brother-in-law.
“I have no objection at all,” Mary said beside him.
“This is fascinating,” Fred Thurston said, looking down at his own suit. “I don’t think a sword could hurt you at all in this stuff . . . except your Sword, of course, Rudi.”
“Not unless you lie still and let someone stab you in the face,” his wife, Virginia, said. “But this much ironmongery cramps my style and I’m not used to having the stirrup leathers so long. Feel like I’m standin’ up, not in the saddle at all. Still, I got this awful feeling we’re going to need every advantage we can get.”
Rollins and his forty redcoat lancers fell in around him. The red serge jackets were still visible, beneath the knee-length hauberks and plate vambraces and greaves. Their helmets were odd, a blunt serrated cone in the center with a flat brim around it, and hinged cheek-pieces; more or less a kettle helm, such as many of Ingolf’s countrymen preferred, but also like a metal hat. Their round shields bore a buffalo’s head face-on, topped with a crown that bore a cross and the French motto Maintiens le Droit.
“ ‘Uphold the Right,’ ” Artos said. “Fitting! And the gear was mostly copied from the PPA’s style, eh? Or what they used ten or fifteen years ago.”
“When we were fighting the Association for the Peace River,” Rollins said. “And it’s proved useful elsewhere. Though from what you and your horse are wearing, we’ve fallen behind the times.”
