S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

Behind them came blocks of sixteen-foot pikes, like rectangular walking forests topped with a glitter of honed steel; the levies of the Free Cities, with the banners of their towns before and their batteries of field catapults rumbling along between. A crash of boots and squeal of fifes, and a deep chorus paced to the marching stride:

“O’er the hills and o’er the main

Through mountain snows and burning plain

Our King commands and we obey

Over the hills and far away-”

Rudi nodded to the Grand Constable; he and Mathilda turned the noses of their coursers and trotted down to the main body. Their escorts followed, the High King’s Archers and the lancers and mounted crossbowmen of the Protector’s Guard bristling slightly at each other. Huon turned and gave a friendly salute good-bye to Lioncel de Stafford where he stood by the Grand Constable’s stirrup, handing up a leather map folder.

“D’you think they’ll be a book, someday, Songs of the Prophet’s War ?” Rudi said. “There are enough to fill a mort of pages. Mind, there’s been a fair deal of marching and waiting in camp, and singing does make that go faster.”

Matti grinned. “If there is a book. . maybe Marching to Corwin . . your little sister Fiorbhinn will write it. And make up half the songs, and change the rest to make them more lively, and nothing anyone but an expert could sing or play.”

“And claim the credit for the whole, the scamp,” Rudi chuckled. “Mind, she does have the talent; to be just, for simple things as well as the high art. Odd that she and Maude are so unalike, in looks and nature both.”

Rudi’s two younger half sisters had both been sired by his mother Juniper’s second husband, Sir Nigel Loring. Maude was tanist of the Clan now-hailed as his mother’s successor-in-training by the Óenach Mór , the Great Assembly-and she was brown of hair and eye, steady and calm by inclination and very clever; Fiorbhinn was fair and slim and had the music and magic running through her soul strong and wild. Along with a good deal of wildness in other directions.

“If there’s one thing I always envied you it was having siblings,” Mathilda said.

Rudi raised a brow at her. “Ah, but I was lucky in mine, or at least the most of them. Your friends and your lover you can choose, most often: your blood kin you’re stuck with. And it’s. . how did Ingolf put it. . a crapshoot.”

She nodded. Their friend had spent a long time quarreling with his elder brother, or in exile; and then there was Fred and Martin Thurston to consider. Being born to power magnified the usual rivalries and gave them a malignant importance that ordinary folk didn’t have to take into reckoning.

Their path took them past the First Richland coming back to fill their quivers and head out again to sweep the western side of the valley. Ingolf saluted from their head. The volunteers were still young men-the war hadn’t lasted that long since they joined in as the Quest returned through the Midwest-but their gear was battered and their faces had an indefinable something that hadn’t been there when they were just gentry sprigs riding off heedless to seek adventure in distant lands, the sons and brothers of Farmers and Sheriffs back there on the Kickapoo.

They’d had the adventure and no mistake, and taken the measure of it. He’d be sorry to see them go when the High King’s Host met the army of the League and they headed home. No doubt Ingolf would be too; the older man was committed to Montival, and he’d left home as a youngster anyway, but his heartstrings would always be there. Having seen it, Rudi didn’t blame him; it was a fine fair land, fairer to his eyes with its rolling forested hills and winding river valleys than the endless flat, fat black earth of Iowa or the Red River. He’d liked the hardy, stoic, plainspoken folk who dwelt there as well.

“They’ll have a tale to tell, back on the Kickapoo,” Rudi said. “For the rest of their lives. Of mountains and battles and strange folk and stranger Gods.”

“Mostly lies,” Mathilda said, but with a smile. “And then sixteen Cutters and a grizzly bear had me cornered in a gulch! With my leg broken and nothing but a roast turkey drumstick to fight them off!”

“Whereupon I died,” Rudi finished for the hypothetical storyteller sitting before a winter hearth waving a mug of mulled cider while his grandchildren gaped. “The which is why I’m not here drinking this and telling the story!”

The easterners gave him and the High Queen a cheer, which was gracious in foreigners fighting for the sake of the thing, and went back to the jaunty marching song they favored, roaring it out loud if not particularly tunefully as they trotted along in an orderly column of fours:

“Instead of water we’ll drink ale

And pay no reckoning on the nail

No man for debt shall go to jail

While he can Garryowen hail!

We’ll break windows, we’ll break doors

The watch knock down by threes and fours-”

They passed Oak among the Mackenzies retrieving their arrows; the big blond man was laughing and exchanging a fist-bump with Lord Maugis, who leaned over with a gruesomely spattered war hammer held across his saddlebow. They both waved to him, well pleased with how the stratagem had worked, and he returned the gesture; now the Montivallan army could deploy unhindered in the broad open valley. Tomorrow would end the war, bar the mopping up and reconstruction. . which unfortunately might occupy the rest of his life.

And isn’t that a sight, to be sure, the two of them thick as thieves, when Oak marched in the War of the Eye against the Protectorate, and his first arrow sent in anger perhaps aimed right at the breastplate of Maugis’ father? And isn’t it a hopeful thing to see?

Mathilda caught his eye, and she knew that she shared the thought. It was natural enough, since their own parents had been bitter enemies once and their sires had killed each other in single combat.

“To work,” she said.

The first chore was visiting the wounded, those who weren’t actually still on the operating tables; a painful task, but something those willing to risk maiming and death for them and the kingdom had a right to expect. Mathilda did the same, and they went from one form to the next while the hospital tents were going up.

When he’d finished, Ingolf Vogeler was waiting outside, pacing and slapping his leather gauntlets into his palm. His nephew-cum-trumpeter Mark stood nearby holding the horses, a youth who looked much like his father’s brother, though lankier with hair of light sun-faded tow rather than brown. Right now he was looking a bit pale despite summer’s tan, as well. Ingolf was merely grim, but something in his eyes brought Rudi up.

“Couple of things you need to look at, bossman,” the Midwesterner said.

Rudi nodded. He trusted Ingolf’s judgment as to what was important. And the High King had a good staff, which freed him from administrative detail, as long as he remained reasonably available. Part of commanding was standing aside and letting your subordinates do their jobs; his was to concentrate on the big picture.

“You too, bosslady,” Ingolf said to Mathilda.

The enemy dead mostly lay where they’d fallen once the Montivallan medics had-carefully-checked for living men to be carried off; bitter experience had shown that some of Cutter wounded were given to pretending helplessness and then lashing out with hidden weapons at any who approached them. Policing up weapons and gear wasn’t the maximum priority, and burial could wait. Followers of the CUT usually cremated their dead, in any case. Rudi’s brows went up a little when he saw a dozen of the Sword of the Prophet laid out in rows, the lacquered leather and steel of their harness oddly bright in the midmorning sun. The smell of blood and opened bodies was fairly heavy, as it always was, though it was cool enough that they were spared the quick bloat and stink. He brushed aside flies; overhead the buzzards and crows and ravens were hanging, waiting, or descending to tear at the dead horses who’d been given quick mercy-strokes.