Prince of Outcasts (45 page)

“Yes, but my father was . . . err . . . conceived . . . in the first Change Year. Sir Nigel arrived about eight years later . . . when the British had their little problem. My aunts Maude and Fiorbhinn are his daughters.”

“Little problem? When Charles the Mad went absolutely barking, and before Queen Hallgerda put a pillow over his face and then William did his little coup?” she said. “People heard about
that
in Oz, believe me, news
still did travel even then. Mummy wasn't surprised at all, and she'd known Charles before the Blackout . . . the Change.”

Then she winked. “Apparently he tried to get into her knickers at least once . . . Well, princes are randy bastards, you know.”

“Right,” Prince John said dryly.

She's a bit disconcerting. I like it.

Breakfast was bowls of the same rice mixture that they'd had for dinner, just cooked until the rice was softer, with a banana from a bunch that had been on the carts. John's stomach was clenched in the fading darkness of the swift tropic dawn. The bodies of the dead had been carted away immediately but they'd mostly been slashed open during the fight, and the climate meant the smell of rotting blood and fluids soaked into the earth was already plain. That certainly didn't help, nor did thinking about what the buzzing flies had on their feet, but he made himself eat, and smile as she handed him another of the yellow fruits.

“It's still odd to think of having these every day,” he said. “I'd eaten them maybe twice in my life before we arrived in these seas.”

Pip laughed. “Common as dirt where I come from. The Mexicans call us bananalanders, in fact,” she said.

“Mexicans?” John asked.

Mexico . . . that was what the realm south of the old Americans was called, wasn't it? But the Change hit them even harder.

There were a few shadowy groups of dusty villages and ranches in remote parts there that claimed to be the heirs of the Mexican realm, the way Boise had with the United States, but he couldn't see what that had to do with Australia.

“Mexicans are what we bananalanders call people in Oz from points south, the Tasmanians and so forth, and all the dozens of little whatevers that've sprung up in the last couple of generations. Mostly we call them that because they hate it, even if they don't remember
why
they hate it.”

After a moment John groaned at the geographical pun, then winced as he began the standard loosening-up exercises. You did
not
want to pop
a tendon. Not at any time, and especially not in a foreign country where killers could be waiting under every brush.

“Neck stiff?” Pip asked, cocking an eye at the way he hitched for a second halfway through a stretch.

He nodded cautiously; it hurt, in fact. She knelt behind him and kneaded the muscles skillfully with strong slender fingers. That hurt even more at first, then he whimpered as the iron cords started to relax, and the incipient headache faded to a throb. That made the effort in the offing less ghastly.

“Knock on the noggin last night?” Pip asked sympathetically.

“Deliberate one,” John replied. “An Iban got far too close with a very sharp knife, so I embraced my outer savage and head-butted him unconscious. It hurt me, but a
lot
less than it hurt him.”

“Ah, the fabled Glasgow Kiss of legend,” Pip chuckled, drumming the edges of her palms into his deltoids. “Even more charming with a helmet on.”

“Are
you
all right,
chérie
?” he asked, feeling a little guilty. He would have noticed if anything was really wrong, but . . .

“Oh, fine. Just a few scratches. Though I loathe those poisoned darts. Not cricket at all.”

She grinned and patted the prang-prang behind them waiting to be harnessed to its team. “Of course, neither are these, and I absolutely adore
them
.”

John looked over at the wounded. Nobody had actually died from the darts; evidently that was only likely if they struck you somewhere like the neck, and the paste on them was very fresh. But all four of the men who'd been hit were unconscious—or possibly suffering from paralysis—and very sick indeed, with a tendency to long pauses in their breathing. The locals had been giving them concoctions that included belladonna and other dangerous stimulants, and they were going back under guard in wagons when the main force went forward. That was very light losses, but the fact that they'd been awake, alert, armed and in their gear when
the enemy struck accounted for it. The Baru Denpasarans hadn't been, and they'd suffered several score dead or crippled besides losing their High Priest and Priestess. He'd been carefully vague about why he'd woken up.

Not least because I'm not really certain myself.

“There, all better?” Pip said.

“Much better, and thank you, sweetie,” John said. Then he looked up: “Ah . . . good morning, Thora.”

The Bearkiller nodded to him, a slight smile on her face. Then she looked at Pip, who was returning her stare with a raised brow and an implacable politeness.

“Talk a bit?” the Bearkiller said.

“Of course,” Pip said; he knew her well enough now to see that there was caution in her courtesy.

They walked a little aside. There was little privacy in a war-camp, and that had been awkward. If only a few spoke your language you could have a conversation, though. John watched warily, caught a stare from both women, and turned away to ostentatiously go over his longsword. It didn't need it—Evrouin saw to it—but it gave him something to look at, and anyway you should check your own gear. He remembered to be conscientious about that . . . most of the time. When he'd been a squire, the others had played a game of substituting a hilt with a stub blade on those they thought were slacking, which could be
extremely
embarrassing if a knight barked
draw
in an unannounced inspection.

Toa was sitting crosslegged nearby, going over the blade of his great spear. There was a nick in it; bone could be surprisingly resistant, and the file made a steady
wheep-wheep
sound as he worked on it.

“I wonder what they're talking about?” John said after a moment, then cursed silently.

Toa laughed, a sound like a lion grunting in the bushes, and rolled his eyes in the direction of the two women. He had a better angle to observe them.

“What the fuckin' hell do you think they're talking about? You, mate.
And not just the length of your donger. Though I figure if they were going to have a knockabout over you, it'd have happened by now.”

. . . and John suddenly noticed that he was sitting in a way that meant he could rise very fast. Neither Pip nor Thora were the type of shy retiring maiden you heard about in some of the romaunts, looking wistfully out of a castle tower and waiting for other people to make events happen. It would take an ogre on Toa's scale to separate them if things went wrong.

Suddenly he laughed—softly, and facing away from them. Toa looked at him with an expression of gargoyle curiosity.

“I've heard a lot of songs where knights fight for a fair lady's favor,” he said. “Not all that many about two fair ladies fighting for a knight's.”

Toa's bellow was loud enough to make a nearby yellow-and-blue bird that was pecking at something on the trampled dirt fly up cheeping in an aggrieved tone. Then he cocked an eye at Thora and Pip again.

“Well, bugger me blind,” Toa said. “They're shaking hands.” Dryly: “No hug or kiss on the cheek, though.”

Pip returned, looking more relaxed; in fact, the contrast made John suddenly realize how tense she had been. He almost blubbered in relief for a moment. It also showed that Pip was taking Thora seriously, which was a very good idea. Toa went back to honing the nick out of the blade of his spear.

“That was odd,” Pip said, frowning a little. “I think we were talking about you, darling.”

“You think?” John said, feeling a little indignant.

“Well, first she said I handled myself fairly well last night,” she said, and frowned a little more. “Fairly!”

Toa grunted. “You're a natural and quick like a taipan,” he said.

John made a puzzled sound.

“Taipan . . . snake that likes to hide in sugarcane fields,” the Maori explained. “First thing you know it's bit you six times and you're not breathing anymore. Seen it happen.”

Pip preened a little. “Well, then.”

Toa went on: “She's a natural and she's got a lot more experience. That
fairly
bit's a compliment from someone like her, straight up. Don't get too full of yourself. She's fucking dangerous and no mistake.”

Pip blinked thoughtfully. “Well, if you say so. I did the pleasant thing, of course. Then she said . . . ummm, some things were worth fighting for and some weren't, and you should know when you've got what you're going to get out of something.”

Toa laughed again. “That's the voice of experience, too,” he said. “Different type but it still helps.”

The younger pair glared at him. “What's that supposed to bloody well mean?” Pip said. “That we'll understand when we grow up?”

Toa shrugged. “Pretty much,” he replied, grinning at her throttled fury. “Because you're just a nipper yet,” he said. “And you're bloody right to be relieved. It could have gotten bad.”

John met her gray eyes. “I don't entirely understand that either,” he said, and shrugged.

“Oh,” Pip said. “
And
she said that she'd wanted more than one thing and gotten all she wanted of that and now she'd go off and set up house, after this fight was done, and to thank you very much for the gift.”

This time Toa's laugh was more like a snigger, an alarming sound from someone his size. He shook his head as they glared at him again.

“Oh, not for the sodding world,” he said. “Mum's the word! Right, mum's the word!”

That set him off again as he slung his modest bundle into one of the ammunition limbers and the locals brought up the six-horse teams that would pull the artillery.

“Let's hope we get the chance to get older and be initiates of all these mysteries,” Pip said soberly.

Then she laughed, young and beautiful and arrogant. “And I expect we will.”

*   *   *

“Yes, seeing . . . I see?” Tuan Anak said later that day.

I hope you do, and I hope I remember those lessons well enough,
John thought.

The Carcosans had pulled back into their fortress when the Baru
Denpasaran force arrived, or at least all the ones they'd seen had done so—those jungle hills on either side of the rolling open land of the valley weren't far away, and quite a bit could be hiding there. The fortress itself had a deep water-filled ditch around its perimeter and a thick sloping wall of compacted earthwork about twenty feet high pounded down around a lattice of bamboo rods. The outer surface of the pentagonal construction was covered in turf that was patched with yellow but mostly the green that showed it had taken root to guard the soil against the washing of the rains.

Higher sections marked the corners, with breastworks of earth-filled bamboo baskets and firing ports for the catapults there; John thought there were probably four in all, and from the descriptions they were nine- or ten-pounders. There was a tall wooden tower on a mound in the center, made of logs notched together and acting as a sort of keep; the fort as a whole was big enough for about a thousand men, and it strongly resembled the motte-and-bailey castles the Association had built just after his grandfather seized power there in the early days after the Change.

Though there was no way of telling if that many garrisoned it. Or of how many had just faded into the surrounding hills.

There
was
a sparkle of steel on the ramparts, the brightness of spearheads. The black-and-yellow flag of Carcosa fluttered at the highest peak of the tower, and elsewhere on the walls. John blinked at it and then away. There was something
wrong
about it . . .

Looking at the steep ground that ran in ridges from southwest to northeast and a tangle of cross-grained hills wasn't much more reassuring. All was covered in three-layer jungle a hundred and fifty feet high, bound together with liana and vine. Tags and tatters of mist filled the folds as far as vision reached, until it faded away into blue distance. Occasionally a flight of birds went by calling raucously and then settled down into the rustling green silence again. It was a loud quietness somehow, lingering there in the background despite the chatter and hum and rattle and thump of several thousand men.

Ruan said the ground was fairly open once you were into the deep
woods—the upper layers shaded the ground densely—but the outer surface was dense as a hedgerow for several hundred yards. The young Mackenzie found the interior oppressive too; a fine mist drizzled down much of the time, or there was a long olive-green gloom occasionally speared by beams of brightness. Where a giant had fallen life roared in, twisting in slow vegetable war for light.

John realized now that most of his local allies hated and feared the jungle and were no more able to operate in it than he was. Less so, if anything, because he was at least well used to hunting in hilly woodlands. Temperate forests with completely different trees and plants, but the basic principles were the same, and the Baru Denpasarans were peasants who tilled cleared land, most of it rather flat. And then stayed within the gates of their villages after dark, believing—rightly—that the forest-dwellers hated them as invaders and would kill them on sight.

Tuan Anak said he had specialists who understood the wildwoods and that they were out there checking. John believed him, but it still made him nervous.

The hills hung brooding over the valley, the arched concrete of the pre-Change dam, the lake that snaked northward from it, and the new-built fort at its foot. A fair stream of water ran foaming over the spillraces and down into a river that hugged the eastern edge of the valley; the enemy were drawing the lake down to deny it to the takeoff for the canal upstream whence water flowed to the western coastal lowlands of the island.