S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

“. . ah, the CO is an absolute stickler for the rules.”

Which had the advantage of being true; scuttlebutt said it was the reason Wellman hadn’t switched sides, which some of the men thought he should do. Cole hadn’t wanted to believe the stories about Martin Thurston, but with his own mother and his wife , for God’s sake, defecting to the enemy and screaming that they were true. . and he was dead now anyway, which left Fred Thurston as the old General’s only living son, and he was on Montival’s side.

Fubar squared.

The glider pilot looked at him searchingly for a long moment, then nodded slowly.

“My chances right now with a busted arm and no gear aren’t much,” she said. “OK, but I will take off if I get a chance and think the odds are good. I’m not giving a general parole. We’re not allowed to, anyway.”

“Fair enough, neither are we,” he said. “Now, what about something to eat?”

She snorted and pulled out a paper-wrapped something from one of her many pockets. The wrapping had Rat. Bar stenciled on it.

“This is the sum total of my supplies. As the label suggests, it’s made from dried rats.”

Cole did a double take before he was sure she wasn’t serious. He had a couple of pounds of hardtack and some dried fruit in his pack, along with some salt and half a bag of dried chili flakes his mother had sent him. He grinned anyway and felt the edge of his smaller knife, the one he used for general camp work, including skinning. Special Forces were supposed to live off the land in the field-they were known as snake eaters for that reason-but right now he didn’t have to settle for reptile meat anyway.

“We won’t starve today; pity the rest will go to waste and we can’t take the hide, but the coyotes have to eat too. Bear tastes like pork.”

“I always thought it was a little gamy unless you soak it in vinegar a while,” she said. “Or beer.”

The pilot started to smile, then winced as scabs pulled. “Not a feast at Larsdalen or Todenangst,” she said. “But sort of. . fitting.”

Castle Todenangst, Crown demesne

Portland Protective Association

Willamette Valley near Newburg

(formerly western Oregon)

High Kingdom of Montival

(western North America)

June 15th, Change Year 26/2024 AD

Squire Lioncel de Stafford’s muscles still ached very slightly from the morning’s run in armor up and down the endless flights of stairs, with a shield on his left arm and a weighted wooden practice sword in his fist. Just enough that it felt good standing at parade rest behind the Grand Constable’s chair, where she sat with the document-and-plate-laden table between her and the Lord Chancellor of the Association, Conrad Renfrew, Count of Odell.

The Silver Tower had the exotic luxury of a functioning elevator, powered by convicts on a treadmill in the dungeons, but Baroness Tiphaine d’Ath didn’t believe in letting her menie go soft merely because they were stationed at HQ for a week.

She’d led the run, of course.

A confidential secretary from the Chancellor’s office took notes in shorthand, with an occasional no, not that! to halt the pen about to render permanent an embarrassingly frank opinion about some exalted personage. One of the Count’s squires stood behind his wheelchair, and the Grand Constable’s pages were serving a working lunch when they weren’t standing silently against the far wall out of earshot; still, it was a sign of the trust attached to Lioncel’s position that he was present as the two most powerful officials of the Association conferred in private.

Just now Tiphaine tapped one finger on a note signed in crimson ink:

���Sandra’s gotten a complaint from the Seneschal’s wife at Castle Oliver and passed it on to me with a flag for action after consulting you, Conrad.”

Both the nobles lifted their eyes slightly at the mention of Sandra Arminger, formerly Lady Regent of the Association and now Queen Mother. There was nothing above this level save her apartments, the crenellations, cisterns, a heliograph station, a detachment of the Protector’s Guard and the roof. The Queen Mother was doing pretty much the same work that she had as Lady Regent, and from the same places.

Lioncel carefully didn’t look up. Lately she’d actually been noticing one Lioncel de Stafford a little beyond the pat-on-the-head level. Not in a bad way, but it could be alarming when things shifted like that.

“Castle Oliver. . middle of the Okanagan. . barony held in Crown demesne. . twenty-two manors, the castle and a lot of grazing and woodland. The Seneschal would be Sir Symo Herrera,” the Chancellor said. “His wife. . Lady Aicelena of the Chelan Dennisons. Aicelena’s running the place while Sir Symo’s away, the usual.”

Conrad of Odell was nearly sixty and built like a squat muscular toad, with a face that would have looked coarse-featured and rugged even if it hadn’t been terribly burned long ago. A bit gaunt now, without the spare flesh he’d had before the Battle of the Horse Heaven Hills last year. He’d been smacked off his destrier there and suffered a hairline fracture of the pelvis. He was out of traction, but still wearing a long embroidered robe with wide sleeves, informal garb for an invalid, which looked rather odd with the massive gold chain of office.

Tiphaine nodded. “Sir Symo’s at the front with the Oliver levy. . he’s been doing quite well, too.”

“So has she,” Conrad said thoughtfully. “Deliveries on time, no major complaints, the books balanced last time I send auditors around, and she doesn’t keep asking to have her hand held. What’s her problem, and why didn’t it come direct to me? Why does the military side need to get involved?”

“Apparently a party of men-at-arms on their way south from County Dawson, seventy-three lances and followers plus some light horse, stopped there. Lady Aicelena quite properly invited the chevaliers and esquires in for dinner and had an ox-roast put on in the courtyard for the rest.”

“Ouch,” the Chancellor said. “I think I can see what’s coming.”

Another nod, this one short and curt. “They repaid her by dropping the drawbridge and then emptied the storehouses in the castle bailey and the barns in the home manor of everything a horse could eat. Nobody hurt and nothing else taken except for a couple of chickens, but from the description it was as near as no matter robbery at spear-point.”

Conrad nodded in turn. “After the Crown emergency requisitions, that was probably the last surplus the area has,” he said thoughtfully. “Except what can be bought in at wartime prices.”

“Right. That cupboard’s going to be bare when the next legitimate call comes.”

The Lord Chancellor and the Grand Constable both had suites on the level just below the Queen Mother; it made conferences like this easier. Much of the Portland Protective Association’s government was handled from here in the great fortress-palace of Todenangst, and the hierarchy of status was quite literal; the higher up the massive ferroconcrete bulk of the Silver Tower you were, the more exalted the rank and the less there was of the tomblike gloom usual in castles. This high there were pointed-arch windows and balconies, letting in a flood of afternoon light through the Gothic tracery along with plenty of fresh air slightly laden with smells of woodsmoke and flowers.

Lioncel still felt a slight chill at the tone of his liege’s voice; calm and even and. . angry. There were reasons her title of Lady d’Ath was usually pronounced Lady Death.

“That was also Royal property they took, especially if they didn’t pay,” the Chancellor said.