No man for debt shall go to jail
While he can Garryowen hail!
We’ll break windows, we’ll break doors
The watch knock down by threes and fours-”
They passed Oak among the Mackenzies retrieving their arrows; the big blond man was laughing and exchanging a fist-bump with Lord Maugis, who leaned over with a gruesomely spattered war hammer held across his saddlebow. They both waved to him, well pleased with how the stratagem had worked, and he returned the gesture; now the Montivallan army could deploy unhindered in the broad open valley. Tomorrow would end the war, bar the mopping up and reconstruction. . which unfortunately might occupy the rest of his life.
And isn’t that a sight, to be sure, the two of them thick as thieves, when Oak marched in the War of the Eye against the Protectorate, and his first arrow sent in anger perhaps aimed right at the breastplate of Maugis’ father? And isn’t it a hopeful thing to see?
Mathilda caught his eye, and she knew that she shared the thought. It was natural enough, since their own parents had been bitter enemies once and their sires had killed each other in single combat.
“To work,” she said.
The first chore was visiting the wounded, those who weren’t actually still on the operating tables; a painful task, but something those willing to risk maiming and death for them and the kingdom had a right to expect. Mathilda did the same, and they went from one form to the next while the hospital tents were going up.
When he’d finished, Ingolf Vogeler was waiting outside, pacing and slapping his leather gauntlets into his palm. His nephew-cum-trumpeter Mark stood nearby holding the horses, a youth who looked much like his father’s brother, though lankier with hair of light sun-faded tow rather than brown. Right now he was looking a bit pale despite summer’s tan, as well. Ingolf was merely grim, but something in his eyes brought Rudi up.
“Couple of things you need to look at, bossman,” the Midwesterner said.
Rudi nodded. He trusted Ingolf’s judgment as to what was important. And the High King had a good staff, which freed him from administrative detail, as long as he remained reasonably available. Part of commanding was standing aside and letting your subordinates do their jobs; his was to concentrate on the big picture.
“You too, bosslady,” Ingolf said to Mathilda.
The enemy dead mostly lay where they’d fallen once the Montivallan medics had-carefully-checked for living men to be carried off; bitter experience had shown that some of Cutter wounded were given to pretending helplessness and then lashing out with hidden weapons at any who approached them. Policing up weapons and gear wasn’t the maximum priority, and burial could wait. Followers of the CUT usually cremated their dead, in any case. Rudi’s brows went up a little when he saw a dozen of the Sword of the Prophet laid out in rows, the lacquered leather and steel of their harness oddly bright in the midmorning sun. The smell of blood and opened bodies was fairly heavy, as it always was, though it was cool enough that they were spared the quick bloat and stink. He brushed aside flies; overhead the buzzards and crows and ravens were hanging, waiting, or descending to tear at the dead horses who’d been given quick mercy-strokes.
Oak and the Baron of Tucannon waited for them. The Mackenzie nodded casually, and the nobleman gave a Protectorate military salute, fist to chest in a clash of steel gauntlet on articulated breastplate.
“Take a look at their faces, your Majesties,” he said grimly.
The pleasure of doing a difficult job well seemed to have fled, and neither was a man to be easily upset by the miserable aftermath of battle.
“Aye, Ard Rí,” Oak said. “This is just a sample, mind, but it’s the same with most in the red armor. Save for some officers. It wasn’t until we went over the field looking for the wounded that we noticed the pattern.”
Rudi did too. At first glance along the row of battered, bloodied bodies he thought some were women. Which was vanishingly unlikely, since the CUT regarded females as a lesser creation and had strict rules restricting them to domestic tasks. Far more so than even Associates, and unlike them with no provision for exceptions for those too stubbornly bloody-minded to accept or work around customs they found grated on them. Then he realized. .
“Young, First Armsman Oak, my lord Maugis,” he said. “Very young indeed-too young to raise a beard, every one.”
“Yah,” Ingolf said. “They take them young from their parents, six or so, but I’ve never heard of them putting the cadets in the line before they’re full grown. That’s eating the seed corn with a vengeance, wasting all that training.”
“Tuili,” Rudi said flatly. “Bastards. They’re desperate, but even so.”
There were battlefield chores youngsters did; junior squires among Associates, eòghann in the Clan, military apprentices among Bearkillers. Some of those tasks involved danger, because there was no absolute safety in an environment full of flying metal and human beings in the mildly insane state of savage focus required for naked extreme violence at arm’s length. Tasks like pulling back the wounded, bringing up arrows or a fresh lance, carrying messages. Riding in the ranks to meet a charge of knights was not among the things that youths just learning their trade were fit for.
“There wasn’t anything we could do,” Maugis de Grimond said. “It’s unchivalrous, but there wasn’t anything we could do but cut them down.”
He seemed to be trying to convince himself, which spoke well for him. Rudi knew plenty, and not necessarily wicked men, who’d simply shrug and move on.
“Not if they were serious, no, there wasn’t anything you could do but strike,” Rudi said. “My lord, I slew my first man in battle when I was barely ten. It would have been fair enough if he’d killed me instead. Since I’d a blade and I intended to see his blood.”
That had been when a Protectorate deep-penetration squad led by one Tiphaine Rutherton kidnapped him and rescued Mathilda, who the Clan had in turn captured in an earlier raid, all part of the build up to the War of the Eye. Or the Protector’s War, as they called it in the north-realm. That was the feat that had won the future Grand Constable knighthood and the barony of Ath, though it wouldn’t be very tactful to mention the details right now.
The knight nodded, his eyes still haunted. “We. . we just thought it was one or two exceptions, some squire getting a rush of spirits, a boy pushing into a man’s work, that happens. They were out to kill, and for squires that junior they were very well trained. And they wouldn’t give up. Then just now we rode back over the battlefield and saw how many. .”
Mathilda put a hand on his shoulder. “Duty is hard, my lord,” she said. “And facing mere danger is not the hardest part of war, sometimes.”
The baron nodded, his face relaxing a little.
Rudi gestured agreement. “After years each in the House of the Prophet, I’m not surprised they wouldn’t give up. And a lad of fourteen can kill you dead as dead, if he’s determined enough and you don’t fight back with all your force. Weight of arm isn’t the only thing that matters.”
He turned back to Ingolf. “There was something else?”
“Yah, you betcha,” he said, the sing-song guttural of his native speech a bit stronger than usual in his voice. “The Dúnedain overran one of these farm things.”
“Temple-farms, I think they call them.”
“Yah.” Ingolf glanced at Maugis; they were good friends, if not particularly close ones. “You ought to come too, Maugis, if you can. I think you might feel better about this”-he indicated the enemy dead-“if you did.”
“What is it?” Mathilda asked.
“Better just to show you, and I wish I didn’t have to know it myself, Matti,” he said.
They cantered in his wake, a squad of Ingolf’s Richlanders added to the party leading the way. The path turned off the old highway and onto a narrower road, dirt but well maintained and covered in rolled gravel. Ingolf was closemouthed.
“I’d have planted trees on the roadsides,” Mathilda said,
to fill the silence-something unusual for her.
“The Cutters don’t do anything just for nice,” Rudi said.
The headquarters of the temple-farm was a set of plain log buildings surrounded by an earth berm twelve feet tall, the wooden plank gate sagging open. Within were barns and grain-stores and the usual workshops essential to cropping and grazing, though there was far less machinery than in most places; the corrals outside were empty, which was logical-nobody left livestock to be swept up by an enemy. Storehouses trailed sacks of grain and potatoes, evidence of a hasty attempt to move the just-completed harvest as well, and a rather crude wagon lay with a broken wooden axle and crates and boxes spilling out of it. The traces lay before it, sliced and loose where someone had cut the team out of its rig rather than bothering to unharness.
Rudi’s lips tightened in a snarl. A pile of scrap wood and straw had been piled against one long low-set building that looked like a cross between a bunkhouse and a fort and set alight, with parts of it still smoldering and reeking. From the look of the shattered door someone inside had broken open the barred portal and then pushed through the flames.
“The Cutters killed the male slaves and pushed the rest inside that building, it’s only got one door, and then lit the fire,” Ingolf said, confirming his guess. “They busted out-which took some presence of mind.”
“Not something the Cutters would expect of women,” Mathilda said, a little white around the lips.
“Yah, well, stupid evil shits, fortunately. The Dúnedain came along about then, and signaled for us. Though damned if I know what they expected us to do that they couldn’t, just at a loss, I guess.”
There were other signs of haste as well. An X of stout timbers held the body of a man; his throat had been cut recently enough that the blood pooled at his feet wasn’t completely dry, but from the look of his body he’d been on the cross for some time. Several other bodies lay about, all men with lash-marks, sprawled naked where they’d been shot or cut down. They had arrow-stubs in their bodies, or just the wounds, and slash-marks from shetes.
So much is bad, but I’ve seen as bad or worse, in war, Rudi thought.
That wasn’t what made his escort swear until their officers’ barked commands for silence, or make signs against ill luck, or cross themselves if they were Catholics. Nor even the fact that all the dead men-slaves had been gelded, and had their right eyes burned out.
One whole man in a rag loincloth crouched beside a cage of poles lashed together with twists of iron-hard rawhide, a short but muscular fellow with bewildered eyes roaming about and his face slack. Two Dúnedain with spear and shield were in front of him, protecting him from a crowd of women. Most of them were naked too, and many were pregnant, had burns on their legs and hands, or both. A round dozen were trying to get towards the man, some of them with billets of firewood or rocks in hand. Others wandered about, or sat and wept, or stared vacantly, several score in all. One dangled from an improvised noose that ran out of a window, and he didn’t think that the Cutters had done it. A team of medics, Rangers and from Ingolf’s volunteers, was tending to the burns and other injuries of some of the women.
The sound the women-slaves all made was a thick gobbling, stammering through tears and moans. You could see why there weren’t any words when one suddenly screamed; her tongue had been trimmed and split. There was a hard stink in the air, manure and dried human waste.
Huon Liu started forward with a shocked exclamation, reaching for a flask from his saddlebags. Mathilda restrained him with a gentle gesture, her eyes the only things moving in a stony face.
“Slave-breeding farm,” Ingolf said grimly. “That guy the Rangers are guarding-look, you two, stop standing there with your thumbs up your asses and get that moron out of here before you have to hurt someone to stop them lynching him! Edain, get a detail to give them a hand, would you?”
Ingolf took a deep breath as a squad of the High King’s Archers attended to it, and went on to the monarchs:
“He’s the stud. Not really his fault, poor bastard, he’s just smart enough to know what to put where. They were breeding for stupid, for people just barely smart enough to do basic work and feed themselves.”
Rudi nodded soberly. He’d heard of this. Once you’d looked into the eyes of a High Seeker, it didn’t even seem very. . unexpected. Seeing it in person was different, though.
“I know,” he said. “And”-he touched the hilt of the Sword-“I’ve seen what this would end in, left unchecked. By themselves humans couldn’t do such a thing, if only because we can’t maintain a set purpose long enough.”
Though that vision of a possible future was so alien it didn’t have as much. . impact. . as this.
Mathilda crossed herself; for once she seemed at a loss. He could see where do we start? in her eyes. Lord Maugis was staring, blinking, looking away and then looking back. His area had been occupied for a while, but mostly by Boiseans in Martin Thurston’s service; the war there had been savage enough, but comprehensible. Young Mark Vogeler abruptly rode his horse around a wall and dismounted. They could hear him vomiting, then washing his mouth out from his canteen.
“What are your orders, Your Majesty?” Ingolf said formally.
He tactfully ignored his young kinsman when he returned, though a signaler wasn’t supposed to leave his commander’s side.
“We’ll have to care for these people,” Rudi said, taking out his dispatch pad. “Messenger! To Brigadier Nystrup, and would he please report here; and this to Lord Chancellor Ignatius, would he have the quartermasters attend to the matter of clothing and basic gear. Many of these ladies will be Nystrup’s people; he’ll want to see to identifying as many as he can. For the rest. . well, the Clan will take in any who wish, I think. Certainly if my mother has anything to do with it, and she will. There may be others who are willing.”
“The Sisters of Mercy,” Mathilda said. “I’ll. . I’ll talk to Father Ignatius. The Superior of their Mother House. . they have a unit with the medical train. . ”
“See to it, please, Matti,” Rudi said. “We’ll do what we can, but the first matter is to overthrow the ones who planned. . this.”
“Where are the children?” she said suddenly; there weren’t many, beyond some babes at the breast.
“You really don’t want to know, Matti,” Ingolf said softly. “Creches, most of them, but. . you don’t want to know.”
“By God. .” Maugis said, crossing himself with a hand that shook. “By God, I’d heard that the Cutters kept slaves, but. . is it all going to be like this, lord King?”
Rudi shook his head. “No. We’re close to their center, here. Elsewhere it’s bad, but on a more. . more human scale of wickedness. But it would have been all like this, in time.”
The baron’s face worked. “They’re. . they’re not human at all.”
Rudi felt his mouth twist wryly. There was a certain innocent vanity in that viewpoint, but he had to prevent it from spreading. The former Cutters would be his subjects too. He intended to see the headsman’s axe had some work, but a little of that went a long way. The Cutters. . former Cutters, they’d have to find a different term. . had to learn to live in peace with others. However, that implied just as much willingness in the other direction.
I cannot have a disgust with the folk of these lands persisting down the generations. That way would lay the groundwork for other wars-of less import to the Powers, perhaps, but just as deadly to humankind and our hopes and our homes.
He spoke carefully: “Alas, would that were so. The Power behind all this, yes, in a sense. But its instruments are all too human. At least most of them, and all of them to start with; and they are what they are because they’ve been mistaught, not because there’s any corruption in their blood, which is as ours. Do you understand me, Lord Maugis? For your own confessor will tell you the same-in somewhat different terms, but the same in the essence of it.”
The other man reluctantly nodded. “Yes. We’re all subject to Or
iginal Sin, that lets Satan whisper in our ears.”
Mathilda spoke: “Original Sin, as a wise man once said, is among the few dogmas which can be proven from experience.”
Rudi sighed agreement; occasionally Christians just had good points. Then he reined around.
“And now. . let’s go. Thank you, Ingolf. . Colonel Vogeler. I did need to see this, and not myself alone. I suggest men from each battalion be brought here. It’s a good thing to know why you’re far from home amongst angry strangers.”
“Yah.” Ingolf’s face lost a little of its pinched look, as if he was withdrawing his memory from a very bad place. “That’s a good idea. I’ll look up Oak, and Eric Larsson, and see to it.”
Another courier rode up as they cantered off. “Your Majesty!”
Rudi opened the dispatch. “Ah. Our blocking force caught the Cutters as they attempted to withdraw. Several thousand surrendered.”
Everyone looked baffled. “What blocking force would that be?” Lord Maugis asked, transparently glad to have something else to think about. “I didn’t think we could get troops much farther north.”
“It’s a case of. . how do you Christians put it. . bread upon the waters.”
• • •
“Major Graber,” Rudi said.
The former officer of the Sword of the Prophet dismounted and came forward with a brisk stride, a medium-tall man in his early middle years dressed in rough plainsman’s garb, looking as if rawhide had been wrapped around his bones and covered in weathered skin. The meeting was informal, but it still amounted to pacing between two rows of the High King’s Archers with the commanders and contingent leaders from the High King’s Host standing thickly behind them. Everyone who could had come flocking at the news.
There was a rattle and a small instinctive growl from the ranked Montivallan officers as he approached. Rudi smiled at it; just so did dogs growl at a stranger in their territory. Though Rick Three Bears was stone-faced and silent; Graber had personally threatened his clan when they sheltered the Questers. The silence itself was a concession, since it wasn’t in his people’s customs to forget such a thing.
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