S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

“That is the question,” Rudi agreed.

You’re the High King, you’re the man with the magic sword, so you tell us what to do. . and you’d better be right, he thought sardonically.

In the end you had to decide; you never had enough information and what you did have might be wrong. That, and the sheer work involved, were among the reasons he’d always found it surprising that so many wanted power. He’d read the philosophers, Plato and Aristotle and Jefferson and the others, and there was something to be said for republics; but the great asset of a monarchy was that you could put men in office who weren’t obsessed with a ruler’s power, wanting it so much so that they twisted their whole lives into a search for it.

Who knows, Bossman Rasmussen’s grandson may be a fine fellow .

“We’re going to follow the old Highway 20 route, east over the Yellowstone Plateau and north then up Highway 89,” he said after a moment’s echoing silence; he saw shoulders relax as the dice were cast for good or ill. “Then down from the old park territories and into Paradise Valley. We have to take Corwin within the next month, and then get the bulk of the troops out to somewhere we can feed them through the snow season. The number who we can overwinter there without producing a famine, or even in the Bitterroot country as a whole, is strictly limited. Even in what passes for lowlands hereabouts.”

Tiphaine pursed her lips. “It’s direct, and it doesn’t give them the chance to get off their back foot,” she acknowledged. “Given the time constraints. .”

“Least bad,” Rudi replied. “The western part outside the old park was cut over about thirty years ago, and the remainder burned hard just before and then just after the Change; it’s grassland and shrub now for the most part, good grazing-and heavy with game, buffalo and elk, deer and boar and feral cattle. That will help a fair bit; we’d send light cavalry and scouts first anyway, and they can shoot as much as possible and rough-gralloch it. The troops can eat roast meat and save the iron rations for later.”

Everyone looked at the map. That route meant hauling everything they couldn’t forage with wagons on roads that had spent a generation getting worse, repairing where essential as they went. And even on a good road a horse or ox could pull less than a tenth of what it could on rails, and more slowly too.

He tapped the map again. “We have to guard our line of communication here, at Henrys Lake and up to the ruins of West Yellowstone town; there’s a possible approach from Corwin to the north, where they could flank us. I want the bulk of the remaining Association foot there, Grand Constable, to patrol and block the possible approaches from the north. Delegate the command as you see fit. You’ll keep. . two thousand of your lancers with the main field force advancing on Corwin. We’ll take the light horse, fifteen thousand of the pike-and-crossbow infantry from Corvallis and the Free Cities, three brigades of Boiseans-Fred, you pick which ones-the Bearkillers, the Mackenzies, and field artillery in proportion. Most of the siege train we can leave west of here, and all the heavy pieces; Corwin isn’t heavily fortified, much less so than Boise, though there are forts, especially to the north.”

The staff at their tables began frantically scribbling, to translate that into the movement orders.

“It’s doable,” Tiphaine said. “But only just. And that’s provided we don’t get locked up skirmishing and breaking ambushes on our way through the Park. That’s mainly still forests, according to the reports. I’ve fought in similar country before, and it’s dead easy to end up chasing each other around in circles for weeks while your main column sits and eats. Or starves.”

Rudi smiled. “I have. . contacts there. They’ll deal with it.”

Hopefully , he added to himself.

Morrowlander Scout Pack Domain

(Formerly Yellowstone National Park)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

August 15th, Change Year 26/2024 AD

The glider blazoned with the crimson bear’s-head whispered by overhead. Sunlight blinked from the canopy as the wings waggled, once and twice and thrice; then it banked off, caught an updraft, and spiraled up into the sky.

“OK, cousin Alyssa, message received,” Mary Vogeler said, waving broadly with her sword in one hand for emphasis and to catch the light as well. “Company’s coming.”

Then she repeated it aloud and in Battle Sign, and the word was passed on from mouth to mouth, quietly and without visible stir. The Dúnedain Rangers were out in force for the great hunt, along with the other scouts and light troops. The day was only just warm even in high summer, for this rolling volcanic plateau rose seven thousand feet above the level of the sea; nights would make bedrolls and fires very welcome, though actual hard frost was unlikely for another month.

Somewhere a work party was singing at their labors, in the Noble Tongue:

“East and west of the Misty Mountains

North and south of the sea-”

Mary smiled; it was good to be back among her own folk for a while. She’d been travelling and adventuring among strangers for a long time by the time they got back from the Quest, and even since. Spending some time in Mithrilwood would be even better, badly though Aunt Astrid’s absence was felt there. . though she had to admit that this part of Montival was just as comely. Mountaintops winked eastward, icy teeth stretching towards a sky aching blue and streaked with high white mare’s-tail cloud.

The rolling ground around was mostly grass tall and lush and green, starred with yellow sand lily and thick drifts of crimson Indian paintbrush, yard-high purple bunches of fringed gentian and more. There were occasional stumps or the remnants of logs in the grassland, charred and rotting; this land had a natural burn cycle that pushed it from forest to prairie and back. Already there were clumps of aspen and tall slender lodgepole pine up to forty feet high on the most favorable locations on south-facing ridges. They’d cut some of those and erected tripods to hoist up the carcasses of the bison and elk and black-tail deer; if gutted and drained they would keep acceptably for days in this climate.

There were dozens of the tripods in use within sight, and teams of horses dragging in more bodies. This was strictly killing for meat, just methodical hard work like farming. Very much like slaughtering season in the fall, in fact, down to the collective thanks-and-apology prayer. They’d used screens of beaters to drive the herds onto the waiting spears and bows. Even upwind the smell of blood was strong, though clean enough, mingled with the smell of grilling kidney and liver, the strong-tasting organ meats that went off so quickly and were the rights of the hunter. They’d dug trenches for the guts, once the dogs had gorged themselves into a stupor, and the hides were stacking up, to be used to wrap around butchered, quartered carcasses for easy transport.

Mary still felt slightly guilty, since they’d be wasting so much valuable sausage casing, horn and fat and leather and sinew and bone, not to mention the brains that could be used for tanning. The Valar recognized that humankind had a right to eat just as the other carnivores did, but they disapproved of wantonness with the gifts of Arda and Eru the Creator.

This is rich land and we’re not taking the calves or young females, she thought a bit defensively. The herds will bounce back quickly. For that matter, the way the herds are composed shows that someone is cropping the wildlife here, and someone who knows what they’re doing, too. You see the same thing in Mithrilwood or our other steadings. I think I know by whom, too.