A Meeting at Corvallis (56 page)

He shook back his shoulders. “And so, back to the immediate problem.”

“If you could tell me exactly what forces you have available, then?”

“We can commit twelve hundred troops; all our knight-brethren, four hundred heavy infantry and the best of the town and country militia,” Dmwoski said decisively. “That will leave enough over to hold these walls, at a pinch. And I will lead the force we commit, of course. But we cannot sally effectively unless the enemy can be drawn off from their investment of the town, most particularly their heavy lancers. We do not have the numbers to fight them in the open field by ourselves, and we have no cavalry to speak of. And whatever we do must be done before they bring in more men from elsewhere.”

Nigel fought down a yawn and shook his head. “Drawing them out of their camp and into the field we can manage,” he said. “This will require careful coordination, though. We have to draw them off, but not so far that we're out of supporting range of your force, or we risk being defeated separately.”

“Very careful coordination.” Dmwoski smiled. “And clear heads. I suggest we begin tomorrow with my staff, after Lauds.”

The older monk rose to lead them to their beds. Dmwoski's hand rose to sign the Cross.

“Pax Vobiscum.”

Castle Todenangst, Willamette Valley, Oregon
March 6th, 2008/Change Year 9

Rudi Mackenzie looked up at walls and turrets and banners, gleaming in the morning sun; the castle reared higher and higher as they rode eastward from Newberg. Rolling fields passed by on either side, where ox-teams drew plows that turned sod into dark rows of damp earth, and green quilted tree-studded pasture, acres of blue-green wheat rippling in the breeze, orderly vineyards and orchards of plums and hazelnuts, with forested hills behind—the Parrett Mountains, and behind them the tiny white cone of Mount Hood in the far distance. It reminded him of a picture he'd seen in a book…something with a French name that sounded like ‘rich hours,' about the Duke of Berry.

The fortress-palace had been built on an old butte just south of the road; carved out of it by brute force, and then the remains bound in ferroconcrete, but despite its massiveness there was a curious grace to the great complex. A curtain wall with towers and gates surrounded it; the skyward-thrusting bulk of the keep rose above where the hill had been planed away to make its base; the high walls of the donjon were covered in granite of a pale pearl color, and towers higher yet were spaced around its oval length, with banners flaunting from the spiked peaks of their green-copper roofs.

A single tower taller than all the rest shone on the southernmost height, its conical roof gilded, but the circular shaft of the tower sheathed in some smooth black stone whose crystal inclusions glittered almost painfully bright.

A large village stood just on the northern side of the road half a mile short of the turnoff to the castle, unwalled but all looking new-built as well, houses in brick with tile roofs, a gray church with a square steeple, and a hall. He got a whiff of manure and pigsties from it, but the stock was neatly penned, and nothing but dogs and children and chickens scrambled in the street. A mass of people had turned out, five or six hundred, waving little black flags with the Eye on them; he could hear them cheering, or calling out Matti's name and title. It seemed a little odd to see all the men in trousers, and all the women in double tunics; apart from the occasional longer
airsaid,
men and women in the Clan wore kilts or robes or nothing much as the occasion indicated, and in Corvallis and the Bearkiller territories nearly everyone wore pants anyway.

It wasn't the first time he'd heard cheers since they'd entered the Protector's lands, but…

They sound a lot more like they mean it this time,
he thought.
I guess they like her more here. Or maybe they like her mom and dad more here. None of them look hungry, at least, not in this place.

The men-at-arms looking on from behind the crowd still gave him a bit of a chill, though. He didn't like the way the villagers moved aside when one walked close. And it was odd to have people pointing and murmuring at him, fright on their faces, as if he was some sort of exotic, dangerous wild beast.

“Wow, Matti,” he said, waving at the castle. “That's something! You told me about it but it looks…like it's really something. Yeah.”

He didn't say what that something was, but Mathilda Arminger beamed proudly.

“Yup,” she said, and chattered on: “Dad built it for Mom, really. When I was just a baby. I don't remember it when it wasn't finished, though. There's this book on it the chief engineer did up when it was finished, it's pretty interesting, with drawings and everything—I liked it even when I was just a kid, before last year, there are a lot of pictures they took.”

“It's real big to build so quick. I mean, it's as big as a lot of the old buildings from before the Change!”

Mathilda nodded proudly. “Dad says that castles were quick to build in the old days too—a couple of years. And it's easier the way we did it, with the concrete and the steel rods and stuff. We live here a lot, when we're not in Portland or visiting around with the counts and barons and Marchwardens. It's real quick, we ride over to Newberg and then get on the railway with guys pedaling, and we're at the city palace in Portland just like that.”

She snapped her fingers, and Tiphaine Rutherton looked over at them, then nodded and smiled when she realized the gesture wasn't meant to get her attention.

She's
been smiling a lot,
Rudi thought.
I mean, smiling a lot
for her.
I bet she's counting up what she's going to get for bringing Matti back. And for getting me.

She was also wearing the war harness of a man-at-arms now, rather than her camouflage outfit, though with the helmet slung at her saddlebow; so were the rest of her party, and the children had acquired clothes rushed south to the border station where they'd paused for baths and food and a good night's sleep. They'd also picked up a four-horse carriage and servants, but Mathilda preferred to leave them inside and ride with him—the riding horses were splendid, not as magnificent as Epona of course, but better than any others he'd ever seen. Rudi had been given well-made boots that fit him, and trousers and t-tunic of fine green cloth. A loose linen shirt went under it and a leather belt tooled and studded with silver was cinched around his waist; on his head he wore a flat cloth hat with a roll around the edge and a tail hanging down the side, and a silver badge and peacock feather at the front.

Mathilda was wearing a similar set of clothes in brown, though with jeweled embroidery and a golden clasp on a hat whose tail was of red silk; that was a boy's gear by northern reckoning, but evidently Princess Mathilda was an exception to the usual rules. She'd also left off the dagger when she saw he wasn't allowed to have his dirk back. She said her mother had probably thought to have the clothes ready, and from his one meeting with her she probably had indeed.

Matti's mother is real smart,
Rudi thought.
I don't think she's real nice, though.
He licked his lips slightly, then stiffened his back; he was about to meet the Lord Protector.
I'm not scared. And if I am, I won't let anyone see!

His mother had said something about Castle Todenangst once, when she'd seen a picture of it:
Sure, and the man must have been Walt Disney in a previous life
. He wasn't sure precisely what that meant, but all the grown-ups had laughed, and the memory of it heartened him now.

It's no use saying anything to Matti. I mean, if I say,
your dad's going to have them cut off my head,
she'd just get scared and mad and couldn't do anything. She loves her dad.

An escort of the Protector's household knights flanked them on either side, the black-and-crimson pennants of their lances snapping in the mild southerly breeze. There were more soldiers about, on either side of the roadway; tented camps stretched there, set up in pastures and fallow fields, from little pup tents to big pavilions with the banners of knight or baron flaunting from their peaks. Crossbowmen shot at targets, footmen and men-at-arms hacked at pells; mounted men practiced spearing the ring or tilting at each other with practice lances topped with padded leather balls; Pendleton mercenaries galloped about firing arrows into hay bales, or slicing lumps of thrown horse dung in midair with their heavy, curved sabers. Some of the easterners broke off to ride over and stare at the procession; many were bare to the waist, with feathers stuck in horse-tail braids down their backs and patterns of black and red bars and dots painted on their faces and chests, or shaggy beards. Troops of all varieties crowded to the edge of the road, and began cheering themselves when they saw who it was, throwing caps and even weapons in the air. Mathilda stood in the stirrups and bowed to both sides of the road, waving and blowing kisses.

Then they turned right and the way rose south towards the castle's outer gates; spearmen lined the road on either side, but more people stood on the battlements above the gate and cheered as well; those had servants' tabards on over their clothes. The gates were of black steel with the Lidless Eye wreathed in flames on them in some red-gold alloy; when the great portals swung open it was eerily like riding into the empty pupil, like a window into nothing. Little flowers rained down as they went on over the drawbridge with a booming of hooves on thick planks, and under the fangs of the portcullis; there was a wet moat, smelling fairly fresh, and thick with water lilies. The tunnel-like passage beyond had a steep rise to it, and must have cut through a fair bit of the former hillside, not just the curtain wall.

“Do you like it?” Mathilda asked as they came back into the sunlight.

“It's really something,” Rudi repeated sincerely.

Inwardly, he shivered slightly, feeling something of the demonic, driving will that had reared these stony heights amid the death of a world. Mathilda leaned over and gave his hand a squeeze; he returned it gratefully for an instant.

On the inside the wall was about half the forty-foot height it had been at the moat's edge, which meant that the lower half backed against the cut-away hill. They'd done the same at Dun Juniper and other places; he knew that was sound technique.

The outer wall isn't as high as Mount Angel, but it goes farther around…
he thought.
It's pretty big, bigger than home or Larsdalen. Not nearly as big as Corvallis, though.

He remembered to look for the things Sam Aylward and Nigel Loring had taught him.

Good location. This is the high ground for long catapult range all around. Probably lots of water inside—the mountains over there to dawn-ward would mean powerful springs and good wells. Good communications. And it dominates the passage between the Parrett Mountains and the Dundee Hills, and the bridge where we came across the Willamette.

Houses and sheds, workshops and barracks and stables and shops lined the inside of the wall's circuit. At their doorsteps was a broad asphalt-paved street lined with trees, and on the inner edge of that was another row of buildings built into the hill so that the rear windows of the two-story buildings were at ground level. Above rose steep hillside, terraced with smooth stonework retaining walls, scattered with flowerbanks—a few already in bloom, crocus and narcissus—lawns and trimmed bushes, fountains shooting water high and white above carved stone salvaged from dead mansions—

I was right about the water. They must have plenty.

—and benches and pergolas. Nothing was substantial enough to give anyone on the slope much cover; every inch of it and the inner side of the walls and the ground outside could be swept from the battlements above.

A single road switchbacked up the northern face to the keep's entrance. Trumpets brayed triumphantly as they rode through; this time the roadway turned right in a deep cutting inside the gate-towers, and then left again before it reached the surface; that meant the walls must have the hill backing them for fifty feet up or better; the hooves of their party clattered in a din of harsh echoes until they came to the light once more.

The courtyard within was huge, better than an acre, but the walls and the towers at the corners still placed much of it in shadow this early in the morning. It was paved with patterns of colored brick, scattered with planters, and buildings were set against the walls around all sides of it; towers rose at the four corners, seeming to reach for the scattered clouds above. One flank was a great church covered in white marble, with stained-glass windows; the central rose showed the stern, bearded face of Christ Pantocrator sitting in judgment. The right seemed to be living quarters; along the south was a great feasting hall with strips of window alternating with tile-sheathed concrete piers in its wall. And there must be another courtyard beyond, with the great black tower on its southern edge.

More knights stood with their lances before them on either side, to make a passage through the crowds from the gateway to the stepped terrace at the hall's flank. Rudi firmed his mouth and dismounted; grooms hurried to take the horses.