Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change (43 page)

“And you have the High Kingdom behind you,” Rudi said when it died down.

He laid a hand on the Baron’s shoulder; some things should be said and done publicly.

“I give you my thanks as well, and all Montival’s,” he said firmly. “The enemy troops you and your fellow lords of the Palatinate tied down may well have made the difference between victory and defeat at the battle in the Horse Heaven Hills. It was a close-run thing, there at the end, and there were all too many of them as it was. I say to you and your vassals and all your followers
well-done
,
and very well-done
. You sacrificed much for the Kingdom, and the King will not forget it.”

Maugis flushed out to his prominent ears and went to his knees; Rudi took the man’s hands between his. Behind them there was a pleased buzz at the honor done to all through their lord.

“I am your man, of life and limb and all earthly worship, my King,” he said. “God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and the Holy Virgin witness it!”

That was an abbreviated version of the usual ceremony of homage, but nobody could doubt the sincerity. The Count of the Eastermark was in Rudi’s train at the moment, and he was the Baron’s immediate feudal superior, but he smiled and nodded as Rudi replied, also shortening it:

“I accept your homage, Maugis de Grimmond; your enemies shall be mine and none shall do you wrong save at their peril; my sword shall be yours to call upon; I will hold your honor dear as my own and give you fair justice and good lordship.”

Maugis was smiling as he rose and stepped back, though there was a
very odd expression on his mother’s face, happiness mixed with some strange detachment or incredulity. Rudi looked at her and shrugged mentally; he would never really or wholly understand the generation that had been adults before the Change, even the ones he’d grown up with. The lord of Tucannon was smiling even more broadly as he brought his lady forward by the hand. She was in a riding habit much like Mathilda’s, a slim young woman with tilted eyes of a very pale blue and raven-black hair falling in a silk torrent down her back from beneath a light headdress, her face lovely but tired with an exhaustion that had little to do with sleep. An infant and a toddler were in the care of a nurse behind her, but she led a six-year-old boy by the hand herself.

“My lady wife, Helissent de Grimmond, your Majesties,” Maugis said proudly. “And the war-captain who held Castle Tucannon for me…and your Majesties…all through the siege, while we harried the enemy.”

She sank down gracefully, hands spreading her habit slightly as she knelt and bowed her head; the boy did a creditable imitation of his father’s reverence.

“Rise, my lady Helissent,” Rudi said, and Mathilda gave the other woman the kiss on both cheeks that was also a mark of favor. “I am in your debt as well, then.”

The boy beamed. “I fired a catapult! Lots of times. I turned the wheel and pulled the lanyard when Captain Grifflet said to and everything! Squished ’em like bugs!” he said with an innocently murderous glee. Then hastily: “Your Majesty.”

“Did you indeed, young sir?” Rudi said, grinning.

“He did,” Helissent said. “As often as we’d let him! My son Aleaume, Your Majesty.”

The young heir of Tucannon had his mother’s eyes. That prompted something as the High King rested his hand on the moonstone pommel of the Sword…

“Lady Helissent, you’d be from Skagit, originally? Your brother Adhémar de Sego holds as a vassal of the Barons of Skagit?”

“Yes, Your Majesty, he holds Sego Manor by knight-service to the Delbys,” she said, obviously pleased. “As my father did while he lived.”

“Sir Adhémar gained much honor at the Horse Heaven battle with the
menie
of House Delby, Lady Helissent. He was wounded capturing an enemy banner, but he’s healing well and expected to be on his feet in a few weeks. And your younger brother Sir Raymbaud—”

“Raymbaud’s been knighted?” she said, startled into a broad grin.

“By the High Queen’s own hand, for his valor in the charge against the Prophet’s guardsmen. They’re both at Walla Walla now with the main body. They should be able to visit you soon, perhaps over Christmas.”

“My thanks, your Majesties!” she said. “You honor us.”

“Not beyond your worth,” Mathilda said.

Young Aleaume decided that there had been enough conversation about people he didn’t know.

“Is that the Sword of the Lady, Your Majesty?” he asked. “The one from Heaven, like Excalibur in the stories?”

“Indeed it is, young lord,” Rudi said, making a slight motion of his hand to halt the shushing his mother hadn’t quite started. “Here.”

He went down on one knee himself and pulled the sheathed Sword free of the frow on his belt, resting it across his palms at about the boy’s height. The young face went serious as the boy tentatively extended a hand and rested it on the glowing stone for a moment. Then he snatched it back, but his face lit up as he met Rudi’s gray-green-blue gaze.

“Did a lady give it to you in a lake? Or did you pull it from a stone?” The boy frowned. “Arthur did
both
, didn’t he?”

Rudi nodded. “Accounts differ. Now, this
was
given to me by three holy ladies, and that on a forbidden island in a distant sea guarded by pirates and awful magic. And it has lain in a sheath of stone
beside
a lake here in our land of Montival, and worked wonders.”

Aleaume nodded in satisfaction. “And you won the great battle with it!”

“I did indeed,” Rudi said gravely. “With this and the aid of many brave men like your father.”

Cocking an eye at Mathilda and then his sister Mary: “And many a brave woman as well.”

“When I’m big I shall fight for you too, Your Majesty!” Aleaume said. “I’ll be your man, and slay dozens and dozens…and, and
hundreds
of cruel and wicked enemies for you!”

“You may indeed fight by my side someday,” Rudi answered him, putting a hand on the boy’s head for an instant before he rose and reseated the Sword. “Or by the side of my heir, who’s expected along in spring, and we’ll be well served if you prove as brave a knight and as good a lord as your father.”

The Baron of Tucannon and his lady offered congratulations. Rudi grinned at Mathilda, the wonder still on him.

“I thank you, my lord, my lady, though sincere as it is, you’re not half so happy as we! Now—”

There was a clatter of hooves, a challenge and response, and Ingolf swung down from his horse and came towards them with a look of intense predatory satisfaction on his battered face, slapping mud off his breeches with the gloves in his left hand.

“Good news?” Rudi asked, as Mary came over to lay an arm around the big man’s waist.

“Damned good! The Boise commander in Castle Campscapell just turned on the Prophet’s men there. Did it real neat and tidy in the middle of the night, too. A few of them are still holding out in the central keep, but they’re bottled up tight, and Hauken, that’s his name, he’s declared for Fred and opened the main gates and our men are inside.”

The news ran through the crowd and there was a rolling cheer; Aleaume was jumping up and down, certain that the foe’s doom was upon them.

The which is not so far from at least a local truth,
Rudi thought, smiling with a slight show of teeth and tapping his right fist into his left palm in three slow strokes. His mind went on, weighing factors:

Campscapell is a great keep and in a notable bottleneck. Now the cork is in our hands and we can keep it closed or go east through there just as we choose. Losing the castle was a bad blow, and regaining it a wind at our back. I must…no, let Fred reward this Hauken. He’ll know how to do it properly.

Rudi raised a hand for silence after the cheers started to fade.

“Well, my friends, I’d been planning a feast of celebration here—for which we brought slaughter stock, cattle and sheep, doubly sweet for being doubly stolen as the saying goes—”

Another cheer rose on a different note, less carnivore glee and more straightforward hungry happiness; the local folk hadn’t actually starved, but they’d gone short and nobody either noble or commons had been eating their fill of roasted fresh meat lately.

“—and some most promising barrels. We’ll feast this night and drink to your homes reclaimed and to this news of a victory won without blood—”

None of ours, at least

“—as an omen of things to come.”

Maugis de Grimmond stepped back and drew his sword. “Artos and Montival!” he shouted, holding it high.

“
Artos and Montival!
”

The Bearkillers held feast for their dead in the great hall of Larsdalen.

The long rectangular room fell silent, the buzz of conversation and laughter that had filled it during the feast dying as the ceremonial drinking-horns were set out in their wrought stands, rimmed and tipped with gold or silver and carved with running interlaced animal-patterns. The central hearth flickered and boomed beneath a hood of burnished copper that led the smoke upward; snow fell against the tall windows, whispers of cold white in the darkness, but within all was warmth and light—an image ancient in the poetry of their peoples.

A fair place, this Larsdalen
, Bjarni Eriksson thought.
No fairer than my mead-hall, but larger and richer…and strange, like its dwellers, full of things alien and familiar and mixtures of the two, like stories seen in dreams.

Firelight and lantern-light shone on the oak wainscoting between the tall windows, wrought in sinuous forms from tales he remembered and some he’d never known; he recognized Sigurd and Fafnir, Burnt Njal, Orm the Strong, Odhinn’s quest for wisdom and his old friend Thor wrestling with the World Snake. It was hung with weapons and shields as well—round concave ones marked with the Bear, backswords and lances and recurve bows, stands of plate armor and captured trophies and banners.

The fire scented the air with the subtly alien smell of burning Douglas fir, not quite like the pinewood blazes he knew, and the fine beeswax of candles from the wrought-iron chandeliers overhead; his folk used tallow mainly. Rather than young maidens, it was military apprentices who brought round the jugs, and they were full of wine from the local vineyards rather than the honey-mead that was the drink of ceremony back home, for those who could afford it.

Now wine, there’s a thing of which I approve,
he thought, grinning to himself and smacking his lips a little.
The vineyards are full of gnarled and ugly plants, but what they make…ah, that’s a different matter!

Back in Norrheim, wine was something they knew only from bottles Vikings salvaged from the dead cities—hardly familiar enough to really tell what was still good from what had spoiled in the long years since the Change. They
called
the tipples made from berries and herbs wines, but here in Montival he’d come to know the difference. The feast had been fine too, smoking platters of beef ribs, roast pork, made dishes more complex than they used in Norrheim and fantastical desserts of pastry and ice cream and fruits like cherries and apricots that were only names in the cold land that he ruled.

One thing that was the same was the roistering, roaring defiance in the face of death and grief. Even if some of these folk followed the White Christ, they knew the Nine Virtues, of which courage was the first.

He stayed quiet as the Bearkillers remembered their fallen, as was respectful, and kept an eye on young Halldor Syfridsson beside him to make sure he did as well.

“Easy, easy,” he said to him quietly, while Eric Larsson invoked the White Christ for those of the fallen who had followed Him. “This isn’t mead. It’s stronger. Drink it more like whiskey, not for thirst like beer.”

The young man’s grin was a little foolish. A woman at the table across the open space from theirs was giving him cool considering stares; she was a little older, which still made her young enough—Halldor was in his late teens yet, and had come at his father’s side on the great journey west. His father, Syfrid Jerrisson, had laid his bones fighting the CUT in Drumheller, and now the youngster was
godhi
of the Hrossings, though they didn’t know it yet.

If they hail him when he stands on their Thingstone,
Bjarni thought.
But they will; he’s his father’s son, and shrewd, and already a fell fighter. I’ll be glad of it, and of a strong ally as chieftain of another tribe, a man who’s seen the wider world and understands my thoughts. Syfrid and I were rivals more than friends; he never forgot seeing me as a child in my father’s hall when he was a man grown, and thought he should be king in Norrheim. Halldor will be no man’s puppet, but we’ll deal more easily, I think. Hmmm. Perhaps when my sister Gudrun is old enough to wed…better to wait on that, perhaps throw them in each other’s way and see how they suit. Still, a good thought. I’ll talk it over with Hallberga when I get back.

“I drink to our glorious dead,” Signe Havel called from the high table where she and the Bearkiller leaders and Bjarni sat.

She raised a horn carved and wrought with silver runes at mouth and tip, her voice as fiercely comely as her face as she looked down the long chamber, mourning and pride as naked as a she-wolf’s.

“May they feast with the High One this night. May His daughters bear them the mead of heroes, and greet the new-come
einherjar
thus at the gates of Vallhöl:

Hail to thee Day, hail, ye Day’s sons;

Hail Night and daughter of Night,

With blithe eyes look on all of us,

And grant to those sitting here victory!

Hail, Aesir, hail Ásynjur!

Hail Earth, that gives to all!

Goodly spells and speech bespeak we from you,

And healing hands in this life!

“Drink hail!” she finished.