S. Stirling - Lord of Mountains

“What really worries me is that we didn’t get the winter crop planted this fall,” the Baron said, nodding to the rolling fields to the north and east. “We stripped out most of our gear before we took to the hills, but nothing can roll the seasons back, here or at my vassals’ manors.”

You could see the layout of the Five Great Fields where the strips of the peasant holdings had lain, and the demesne fields of the manor-holder’s home farm; there was a biggish vineyard on a south-facing slope that looked to have survived, and most of the trees in the orchards hadn’t been harmed. The sweet clover and alfalfa planted in the Great Fields as rotation and fodder crops were there yet, though heavily grazed by the occupiers; but the potatoes had been dug and stolen, and the fields that should have been green with the young winter wheat were under nothing but a scurf of weeds and incipient bush. That was enough to worry anyone.

Mathilda pulled up and dismounted, passing her reins to a squire with a word of thanks as her guardian men-at-arms and mounted crossbowmen backed out of the crush. She was in civilian riding garb, a divided skirt and jacket of russet brown, with a plumed Montero cap pulled over her brown braids.

“Lord Maugis, you’ll have seed corn and working stock enough by spring,” she said, as the commons touched a knee to the ground and the nobleman bowed and kissed her extended hand in fealty. “As Lady Protector-”

That’s right, Rudi thought with a blink of surprise. Matti’s twenty-six this coming year, and inherits. Not that Sandra will be going to a nunnery or dower-house; we need her too much, and sure, she’d die of boredom without administration and intrigues and secrets.

“-I’m going to order a capital levy on every intact manor and Chartered town in the Protectorate to help rebuild the County Palatine. The Association takes care of its own.”

There was a murmur of delight from the commons crowding behind the knights and their retainers; they had crossbows and shields and spears in their hands, swords at their belts, but their eyes lit at the thought of more plow-oxen and earth curling away from the harrows and seed-drills. A cheer went up from them all, for Mathilda and the prospect of sacks of grain and beans resting secure in their barns come next August.

“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.”