S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

The armor the menie of Ath wore wasn’t black like the harness of the Protector’s Guard, because that color sucked up heat in the sun and sometimes stood out against a background. It wasn’t white-bare and brightly polished-like that of many baronial fighting-tails, either, because that was even more conspicuous.

Instead it was a pale neutral gray like her eyes, the finish very slightly roughened so that it wouldn’t glint, though in fact you rarely tried to hide in plate. Lady Death was meticulous about details.

Mom is that way too, Lioncel realized suddenly. Only she does it about other things.

“It’ll look very strange, my lady,” he added, and didn’t go on to say: Charging into the Queen Mother’s quarters with drawn sword and armed men at your back.

“Lioncel, have you heard the saying that you can do wonders if you don’t care about who gets the credit?”

“Yes, my lady. My lord my father is fond of that one.”

She smiled, a chill stark expression. “Well, you can do even more if you don’t give a damn how crazy it makes you look.”

As she spoke he went down on one knee and buckled the sword belt around her waist while she pulled on her gauntlets; that took three extra holes on the belt in armor, and he tucked the tongue neatly beneath. Then she drew the sword, a yard of tapering watermarked cross-hilted steel. That slid the honed edge within an inch of his ear, but it didn’t occur to him to flinch. Tiphaine d’Ath’s sword went exactly where she wanted it to go, neither more nor less. He’d seen her flick flies out of the air, neatly bisected with a twitch of the wrist, something he still couldn’t do in practice.

With the curved top of her shield she knocked the visor of her sallet up. His own vision disappeared for an instant as he pulled his light mail shirt over his head; when he settled the familiar weight and belted on his own sword the two household knights were there.

“Lioncel, get your helmet on,” she said. “And stay behind the shields when we move.”

“What’s up, my lady?” Rodard said as he strode briskly in, blinking at the naked sword, his brother Armand at his heels. “I have six men-at-arms including us-”

All knights were men-at-arms, full-armored and capable of fighting as lancers on horseback among their other skills. Not all men-at-arms were knights, though most hoped to be some day.

“-and as many more of spearmen and crossbowmen. I could recall men from other duties or rustle up some more from the Lord Chancellor’s household-”

The Georges brothers had been given the accolade last year; Rodard had been wounded at the Horse Heaven Hills and was just back on full service. Both young household knights were armored cap-a-pie with their shields slung point-down across their backs; they’d been on duty. Usually there weren’t more men than that up here in the Silver Tower; most of the menie of Ath was still at the front, or at work on half a dozen assignments.

“No, no time for explanations,” his liege replied.

Lioncel felt himself nodding, under a tight-held excitement. His liege-lady was fond of the maxim that it was better to react in good time with a small force than too late with a larger one. He used the moment to get his own crossbow and hang the quiver of bolts to his waist; he was still too young to match a grown man with the sword, but he was a good shot and his quarrels hit just as hard as a veteran’s.

“I think the enemy are going to try something underhanded and we need to move now .”

She flicked the point of her blade towards the ceiling, and the steel-framed faces of the knights changed; they pulled on the guige straps that slung their shields and ran their arms through the loops. Armand spun on his heel and began calling orders.

There was a rustle and clank as the command party came through into the outer chambers, and the ranks of the menie stiffened the way a cat did at the beginning of its stalk. This part of the Grand Constable’s suite was interlinked reception rooms; in normal times they were spacious and airy, despite the massiveness of the structure around them. Even a small force of armored men in a bristle of shields and spears and glaives made them at least feel crowded. Honed metal winked and glinted as the pole arms shifted into beams of light from the high windows, amid a smell of leather and male sweat and oiled steel.

“There is a plot against the Crown,” Tiphaine said without preliminaries. “Some officers of the Protector’s Guard must have been suborned or replaced and we may have to fight the Guard.”

Which would mean being grossly outnumbered, for starters.

“Anyone who isn’t ready to follow me on this had better step aside right now. Fall out if you care to.”

Fists and swordhilts thumped on breastplates and shields. There was a short crashing bark of:

“D’Ath! D’Ath!”

Lioncel wasn’t surprised; he’d have been shocked if anyone had dropped out. These were all men who’d sworn fealty to Tiphaine d’Ath of their own will. Nobody became a personal vassal of Lady Death because they longed for a quiet life.

“The cry is Artos and Montival. Follow me!”

Then they all trotted towards the stairwell; there were two on this level, spirals set in the east and west thicknesses of the tower. A slam of boots and a clatter of harness, men-at-arms and spearmen settling their shields and crossbowmen loading as they ran.

Mother! Lioncel thought suddenly with his hand on the cocking lever. And the girls, and Huon! They’re up there with the High Queen!

The war was here , with shocking suddenness, not just out at the front. It was like running down a staircase in the dark and expecting another step when there wasn’t one, a blow running up into his chest and squeezing even as his hands fumbled through the loading routine.

This is Castle Todenangst, not some gulch out east !

Seven Devils Mountains

(Formerly western Idaho)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

June 15th. Change Year 26/2024 AD

Cole Salander was under a fallen tree, sweating and baring his teeth in an unconscious rictus of tension. The first warning had been a covey of blue-gray upland quail taking off, and then a Cooper’s hawk perched in an aspen had turned its mad red eyes upslope and discovered business elsewhere without trying for one of its natural prey. And then something that could have been a dog giving tongue. . that was when he’d gone to ground in a hurry.

Cole glowered at the POW lying to his left out of the corners of his eyes. Alyssa was the reason he couldn’t just try to outrun the pursuit. The enemy glider pilot smiled at him��with poisonous not-real-sweetness-and lay quietly with her splinted arm cradled against her chest. A distant sound. .

Yup. A hound belling. Shit.

Somewhere the damned dog bayed again, and closer, the sound echoing against rock, startling the woods into silence. All that could mean only one thing here in the Seven Devils Mountains of western Idaho. Nobody had lived here even before the Change, and few had even passed through since the machines stopped. It had to be soldiers in this time of war. More than one or two, and he didn’t think they were soldiers of the US Army. Normally that wouldn’t be an insoluble problem; he could cover forty miles a day or better if he really pushed it, even in mountain country like this, and the same terrain made a cavalry pursuit impossible. There might be individuals in the bunch combing the area who could equal his best pace, but no unit of any size could.