Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change (17 page)

It was part of an ancient poem about the McClintocks, too, and before the Change Collin’s father had owned or accumulated quite a set of tomes on the subject of the Highland clans. From which he and his followers
had afterwards pulled a dreadful muddled mulligatawny of ideas from history, legend, myth and bad romantic fiction all simmered to taste with a curry-sauce of things wholly their own.

They no more spoke the tongue in their daily lives than Mackenzies did Erse, but enough of his followers knew the phrase for an enormous roaring cheer to bellow out amid brandished weapons. McClintocks didn’t paint their faces for war like his own clan…but a
lot
of them tattooed instead, everything from woad-blue to screaming scarlet. Rudi suspected they’d have frightened the victors of
Cath Raon Ruairidh
into fits, or possibly hoots of slack-jawed laughter.

Chief Collin leapt down among them, and dozens of sub-chiefs crowded around. A brace of his armored gallowglass bodyguards heaved him up on a shield as he harangued his followers with sword flourishes for punctuation. They surged about him, a tossing sea of weapons and contorted faces and banshee shrieks.

“By the Threefold Morrigú and the Dagda’s Club, will you look at that lot of prancing monkeys?” the commander of the High King’s Archers said under his breath. “They’ll be setting up a Wicker Man next. With real
people
in it. Where do they think they’re livin’, the boothie next the Dá Derga’s hostel?”

He nodded at one woman with bars of red and orange across her face and bones through the knot of black hair on the top of her head who was doing an improvised war-dance with a javelin in each hand and more in a hide bucket across her back.

“Poetry in motion, I
don’t
think,” he concluded.

Rudi grinned to himself as he walked back to the map table.

“I happen to know that their Chief’s sire forbade the ancient sacrifices as
gessa
to their whole clan. Admittedly, it’s without doubt or question a very good thing that he did just that before they got completely out of hand, so. Forbye they have their uses,
mo bhearthár.
”

“Breaking heads and bottles and windows in a tavern, would that be, Chief?” Edain Aylward Mackenzie muttered, his square stubborn young face frowning. “Or gettin’ more friendly with their sheep than is right altogether or proper?”

“Well, my mother did say once they’d all be fanatical Jacobites if only there were any Stuarts about the place for them to be loyal to, the which there are not. As it is, I’ll have to do.”

Edain and the archers took stance behind him as he rejoined the party around the map table, their strung longbows in their arms; compared to the southerners, their green brigandines and sallet helms and neatly uniform kilts and plaids looked very disciplined indeed. Eric Larsson was looking dubious himself as the hairy mass of McClintocks went pouring off south at a swinging trot. The massed rumble of their feet made a counterpoint to the keening wail of their pipers, which Rudi had to admit were just as good as any the Mackenzies produced. Or they would have been, if only they’d all been playing the same tune, which they manifestly were
not.

“They’re reliable?” Eric said.

“Down among the rocks and gullies?” Rudi said. “Most certainly. To stand against cavalry in open country, no; to fight in ranks against a pike-hedge of heavy foot, no, not that either unless they carried all before them in the first charge. But for this? They were born for it.”

Everyone around the table nodded; a few just looked relieved to get the wild men out of the way and doing something useful where they didn’t have to look at them. Feeding the McClintocks and keeping them from starting epidemics with lax hygiene had been a continuous trial. They were battle-hardy enough, experienced from constant skirmishing with the bandits and the remnants of the cannibal bands down towards the old California border and sometimes with each other. And it wasn’t that they didn’t wash, but they also lived widely scattered in the forests and dells and by the hunt about as much as from their flocks and fields. Gathering together in numbers was something they simply weren’t used to, and they’d lost the necessary habits. Things that were tolerable in small doses were lethal when you crammed tens of thousands into a limited space.

“Eric,” Rudi went on. “Lady Signe.”

They were fraternal twins, tall and fair and in their early forties, and they ran the Bearkillers as war-leader and head of state, more or less—the
post of Bear Lord had been vacant since Mike Havel died at the end of the War of the Eye, fifteen years and a bit previously. Signe had never liked Rudi overmuch…but they respected each other, and he did like her son and heir, Mike Jr. Right now they were both in browned-steel armor, suits of plate that differed only in detail from Association styles, with the snarling crimson bear’s-head of the Outfit on their chests.

Mike was standing in the rear as befitted a junior, and in mail and arm-guards because he was still growing, but he had the mark of the A-List between his yellow brows, the Bearkiller elite, granted for his deeds south of the Columbia when the enemy invaded the lands of the CORA—the Central Oregon Rancher’s Association. That land had been overrun, but the dwellers and the Clan and the Bearkillers had charged a stiff entry-fee and guerrillas were still collecting rent. Rudi went on:

“They’ll try to push you away from the river. The
other
thing they’ll try to do is tie up our reserves here. Take us by the throat with their left hand, so to speak, so they’ll be free to punch with their right.”

Eric grunted again, looking at the map. “So you’ll want us to hold without reinforcements.”

Rudi nodded. “It’s sorry I am, but that’s so. They’ve more light horse than we do by a wide margin, and out on the north where there’s room to move that will be crucial. I must have the men there to deal with that. Time…you have to buy me
time
. Remember, we win if we don’t lose. They lose if they don’t win.”

“Point taken.” Thoughtfully: “I’ll put Arvid Sarian and his boys in to form our junction with the McClintocks. His lot are hairy enough too.”

“And I’ll leave the Degania Dalet contingent behind you. Use them if your hairy men fail, or at need elsewhere; but that’s all I can spare.”

“Good. They’re reliable. And we’ll need them before the day’s out.”

Signe traced the twisting south-to-north line and the blocks marking the patched-together coalition that was the host of the High King of Montival.

“And the Protectorate’s knights?” she said, tapping the figures for the reserve behind the line.

“I’m going to shift some of the men-at-arms about and take a few
whacks to keep the enemy guessing where the main weight will fall, draw as many of their light horse as I can on to the Clan’s archers—they’re still not used to foot soldiers who can outshoot them—and then concentrate the Association’s lancers for the decisive point. I’ll want the most of them fresh for that, too, where the place is right and the time ripened.”

“For the
Schwerpunkt
,” Eric said.

Rudi nodded; he’d learned that term from Sir Nigel Loring, his stepfather, who’d been a trained officer well before the Change over in Britain, where he’d attended an ancient warrior’s school called Sandhurst. It summed the concept up more economically than
point of main effort
, which was the alternative.

“I’d be happier if I knew where the Sword of the Prophet was, for that would be the target I’d prefer,” he said.

That was the elite force of the Church Universal and Triumphant, better than eight thousand men according to the latest estimates, superbly trained from their earliest years and fanatically dedicated. The others glanced at the Sword of the Lady. Rudi shook his head.

“Sethaz is here. He can’t see me or know my mind…or I him, nor his. Not beyond the usual way of deduction from a man’s deeds. So it’s mortal minds and eyes and swords that will settle things, and all the better for it.”

He turned to Frederick Thurston. “And you, Fred—here.”

His finger stabbed down on the map. Fred winced. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to…”

“Fight your countrymen, yes. That’s precisely the point. I think things have come ripe right now in that regard as well.”

Fred rubbed his shaven chin. His crested helmet was under one arm, and he looked quite dashing in the hoop-armor and scarlet cloak, with the loose black curls of his hair moving slightly in the breeze.

“I won’t be able to talk anyone into actually switching sides in the middle of a fight,” he warned. “We don’t think that way in Boise. Those who fight are going to give it everything they can.”

Rudi grinned. “I know. But just
not fighting at all
…eh, maybe that’s possible?”

Fred brightened. “A sit-down strike? Now,
that
might be possible, you’re right. As long as all they see in front of them is their own people. We know a lot of them are very, very unhappy about the situation. If they don’t get started, they won’t have to stop.”

He looked at the prisoner the Dúnedain had brought. “Centurion Woburn?”

The man nodded. “Centurion David Woburn, Sixteenth Battalion, AE12774,” he rattled off, conspicuously not coming to attention or saluting, and the battalion number was on his gear in any case.

“And you’re a man caught between two fires.” Frederick Thurston smiled grimly. “Either my brother is lying, or I am. I don’t expect you to take my word for it. I’ve someone here you should meet, though,” he said.

Then slightly louder: “Captain Woburn! Front and center!”

Rudi cut in as a man pushed through from the rear where he’d been standing with Fred’s staff and subordinates:

“Just to make one thing clear, Centurion Woburn; if you choose, you can sit out this war as a prisoner in safety and comfort. And when we’ve won, you can go home free as a bird and live just as you please and tend to your crops and cattle; I understand you’ve a wife and children back home on the Camas Prairie. If we were to
lose
, however…”

The prisoner winced; he had to have some notion of what his father had been doing in clandestine opposition to Martin’s regime, and it would get back that his brother had openly gone over to Frederick. Martin Thurston had never been the type to tolerate waverers, and since he’d met the Prophet eighteen months ago, he’d become utterly merciless.

Rudi’s nod was not without sympathy, but not overflowing with it either; too much rode on this war to be excessively tender of any one man’s feelings.

That’s the problem with punishing any sign of wavering harshly,
he thought.
Once a man or his kin have wavered at all, it’s
in for a penny, in for a pound
and he must see your head nailed over the door of his hall, because neither he nor his can be safe while you live and have power. Those who despise mercy are as much fools as those who can’t withhold it at need. More, for mercy can be a weapon as real as a war hammer to the head.

A man came forward and saluted Frederick, with the same lean, brown-haired, high-cheeked look as the prisoner, tanned and weathered like any outdoorsman but no more than a few years past twenty. He was in Boise light-cavalry gear, mail shirt and Fritz helmet under his arm, a curved saber at his belt and quiver over his back.

“Sir?” he said to Frederick.

Then he saw who was standing near. “Dave! Christ, they caught you too!” he blurted to his elder brother.

“Looks like you landed on your feet, Jack.”

“It was a Goddamned stroke of luck, is what it was,” Jack said; then he looked over at the Dúnedain party. “I see you met Mary Vogeler. She and her husband…now there’s a man who knows his cavalry work!…and a bunch of wild Indians and Baron Tucannon and his
menie
mouse-trapped my command. Baited it with a flock of sheep, of all things.”

The brothers stood awkwardly for a moment, then embraced even more clumsily and stood back, looking at each other more carefully. Dave went on in a more normal tone:

“Dangled sheep in front of you, hey? What’s the difference between a cavalryman and an ordinary sheep-stealing rustler?”

His brother grinned as he completed the joke: “Same as the difference between bandits and tax-collectors:
official permission
. Yeah, it was dumb, even if the logistics were shit and we were hungry. But it got us…me…where we could find out for sure what’s really going on.”

His face went bleak. “I lost some good men. But not as many as staying in the campaign would have, and…We need to talk, Dave. I’ve talked to Fred’s mother and sisters…and to Juliet.”

“The President’s wife?”

“Martin Thurston’s wife. After she and the…Fred’s mother…came and gave us a talk, nine-tenths of my men came over in a body. And the rest were mostly just sick of the whole thing and wanted to sit it out somewhere nobody was sending arrows and roundshot their way. We
really
need to talk.”

“Ok…Jack.”

Jack looked at his commander, who nodded and jerked his head
slightly aside. They drew off together. Rudi nodded to the younger Thurston himself.

“Sure, and that was well done, Fred. You’re learning. Not least when to speak and when to leave it to others.”

“Got the basics from Dad and the details from you, Rudi,” Frederick Thurston said as he smiled whitely, but it was a slightly grim expression for all that. “It’s like a snowball running downhill in winter now. And every one I talk over…”

“…is one we don’t have to kill. That’s what war is about, sure and it is, for those who don’t love it because it’s the most rapid and efficient way of producing a great whacking heap of corpses. It’s a way of getting people to do what you want, and not the most economical when there’s an alternative.”

“And every one we talk around is another who can fight the Prophet’s men later. We’re not going to talk many of
them
around.”

“Arra, I fear you have the right of that, not until we’ve hit them hard enough to break the hold he has on their hearts. Though I have my hopes for the long run.”