S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

“Speaking of which, here’s the grant,” he said, pulling a last formidable-looking document out of a folder and tossing it in front of her. “That’ll keep you travelling out there the rest of your life!”

“Joy,” she said. “Thank you. . I suppose.”

“Hey, it’s free! That’s always a bargain.”

“Like getting fifteen million tons of undelivered Arizona sand for sixpence ha’penny,” she said dryly. “Don’t work yourself to death while I’m gone, Conrad. I’d rather snog wolverines in a confessional booth than be saddled with the job you’ve got now .”

The Count of Odell picked up the ebony cane that leaned against his wheelchair, tapped it on the marble tiles of the floor and waved it forward as he cried:

“En avant!”

There was a ripple of bows as his squire wheeled him out.

“Clear this up, Tasin,” Lioncel said, when nobody was left but the Grand Constable’s household.

The senior page-he was Tasin Jones, one of the younger brothers of Count Chaka of Molalla-slid forward and helped the younger pair clear the remains of lunch. His square brown face was intent; he’d entered the d’Ath household barely six months ago. Lioncel had been a page himself until last August, and he remembered how anxious you could get at the thought something would go wrong while you were attending the lords. It would be worse for Tasin, since he hadn’t grown up with the Grand Constable, just knew her fearsome reputation.

He was shaping well, though, now that he’d gotten over homesickness. Lioncel gave him a discreet wink and a thumbs-up when the job was done, and got a brief broad smile in exchange.

The plates held the remains of a lunch of cold spiced pork loin, a long loaf of white bread, sharp Tillamook cheese, sweet butter, a green salad and fruit tarts; the sort of plain good fare Tiphaine d’Ath preferred even at court. At a gesture, Tasin poured her another glass of watered wine and one for the squire and left the carafe. The pages made a little procession as they took the plates out to hand off to the castle staff; they were eyeing the uneaten blueberry tarts too, since those were their lawful prerogative. . though as he remembered it the staff would get them as often as not.

One of the points of page service was to teach young noblemen humility, learning to obey among strangers before they commanded at home. And that good things didn’t simply appear by magic when you waved your hand.

“Lioncel, attend,” Tiphaine said.

They were about as alone as you ever got at court. A tinkle came from a wind chime near the windows, and one of the interior walls of the big room was mostly bookshelves and map-racks, with a trophy of crude spears taken in some skirmish long ago crossed over a shield made from a battered-looking STOP sign above the swept and empty hearth. The furniture was understated and strongly built, mostly rubbed oak lightly carved and brown tooled leather held by brass rivets; a tapestry showed Castle Ath across a landscape of forest and vineyard and huntsmen bringing in boars, and the rugs were patterned with birds twining through vines.

The decor suited the Grand Constable perfectly, down to the hunting trophies-a stuffed boar’s head, tiger and bear-skins-but she wouldn’t have bothered about it herself. His mother had furnished the place, part of her duties as Châtelaine. In effect, general manager of the whole civilian side of the barony, from interior decoration to keeping the reeves and bailiffs honest and arranging apprenticeships for deserving youngsters. In the last few years he’d started to realize just how much work that involved, something that had taken a while not least because his mother always made it look either effortless or enjoyable. And how not only the baron’s interests but the comfort and livelihoods of hundreds of families depended on it.

“My lady?” he said.

“Time for a little question-and-answer, boy.”

It had also been just recently that he really realized what it meant that Lady Delia de Stafford lived with the Grand Constable, and that his father was perfectly content with the arrangement. It hadn’t made all that much difference, though he was a good Catholic himself. They were the people he’d grown up around, after all, the ones he knew and loved.

His liege jerked her thumb towards a stool. Lioncel de Stafford was a dutiful young man. He bowed and sank down with a perfectly genuine expression of alert interest. Squirehood involved a lot of lectures, if your liege was conscientious; it was the aristocracy’s equivalent of apprenticeship. His liege-lady was always worth listening to and didn’t just talk because she liked the sound of her own voice.

“What did you gather from all that?” she said, inclining her head towards the door the Lord Chancellor had used.

Tiphaine had always been kind enough to Delia’s children, but the Grand Constable wasn’t a woman who had much use for youngsters. As he got older she was paying more and more attention to him, which was intriguing and disturbing in about equal measure. They were a long way from equals; he didn’t know if they ever would be that, since she was terrifyingly capable at all of a noble’s skills save some of the social ones. But he’d put his foot on the bottom rung.

“That some of the great families are starting to bicker and complain, my lady. Even though the war isn’t over!” Lioncel said, trying to keep the heat out of his voice.

He’d had a ringside seat the last few years, old enough to no longer assume victory was automatic, and things had often looked. .

Very bad indeed, he thought . Before the Quest returned with the High King and the Sword. . very bad.

“We won the decisive battle at the Horse Heaven Hills, and Rudi killed Martin Thurston to put the brandied cherry on the whipped cream,” Tiphaine said in a cool even voice, wine-cup between her long fingers. “That leads to. . premature relaxation. Mistaking are winning for having won .”

“Last year the enemy were winning , and look what happened to them. The Prophet isn’t dead yet! Are these people stupid ?” Lioncel burst out. “My lady,” he added hastily.

“Some of them are. The rest. . just arrogant and shortsighted and obsessed with who’s getting precedence. And in love with their own supreme awesomeness, particularly since it was a classic chivalric bull-at-a-gate charge with the lance that finished off the battle, like something out of a chanson . They tend to forget the rest.”

Lioncel looked down at his glass. He’d always loved the songs and still did, and the great charge had been like one of the chansons about Arthur or Charlemagne and their paladins come to life.

When eight thousand lances crested the ridge in a blaze of steel and plumes and rearing destriers. . and then the oliphants screamed the charge à l’outrance. .

It would be a thing of pride for the rest of his life to have taken part, even in a junior squire’s place behind the line. . but he’d seen enough of real war now to realize that the troubadours tended to dwell on a very narrow part of it.

And to leave out things like what a man looks like after a conroi’s worth of barded destriers have galloped over him. Or maybe it was a man and a horse to start with, I couldn’t tell for sure in a single glance.

Tiphaine raised one pale brow, as if she was following his thoughts.

“When we were desperate, politics got damped down,” she said. “Now, not so much.”

“Yes, my lady,” Lioncel said. He thought for a moment, then: “Still, it’s better to have the problems of victory than those of defeat.”