S. Stirling - The Tears of the Sun

Huon leaned forward as the old soldier-monk spoke. The room around them faded away; he could smell the oiled metal of armor, feel the fierce interior sun-

PENDLETON ROUND-UP TERRITORY

CITY OF PENDLETON

(FORMERLY NORTHEASTERN OREGON)

SEPTEMBER 15, CHANGE YEAR 23/2021 AD

This is not going to be a good day.

Sir Guelf Mortimer of Loiston Manor frowned down at the map spread over the gritty soil and weighed down at the corners with chunks of volcanic rock. It showed the city of Pendleton, capital of the Round-Up territory, or the Associated Communities of the Pendleton Emergency Area if you wanted to be technical, which he didn’t. He could look up and south across the river and see the low rough-built walls with bits of rusty iron showing where the reinforcement cropped out through the concrete and rubble and odd angles where buildings had been incorporated into the defenses. Modern Pendleton was a rectangle, roughly, on the south bank of the Umatilla River; that acted as a natural moat on three sides.

Sir Ruffin Velin was delivering the bad news. He was the Grand Constable’s second-in-command right now, a hard-looking man in his thirties with thinning brown hair, and one of her vassals and hatchet men. You had to be careful around them. They’d been the Lady Regent’s kill-squad before Baroness d’Ath went into the mainline military. He wasn’t going to take Ruffin on lightly. Tiphaine d’Ath. . made his skin crawl. He wasn’t the only one. Nor was the Regent called the Spider without good reason.

In fact, it’s going to be a very bad day, Guelf thought.

He was head of the Barony Gervais contingent here today, as senior fighting vassal in the absence of his nephew Baron Odard. . who was off somewhere to the east on a quest like something out of one of the Dúnedain storybooks, hopefully making the runaway Princess Mathilda helpless with admiration of his heroism as they tailed along behind the Mackenzie brat.

And what I’m doing today won’t be in front of a beautiful. . well, passably good-looking. . Princess who’s heir to immense wealth and power. Hell, let Odard get her flat and I’ll be content to be his uncle and shake the patronage tree in his shade.

They’d been up before the dawn, working like mules to set up the siege machinery along the bank of the Umatilla. He was sweating like a pig inside his suit of plate and wishing he’d switched to an old-fashioned mail hauberk; the interior was still beastly hot this time of year, and they were a long way from the Pacific’s cool breezes. Plate might as well be waxed canvas as far as keeping the air out was concerned. All he was getting was the occasional tantalizing draught through the joints when he moved. Little metallic clanks sounded as men jostled around the map and their harness rattled, or the leather straps and padding beneath creaked.

The stated objective- Right up till now, thought Guelf, casting an irritated eye at the quarter high sun-had been to install the machines to sweep the bridges across the river, then advance to take out the city wall of Pendleton by the Emigrant Gate when the beaten forces of the Round-Up tried to hold the city. Meanwhile the rumor was that the Dúnedain were to do something unspecified but wonderful, if it worked.

“The whole operation got blown,” Ruffin said bluntly. “They pushed in more forces at precisely the wrong time for us. We don’t have very much information yet, mostly from enemy deserters, but the Grand Constable. .”

Sir Ruffin was looking at Sir Érard Renfrew, who was also Viscount Chenoweth, heir to the Count of Odell, and his younger brother, Sir Thierry Renfrew, who was something of an artillery specialist.

Sir Guelf allowed himself the luxury of a grimace of distaste and a quick turn of his head and spit. With enough dust to make your teeth gritty every time you swallowed no one could prove it was a statement of opinion. Of the Grand Constable, and of House Odell, d’Ath had been Conrad Renfrew’s protégé as well as the Lady Regent’s; the families were tight, part of the glacis around the Lady Regent’s position.

“. . says we also have intelligence that we are facing almost twice the numbers we expected, say two or three thousand men each from Boise and the Church Universal and Triumphant as well as the Pendleton troops we knew about.”

That brought grunts. Everyone here could add.

“They suckered us and got their forces in here first. We can’t fight this one and win with what we’ve got here and there’s no way to get meaningful reinforcements in time to do any good. We need to break contact and retreat as far as Castle Hermiston, on the old border. The fortifications there will give us an edge and we can put in enough additional forces to make them think three times about trying to invest the castle.”

Guelf growled at the thought of giving ground. He knelt next to Thierry and traced the bridges over the Umatilla north of the walled city of Pendleton.

“They can cross these and flank us. We control the 18th Street bridge and the footbridge next to it. But 10th, 8th and Main are weak points. If we can cut those off, they’ll have to go all the way up to Fulton”-his gloved finger traced north, over the river and then back down-“and sneak back down Highway 37 to get near us. Which will give us the time we need.”

Sir Ruffin nodded. “So, here’s what we’ll do-Sir Guelf, you’ll take your men and neutralize those bridges. Caltrops, barbed wire, oil slicks, burn them, saw them, fucking piss on them, whatever it takes. Just make them impassable for long enough if you can’t destroy them.”

He turned to the scions of House Renfrew. “Sir Thierry, we’re abandoning the siege engines, so you can start the teams and limbers out now, at least we can save the horses. You’ll hold this headland until the evacuation is complete. Breaking contact is going to be a bitch.”

Thierry thought for a moment, then grinned like a coyote scenting a housecat.

“I think we can get some use out of the engines first, Sir Ruffin. There’s only a couple of ways they can get at us here; if a place is hard to get into it’s usually hard to get out of as well. And if we channel them a bit that narrows it even more. Done right we can turn it into a real killing ground and they’ll lose all interest in chasing us for a while.”

Sir Ruffin nodded. “Good, use your discretion. I need you and you, my lord Viscount, to hold here and get as much matériel out as possible as well as the troops. We’ve got the pedal cars all set up; they’ll go to Hermiston and return for a second trip if possible, and anyone marching in that direction can hop on when they reach them. When you leave, take out these three bridges over the Umatilla. .”

Sir Ruffin marked a cross on the bridges at Highway 84, the Westgate Bridge and the rail bridge.

“They have to be impassable for at least twelve hours, more if possible. That’ll bottleneck the enemy long enough, hopefully.”

The elder Renfrew brother looked east. “We don’t have enough men for that, Sir Ruffin. If there’s a sortie in any strength from the city to capture the engines, we’ll be up Shit Creek, not the Umatilla River!”

The Grand Constable’s right-hand man nodded. “I’ll send a couple of conroi of men-at-arms and infantry to help you hold. Most of the fighting is down around the John Day Highway and south of the old Highway 84 and 30, that’s where it looks like the battle line is shaping up. The enemy is anchoring their right on the city and trying to swing up north. We’ll have to rock them back on their heels there, that’s where we’ve got most of our lancers and the Mackenzie longbowmen, but this position has to be secured or they can use their reserves to flank us out too soon. As soon as I can spring the men I’ll send them to you.”