S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

The flask was empty. Cole looked down at it-there was a wolf’s face on it, thin black lines set into the silver-and wondered whether he should ask for more or just upchuck. A gust of wild laughter threatened to break free. Probably puking all over the High King would be blasphemy or lèse-majesté or something like that.

“Cole Salander, is it?”

“Yes,” he said. Familiar ritual straightened him a little, as he rattled off his rank and serial number.

“And you’ve two brothers, Jack and Tanner?”

That startled him enough that his stomach subsided. “Yeah. They went missing-”

“At the Horse Heaven Hills last year, yes,” the High King said. “There was more than a little chaos, just then.”

His hand was on the Sword again, eyes slitted in thought for a moment before he went on:

“They’re alive. Tanner I grieve to say lost his left foot at the ankle, a matter of a six-pounder round shot, but he’s recovering and will be able to get about well enough to do a man’s work yet. Jack has taken service with Frederick Thurston, the one of your first President’s sons who yet lives, and the one who didn’t betray and kill him and sell his country to the enemy of humankind. With which enemies you have just now had, I’d be thinking, a closer acquaintance than is comfortable. Not so?”

“I, uh. Yeah.”

Rudi straightened and clapped a hand on his shoulder. When he spoke he raised his voice to carry among the onlookers; faces stretched back into darkness.

“This man did no wrong of his own will. He’s now free of all taint, and I swear by the Sword of the Lady and She who chose me to bear it that he means to abide by his oath. He strove his utmost to resist the bane laid in his soul, and that may well have slowed the stroke just enough to spare me. And he’s now under my protection and that of the Goddess through me, so heed the word of the Mother-of-All.”

A babble broke out, as the late-comers were filled in. The square-faced man took his flask back and tucked it into his sporran.

“You’d think they’d have learned by now it wouldn’t work, and they so full of eldritch knowledge,” he said cheerfully.

Cole thought he was a little white around the gills, though.

“It didn’t work this time ,” Rudi said grimly. “If we do well, we’ll keep dodging and weaving long enough for me to accomplish what I must. There’s a reason I was given the Sword. The Lady’s protection does not sleep, but neither does the hatred of the Malevolent.”

He turned his attention back to Cole. “You can see your brother Jack soon,” he said. “And perhaps he can acquaint you better with the rights and wrongs of this miserable war.”

The beautifully modulated voice rose again. “Are there those who’ll care for this man?”

Three stepped forward. “Ah, cousin Alyssa. And Talyn and Caillech of Dun Tàirneanach. See that he sleeps, and that he’s bundled warmly; shock’s a possibility.”

They helped him back, and got out his bedroll to wrap around him while they built up the fire a little and set rocks to heating; he did feel core-chilled.

After he stopped shaking Cole looked into the darkness where Rudi Mackenzie had vanished.

“He’s. . quite something, isn’t he?” he said slowly. “He’s got. . impact. Whatever it is about a man that. . the old General had a lot, and my CO has some. . but that guy, he’s got all there is to get.”

“Baraka,” Talyn said soberly. “The Mother marked him for Her own when he was yet a boy, in the nemed , the sacred wood above Dun Juniper. My own father saw it, the great Raven flying out of the setting sun. . the mark of Her beak is between his brows, you saw it? That was put there by no human hand. Some say he’s Lugh come again, the Sun Lord’s self returned in His joy and wrath and splendor.”

Cole nodded. It was weird, but somehow it made sense. Then he yawned enormously, and the world faded away. He scarcely felt hands moving him into the tent and laying him on the pine boughs, hot stones at his feet and back.

Castle Todenangst, Crown demesne

Portland Protective Association

Willamette Valley near Newburg

High Kingdom of Montival

(formerly western Oregon)

June 15th, Change Year 26/2024 AD

“Órlaith!”

Mathilda ran. Vision came in jerky flickers, fast and at the same time unbearably slow. Sandra scooped her granddaughter up and rolled into the swept outdoor hearth, curling her body around the infant’s, and the wet-nurse stood in front of them with a poker in her hands like a baseball bat. Signe spun out of her chair, the Bearkiller backsword snapping into her hand, a bright glint of steel in the flickering green gloom. The two Countesses swept up the skirts of their cotte-hardies in their left hands and each drew the dagger that marked them as Associates with their right; the weapons were ceremonial, but quite functional as well.

Delia de Stafford and Virginia Thurston started throwing things-teapots, for starters. One smashed right into the face of the Cutter assassin, boiling-hot water flying with shards of Sevres porcelain that had come down two centuries to meet its end here. The de Stafford nanny took Heuradys in one arm and Yolande in the other, retreating behind her mistress.

Buy time, Mathilda knew. The guards will be here in seconds.

Then a clash of steel came from the inner rooms as she raised her sword. One of the magus-assassins turned to meet her.

• • •

Lioncel struggled to keep his breathing even; it wasn’t the effort of the brief run, but the tension, and that ratcheted upward when they came out into the central space of the Queen Mother’s level. There was a dead man lying on the stairs that led up to the Guard barracks, blood leaking out of his armor, and the clash of steel on steel and the dull beat of blades on shields from farther up. Two dozen men-at-arms in the black harness of the Protector’s Guard waited in the great groin-vaulted chamber that lay outside the Queen Mother’s private rooms, their visors down except for the man in front. The leader of the living was a young knight.

Lioncel recognized him, but vaguely, Sir Evroyn-something, from somewhere north of the Columbia, one of the valleys on the eastern slopes of the Cascades. His face was white and sweating-though to be fair, if Lioncel’s liege was standing in front of him looking like that Lioncel would have sweated too. Some of the men-at-arms behind him were stirring slightly, not much, but not the statue-still immobility you expected from the Protector’s Guard. Not all of them were in on this; the rest must have been fed some story.

“There’s a conspiracy against the Crown. Stand aside,” she said, not halting her forward stride and pitching her voice to carry to all the guardsmen.

And a conspiracy against my mother and sisters! Lioncel thought.

“My lady, I have orders that absolutely nobody should pass-” the knight began, clearing his throat.

“I am Baroness Tiphaine d’Ath, and I am Grand Constable of the Association,” Lady Death said. “By my office I have right of immediate access to Her Majesty. Get out of my way. Last warning.”

It was also the first, but this was Lady Death speaking. Not for the first time, he knew a deep comfort in the fact that Delia de Stafford was also Tiphaine d’Ath’s Châtelaine. Then his ears twitched. Was that a scream from within? His mouth went dry.

“I have orders-” the knight began again.

Lioncel had been around his liege all his life, and seen her in battle. He had never seen her move so quickly; one instant she was walking, then next extended in a perfect long-lunge with the flat of her blade horizontal to the ground, right foot forward and arm and sword extending the line, shield reserved and tucked against her torso for balance.