Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change (26 page)

It’s easier to be brave in company, though
, he thought, and went on quietly:

“This is it.”

“Yup,” Lioncel said. “The jugglers and tumblers and dancing dogs have done their acts, the tables have been carried out, the floor swept, all the dancers are in place for the Grand Volta and the music’s about to start.”

“Dust and Sweat Pavanne with Scrap-Metal Accompaniment,” Huon said, and Lioncel chuckled.

Elsewhere the din of onset sounded where the great hosts came together in an embrace of desperate violence as they had all day, but in this space and moment on the northern flank the mutter was a far-off burr; Huon felt his brain stutter as he tried to take in how
big
this battle was. Half a continent was here, with edged metal in its hands and murder in its heart.

Beneath the distant surf-roar was the creak of leather and clatter of metal from the royal party and the hard clopping thud of hooves bearing the weight of horse-barding and metal-sheathed rider, and beneath
that
the same sound from so many thousands more at a little distance, turned into an endless grumbling rumble that you felt up through your seat in the saddle as much as heard.

The High Queen looked over her shoulder and grinned, her white teeth flashing in the shadow of her raised visor, the black ostrich plumes rippling above.

“Mud’s worse than dust, squire,” she said lightly. “Much worse. This is a
good
day to fight, and the best of company to do it in! Even if it is thirsty work. A drink, if you please.”

“Your Majesty,” he said.

He grinned back as he said it and brought his courser forward, leaning across to put the canteen in her hand. She nodded at him and drank; he felt his heart lurch with a vassal’s love and loyalty, dread and a furious exhilaration like nothing he’d felt before in his fifteen years. His own swig afterwards at the water cut with cleansing wine seemed like a sacrament.

Ahead of them, at right angles to their course, a long line of horsemen stretched north and south, twisting with the rippling curl of the land and far enough back that they were hidden from the enemy to the east by the crest ahead. More came up as he watched, trotting behind the ranks of the Montivalan host and falling in around the standards of Count and Baron as the heavy cavalry was withdrawn from the rest of the kingdom’s battle line and concentrated here.

There was a ripple of movement as spare destriers were led up and men-at-arms and squires and varlets switched saddles and horse-barding to the fresh mounts. Destriers were trained and bred for aggression, and most of them were entire stallions; they knew exactly what the weight of padded leather and steel being buckled onto them meant. Squeals of rage sounded, and here and there one reared. More stamped and mouthed the heavy jointed bits, foam dripping from their jaws.

A cheer went up as the High Queen’s party came through the line and trotted along it, banners fluttering; Huon saw men grinning as they thumped fist to chest or bowed in the saddle. Some shouted out:

“
For the Light of the North
!”

He felt a twinge at that; Odard had been a troubadour as well as a knight, and he’d made a song in Mathilda’s honor with that title. It had become very popular recently. Chaste and hopeless love by a lowly knight for a lady of impossibly exalted degree was a staple of the stories, but after recent experiences Huon suspected it was better in a
chanson
than in day-to-day life. It all seemed a lot less theoretical since that haystack.

“What news, Your Majesty?” one baron called. “Do we charge?”

Mathilda laughed back. “Do we charge? Is the Holy Father a Catholic?
The High King brings you a great gift this day, chevaliers, esquires and men-at-arms of the Association. A
cadeau
beyond price. He will give you a chance to die with honor!”

That produced a laugh
and
a cheer, and more up and down the line as the words were passed from man to man beyond immediate hearing. The chevaliers were in the first rank, a linear forest of bright steel lanceheads atop the twelve-foot ashwood shafts. The plate armor of the men and the articulated steel lames that covered the head and necks, shoulders and breasts of their mounts were often burnished until they glittered as well, and through it shone the bright colors of four-foot kite-shaped shields blazoned with the arms and quarterings of Count and Baron and Knight and the shining gold of their spurs.

The lanceheads wavered a little as the men shifted and the horses stamped and tossed their heads, and the brisk wind caught the pennants and streamed them out behind. The second rank were household men-at-arms of the nobles and manor lords and those squires old enough to ride to battle armored cap-a-pie behind the knights they served; spaced along the line in back were clumps of mounted varlets and younger squires like him, ready to dash in with a spare horse or a new lance or to rescue a knight down and wounded and carry him across a saddlebow back to the field ambulances.

Men were taking a final swig of water cut with rough wine, handing the skins down the rank, tugging to settle their sword belts one last time, touching the war hammers or maces strapped to their saddlebows. Making ready to die as each felt best, some silent, others passing one more foul joke, more crossing themselves and muttering a prayer, shaking hands with a sworn comrade or looking again at a photograph of wife or leman or child tucked into the inside curve of their shields. Men who could afford destrier and full armor could pay the high price of a camera and its operator.

He’d thought he would be envious of the squires old enough to hope for their golden spurs this day, but now he knew they envied
him
his place by the Queen’s side.

Lord Chancellor Ignatius said
squire to the High Queen
would be a post of
honor and peril, and he was completely damned right, may Saint Benedict bless and keep him. I wouldn’t trade places with anyone here, not for twenty manors and a Count’s blazons. Plus I don’t have to wait in ranks. I get to see everything and know what’s really going on! I’ll really have a story to tell Yseult…

He spared a brief prayer for her, too; his older sister would be stuck helping the nuns and doctors in the field hospital well back, seeing only the wreckage of war and not feeling this driving excitement. The knowledge that destiny was at work, that you were part of the wheel of fate turning on the pivot of mighty deeds…

St. Michael witness, I’ll have a story to tell my grandchildren when I’m an old man! There’s been nothing like this since the Change, nothing!

Or he might die today, of course, and House Liu with him. He knew that, but the thought seemed remote, like a line sung in a
romaunt
in a hall after dinner.

“Saints Valentin and Michael be with me,” he murmured very quietly. “I will burn a candle the length of my arm from wrist to elbows for them both when the war is done and I ride back to Castle Gervais.”

At the middle of the long line the banner of House Renfrew and the Counts of Odell fell in beside the Lidless Eye of House Arminger. Others trotted to meet them, beneath the blazons of Chehalis and Tillamook, Molalla, Skagit, Dawson, Walla Walla and more and more, all the great families of the Protectorate. When they drew rein, not all the glances exchanged were friendly, and there was a little jockeying for position as horses were spurred accidentally-on-purpose.

“My lords, there’s no time for precedence and state,” Mathilda said crisply. “Just your bannermen and signalers, please.”

House Renfrew of County Odell was led by Viscount Érard, a square hard young face under the visor, blue-eyed and rough with dusty brown beard-stubble. His helmet looked a little incongruous, obviously a brand-new spare brought up during a lull in the action worn atop a suit of plate that had more than its share of fresh dings and nicks. He was probably on his second or third shield of the day; a sword might last a lifetime, but a shield was lucky to see out a few hours of strong men and heavy blows.

“My lord your father?” High Queen Mathilda asked. “I didn’t hear the details.”

The heir to County Odell shrugged in a clatter of metal. “The chirurgeons say he’ll be on his back for six months and limp when he walks again, Your Majesty. Pelvic cracks, hit with a war hammer, they have him in traction and on blood-thinners, but he’ll live, for which God and St. Dismas be praised.”

“Amen!” the High Queen said, crossing herself. “He
would
try to take on a younger man’s work.”

Érard grinned. “He told me that until today he’d always thought it was just a metaphor, Your Majesty, but that now he can indeed truthfully say he’s
busted his ass
for the Crown.”

She raised her eyes a little in fond exasperation; the Grand Constable just blinked, but there was a bark of harsh male laughter from the noblemen before the High Queen went on:

“Ride with me a moment, my lords.”

They crested the rise, two-score horsemen, and rode a little down it. Ahead of them the land sloped eastward, a gentle surface with only a little roll to it for several thousand yards; then some steeper ground. The shadows of the lances lay long and thin before them. The ground was open, save for the rust-streaked mound of brush growing in drifted soil that marked the grave of some great farming-machine of the ancient world, the size of a peasant’s cottage and dead with the Change long before he was born.

The rest was pasture, nothing growing more than knee-high…except the piled bodies of men and horses, of which there were a fair number scattered here and there. Everyone but the screen had kept below the crest as the heavy horse moved into position, but that had meant a fair bit of fighting to keep eyes away as both armies extended their flanks northward, reaching for advantage.

“That’s good ground, that’s very good ground, Your Majesty,” Count Chaka of Molalla said admiringly, his smile splitting his broad-featured dark-brown young face. “You couldn’t find any better. Not for a knight’s battle.”

Piotr Stavarov of Chehalis nodded silently, his pale blunt jowly face looking very like a wolf’s for a moment; by what Huon suspected was no coincidence, the arms on his shield included a white wolf
passant
. Countess Anne of Tillamook wasn’t here in person, of course, but her contingent was and her war-captain Baron Juhel de Netarts, the Warden of the Coast March. If the company of the greatest nobles of the PPA intimidated him, he didn’t give any sign, just tapped fist into palm on either hand like a man absently settling his gauntlets as he frowned, narrow-eyed.

“The Grand Constable picked it and the High King confirmed the choice,” Mathilda said. “We’ve spent considerable blood today getting things set up this way.”

Out there, men were fighting right now, and his breath came quicker at the sight. Not the smashing impetus of a charge
à l’outrance
; this was the darting quicksilver snap-and-slash of the eastern light cavalry, the way ranchers and rovers made war.

Huon could see little knots and groups of riders tiny with distance, each trailing its plume of dust. The twinkle of arrowheads as the horse-archers swept past each other, rising in the stirrups to bend their short thick recurve bows. Now and then two groups would dart together, and the sabers and shetes came out, the blades swinging in deadly arcs. He thought he caught the faint
ting-
crang! of steel on steel and the shrill war-shouts. Or possibly of men screaming in mortal pain and fear of death. Once a melee ran over a knot of the fallen, and the black wings of the carrion birds squabbling for tidbits exploded upward like a torrent of grief.

He grimaced a little at that. He’d seen men die—you couldn’t grow to his years without that happening, in the modern world—but the birds were an uncomfortable reminder that at seventh and last people were made out of meat.

With souls, remember that, Huon. So many to Heaven or Hell or Purgatory today…Holy Mary, Mother of God, intercede for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

After a moment he noticed the leaders had given the skirmishing only
a glance as they turned their field glasses about. A squire was supposed to learn by example as well as precept, even a very new and very young one; and he had the luck to be a squire of the royal household, with more to see than how to hold a lance and charge when the trumpets blew. His left hand was busy steadying the two spare lances that rested with their butts in a rawhide bucket at his saddlebow, but he managed to get the small pair of binoculars cased at his waist out and up to his eyes; the light squire’s sallet he wore didn’t have a visor to get in the way.

The Association foot was northward to provide the base on which the chivalry would pivot, blocks of spearmen and crossbowmen and field-catapults between them; beyond that only swarms of light cavalry, screening the flank of the war-host of Montival. Some of them were from the eastern manors of the Protectorate, where the PPA bred its own cowboys; more were from south of the Columbia, refugees from the Central Oregon Rancher’s Association territories occupied by the enemy. They weren’t very organized beyond the level of individual ranches, but they certainly had plenty of spirit. And not much inclination to take prisoners. They wanted their homes and grazing back, and they wanted revenge.

South beyond the last Portlander banners he could just make out the positions Clan Mackenzie held, the long jagged hedge of swine-feathers planted point-out and behind them the harrow formation of the kilted archers. They weren’t engaged right now either; the thick drifts and windrows of dead out three hundred paces beyond their position showed why, and what happened when a charge tried the arrowstorm. And the goose-feathered arrows standing in the ground so thick that they made a gray haze over it where the flail had fallen, hundreds of thousands of shafts falling out of the sky like hard steel rain.

Eoghan—youths and maidens about his own age who were something like squires in a rude tribal fashion—were running about there, snatching up armfuls and rushing them back to the reserves. Far and faint he could hear the triumphant pagan war-chant of the clansfolk roared from thousands of throats: