The Given Sacrifice (13 page)

“Please, no formality, Mesdames,” Mathilda said, and picked a pastry off the chased
silver, making herself nibble graciously rather than bolting it. “Speak freely, and
don’t worry about precedence.”

I’m
hungry
. Getting back into shape is
brutal
but I don’t dare go anywhere near a battlefield until I do. Even commanders end up
fighting with their own hands at least occasionally, God knows
I
have often enough, and if you get tired first you die. I want to help Rudi the way
I did on the Quest, not burden him.

She’d managed to hack out a two-hour session every morning from her impossible schedule,
and sparring in plate armor with a fifteen-pound shield on one arm and an oaken drill-sword
in the other hand was about the best overall exercise there was. The changes in her
body during pregnancy had been . . .

Interesting,
she thought.
And certainly worthwhile.
Though the mood swings . . . poor Rudi! He was probably glad to get back to the field.

Her lips thinned a little as a muscle-memory of her sword-edge hammering into bone
ran through her fingers and up into her gut. That was the sort of thing you remembered
in the middle of the night sometimes; that and the faces.

She worked her right hand, the way you did to get the kinks out after a fight. Unexpectedly,
she found herself crossing eyes with Signe Havel, who nodded very slightly with a
small wry smile. They’d never be friends, but for that instant across the gulfs of
family and rivalry they shared something—something incommunicable to anyone who hadn’t
been in the place they’d both visited and from which you never
entirely
returned.

The hardest part now was that unlike a lot of warriors she had never really
enjoyed
the utterly essential life-preserving process of keeping in tip-top shape. She enjoyed
the results, the feeling of strength and capacity, she was a pretty good natural athlete
and sparring was fun in limited doses, but it wasn’t the passion for her it was with—say—Rudi.
Or for that matter Tiphaine d’Ath, whose idea of
rest
was flipping through a back issue of
Tactical Crossbows
between bouts in the salle d’armes. And if she was better than average with a sword,
it was because she’d pushed it doggedly all her life with the finest tutors.

Not least of that had been Rudi. Just trying to keep up with
him
made you do things you hadn’t imagined were possible.

God, I miss him, seeing him smile and touching him and even the way his hair smells.
Oh, well, at least my sword-calluses are recovering so my hands don’t hurt as much.
For once I’m not sorry to be in a cotte-hardie; I still feel shapeless without lacing.

Delia de Stafford exchanged a glance with Sandra; she was in her thirties and smoothly
beautiful, with raven-black ringlets hanging artlessly from under an open lace wimple
topped by an embroidered cap. Baroness Forest Grove by marriage to Baron Rigobert
and Châtelaine of Ath because of a rather less . . . orthodox . . . arrangement with
the Grand Constable, as the two sets of ceremonial keys at her belt indicated. Sandra
had always been her patron—she had an Associate’s dagger because of the then Lady
Regent’s favor, as well as the Grand Constable’s—and the whole rather complex quasi-family
were pillars of the throne.

“It’s wonderful that the news from the east is so good,” Delia said. “Not only more
victories, but so far
bloodless
ones. Well, mostly bloodless. As far as
our
blood goes.”

“Thanks to Fred! Ah, General Thurston,” Virginia Thurston—née Kane—said. “President
Thurston, soon.”

“He’s certainly done a wonderful job,” Mathilda said.

And truthfully again!
she thought, and went on:

“We both saw what he could do on the Quest.”

Though we also saw him grow up a lot getting there and back again. Or at least I did.
You
never saw him in his father’s shadow.

Delia’s eight-month-old daughter Yolande was with her, and a very active toddler named
Heuradys in a lace-fringed shift and mob cap controlling unruly mahogany hair, both
playing quietly to one side under the direction of a nanny. Though Heuradys had apparently
learned the word
no
and liked using it with lordly insouciance. Mathilda chuckled at the sight, not least
because of the names.

Yolande and Heuradys, Lioncel and Diomede . . . all of Delia’s children were named
from a set of books her mother had always liked, set in a skewed version of France
seven hundred years ago. Mathilda liked them too; they were far more realistic than
most pre-Change fiction, even Austen or Mallory. They fitted in perfectly with the
archaic-French naming pattern the PPA nobility mostly favored anyway; Spanish was
the second choice. The Grand Constable, Tiphaine d’Ath, had taken her Associate name
from them too, long before, when Sandra had taken her under her wing and recognized
her . . . unique . . . talents.

The Countess Anne of Tillamook looked at the children wistfully. She was in her twenties
and handsomely strong-faced, a pale blonde with sea-green eyes; and she ruled that
coastal holding by her own hereditary right as her father’s heir, as yet without a
consort. She was more or less betrothed to Ogier, the youngest son of Count Renfrew
of Odell. Young Sir Ogier was with the host, of course; another thing to resent about
the war was the way it
delayed
things you were looking forward to.

The other noblewoman was Countess Ermentrude of Walla Walla, a slim dark-haired willowy
woman in her mid-twenties, still looking a little uncertain in this company but hiding
it well. By birth she was from County Dawson on the Association’s far northern border,
and her husband’s holding—the County Palatine of the Eastermark, centered on the great
fortress-city of Walla Walla—was on the PPA’s far frontier eastward, what had been
the border march with Boise before the war. Neither she nor the young Count Palatine,
Felipe de Aguirre-Smith, had been much at court, beyond the essentials.

She was making a strong effort to be gracious to Delia, too; the last year had given
her and her spouse good personal as well as military reasons to be grateful to Tiphaine
d’Ath and Rigobert. And Ermentrude herself had won considerable troubadour-spread
fame by commanding the defense of the city of Walla Walla during its siege by the
enemy, while the Count led his vassals in the field with the High King. She’d commanded
the all-important political side at least, which included keeping the city’s guilds
and her lord’s war-captains in order, and that despite being heavily pregnant at the
time.

It’s breaking out all over,
Mathilda thought whimsically.
Well,
replenish the earth
and all that. At least this miserable war is cementing a lot of new relationships
between the noble houses who support the Crown. Delia and Anne and Ermentrude between
them have connections all over the Association, and their opinions really matter on
the manor-house grapevine telegraph. If they’re all pulling in the same direction,
it’ll make things a lot easier.

Signe looked down at the heir to the crown of Montival and chuckled as she tickled
her, a little unexpectedly . . . but she was a mother as well as a political leader,
of course.

“They’re so cute at that age,” she said. “They have to be, or we’d strangle them.
After two sets of twins and a singleton I should know.” She looked around. “Aren’t
the Thurston kids here at Todenangst? Fred’s sisters?”

“Shawonda and Jaine? They’re at their lessons with my lady-in-waiting, Yseult Liu,”
Mathilda said.

“Studying falconry, was what I heard,” Juniper said. “Diomede is giving them a tour
of the mews.”

Delia smiled fondly at the mention of her younger son. “Diomede is just getting to
the age when showing off to girls is something a boy likes,” she observed.

Mathilda nodded. “I’m keeping them close for security reasons, but this is going to
be a bit boring for teenagers, they’re good friends of Yseult, and . . .”

“You don’t want them too closely identified with Court,” Signe said; she was a politician
too, after all. A wolfish grin. “Especially with
Associate
court stuff.”

Sandra nodded coolly and sipped at her tea; partly in recognition, partly an unspoken
tsk, tsk
. She would never have said that
aloud
at a public gathering, even a small one like this. Not that she’d give Signe any
notice of it, either.

Mathilda could read her thought:
those with wit enough will realize, and why point out to the gullible and dim what
they can’t see for themselves? Part of being clever is not needing to prove it all
the time.

Juniper snorted and rolled her eyes.

“They’re nice kids,” Virginia said. “And their Mom is one smart lady.”

Everyone nodded and took a sip of their tea. Anne of Tillamook had been visibly waiting
to speak, but she deferred gracefully to Ermentrude. The flat, slightly drawn-out
vowels of the Peace River country were still audible in her voice as she spoke slowly:

“Thank you for inviting me, Your Majesty. I’ve written, but it’s always better to
speak face-to-face if you can. And Felipe . . . well, he’s very busy with leading
the County’s contingent in the field, of course. The thing is . . .”

She took a deep breath. “I’ve been touring all the areas of the County Palatine the
enemy overran, helping with the reconstruction. It’ll be years . . . we lost so much
livestock and equipment. Though we’re not actually facing famine thanks to what you’ve
shipped in. And the damage to the manor houses and villages was very bad . . . the
castles held, almost all of them, but . . .

Her calm broke a little. “A generation of work wrecked in a year!”

“I said after the Horse Heaven Hills that the Association looks after its own,” Mathilda
said. “We’ve already sent a good deal.”

Everyone nodded. About a quarter of the Protectorate’s manors had been damaged in
the war, ranging from
cattle raid
level to
burned to the ground
. Castles were nearly invulnerable if well provisioned and strongly held—that was
the whole point—but villages and manor houses were easy meat to an enemy who held
the open country. The untouched ones farther west had agreed to doubled mesne tithes
and even better had mostly actually paid them, with no more than a token amount of
grumbling. That was over and above the lawful reliefs they owed in war anyway and
the lost labor when the full levy was called out, and it was going to hurt. That response
had made her proud to be an Associate and an Arminger.

“We’re grateful. But?” Ermentrude said. “Your Majesty, I can hear the
but
in your voice. My father always said that
but
is the killer.”

Mathilda sighed. “Have you seen the reports from south of the Columbia? The CORA territories?”

She pronounced the acronym in the usual way, as if it were a woman’s name. Technically
it stood for the Central Oregon Rancher’s Association, the ad hoc group that had gotten
the area west of the Cascades through the first years of the Change down there.

Ermentrude winced a little. “Yes. There’s . . . really not much left, is there? We
were hurt, they were wrecked.”

Juniper sighed, suddenly looking older. “The people got out two years ago, the most
of them, and some of their stock, and what they could carry with them on packhorses
moving fast through the Cascades to the Willamette. Nothing else.”

The Mackenzie chieftain nodded to Signe. “You Bearkillers helped cover the retreat
well, after the lost battle at Pendleton.”

Signe shrugged. “From what Eric tells me it’s a total mess there.”

Her brother Eric Larsson had led the Montivallan forces following the retreating enemy
south of the Columbia; he was a hard man, but there had been an undertone of horror
in his reports.

“Pure meanness,” Virginia Thurston said with deep sincerity. “Christ . . . or the
Aesir . . . but the CUT needs to be burned off the face of the earth.”

She obviously sympathized with the Ranchers; she was fierce, but not vicious. And
the CORA were very much like her own folk, though perhaps a little less . . .

Rustic,
Mathilda thought charitably.
The Powder River country is very . . . rustic. Or within wiping distance of the arse-end
of nowhere, as Edain put it.

“Most of the CORA fighting-men are with the host,” the High Queen said aloud. “And
the King will need them badly in the east, they’re fine light cavalry. But they’re
also proud folk, the Ranchers and their cowboys both. They’ve fought well, and their
guerillas did good service tying down enemy troops south of the river. They don’t
like being refugees living on the charity of others.

“They want to go
home
, and make a start on rebuilding, even while their warriors are away.”

Looked at coldly, it would make more sense to resettle the folk elsewhere. Morality
and practical politics both made that out of the question, of course. Her own consciousness
of the land—all the land of Montival—made that part of it feel like a raw bruise.

Some of the conversation that followed was by prearrangement. The Mackenzies had always
had close links with the CORA, and she suspected it hadn’t been too hard for Juniper
to get the Clan’s
Óenach Mór
, the Great Assembly, to agree to more help; Father Ignatius had assured her that
Mt. Angel would do the same. Signe offered to join the effort, and hinted that she’d
get Corvallis to cough up too. They all promised longer-term aid to the County Palatine
as well.

“Lady Ermentrude?” Mathilda said, when they’d gone around the subject long enough.

“I . . . yes, we’ll accept that some of the aid from the western and northern parts
of the Association goes to the CORA rather than immediately to the County Palatine.
Felipe will agree, after he shouts and kicks the walls a little.” More firmly. “Yes.
Ruling means setting priorities and you can never satisfy everyone.”