A Meeting at Corvallis (82 page)

“What does the Bear Lord send unto you? Defiance,” the emissary said. “Add unto this, contempt, and slight regard.”

And he hurled the gauntlet down on the table. Unit markers went flying from the surface of the map, some of them striking Arminger in the face. Almost, for an instant, he did what his wife was still silently willing he should. When he spoke he slowly stood upright, forcing his teeth apart.

“Be glad you're an ambassador, boy. I can't kill you now. When the battle comes, there will be no such restrictions.”

Larsson smiled. “You refuse the challenge?”

“Sovereigns don't accept challenges from their inferiors. Tell your master that.”

One yellow eyebrow went up. “Oh, my lord Protector, it isn't
my
challenge.” He raised his voice: “The Bear Lord calls the Lord Protector to account for his many crimes, and will meet him between the armies tomorrow in single combat, with any weapons the Lord Protector may choose, to the death.”

Norman Arminger felt his face go gray. It wasn't fear—fear of ordinary physical danger was not one of his weaknesses. It was the realization…

I can't say no,
he thought, thinking of the young lion eyes on him.
Not here, not now, not with all my men assembled and with the uprising back home. They'll accept anything but what looks like cowardice. The old gangers as much so as the new crop of knights, for only slightly different reasons.

“I
told
you to kill him!” Sandra whispered fiercely.

“And I will,” he answered. “After I kill the Bear Lord, tomorrow.”

He turned his head, conscious of her slight moan, and met Eric Larsson eye-to-eye. “Tell the Bear Lord that the Lord Protector of the Association will meet him tomorrow with destrier and armor, shield and sword and sharpened lance, at noon between the armies. This fight to settle our differences as men, and not to bind our armies; and there will be a general truce until sunset.”

“Agreed, my lord,” Eric Larsson said.

He bowed again, made a precise turn and walked out to his horse. It had waited with perfect discipline until he returned; it swiveled in the instant his foot found the stirrup, and he rode it into a canter as it left.

Field of the Cloth of Gold, Willamette Valley, Oregon.
September 4th, 2008/Change Year 10

Signe handed him his lance. Mike Havel looked down at the fierce, beautiful face with its little nick at the bridge of the nose and smiled.

“Thanks,” he said. “See you in about half an hour, I think.”

“
Kill
him, Mike,” she said.

“Hey, that's the general idea,
alskling,
” he said, his smile growing into a grin. “We'll be out of this stinking armor and back in bed at Larsdalen inside a week.”

“That's a date, buster!” she said.

The other leaders were there, but they left the last words to his wife; he nodded to them and set the lance-butt on the toe of his right boot. There was no point in using the scabbard behind his right hip; he wouldn't be taking his bow to this encounter.

Yeah, gotta beat him on his own terms for this to work properly.

It was almost precisely noon, the sun overhead to minimize advantage to either side. And it was a hot day for the Willamette country, in the eighties; clouds were piling up on the western horizon over the distant Coast Range, like taller mountains of cream and hot gold to match the blue-white Cascades. Soon the fall rains would start, softening the land for the fall plowing and planting; right now the last sun of summer baked pungencies out of earth and horse and man. Dust puffed up under hooves.

A low rumbling spread across the front of the allied army; everyone who didn't have inescapable duties was out today, drawn by dread and fear and hope, protected by the truce. It built to a roar as he cantered Gustav out into the open space. The Protectorate's force was there as well, a dark line across the stubblefields a mile north. Their cheering was more regular, and as their lord emerged from under the black-and-scarlet banner they started beating their spears or the flats of their swords against their shields, a rumbling like ten thousand drums, stuttering through air and ground, bone and flesh. From the south the roaring of Havel's supporters grew louder too, not wanting to be outdone. He surprised himself with a chuckle as he recognized the OSU fight song in that chorus of screeches and bellows and chantings of his name.

The two men cantered forward, meeting midway between the armies; the roar was still loud, but muffled to the point where ordinary voices could be heard. Arminger's coif didn't cover his mouth; not surprising, since he'd be planning on giving orders in any fight he was in; the Lidless Eye was on his shield, and on the forehead of his conical black-enameled helmet, making him look like a caricature of evil. They each leaned their lances forward and tapped the shafts together ceremoniously before raising them upright again.

“Ten years since we last met, isn't it, Havel?” Arminger said.

Mike grinned. “Ten years since I suckered you the last time, Norman,” he said.

There were lines graven on the angular face across from him that hadn't been there back when he'd come through Portland so soon after the Change; partly just age, but partly stress too, he judged. It couldn't be easy staying on top of that snake pit he'd built.

I'm going to kill you,
he thought coldly.
Not least because you're still playing a game, college boy. I'm a working man, and fighting's just another job I do to keep my family fed and safe.

There were none of the melodramatic threats or boasts he half expected, the I'm-going-to-rape-your-wife-and-feed-your-children-to-dogs; the man had learned control since they last talked. Though of course he'd be quite capable of
doing
anything of that sort.

The Lord Protector simply nodded. “One of us, I think, will not leave this field alive,” he said, and turned his horse.

They continued until they were about a thousand yards apart. This was no tournament with rebated lances, or even à outrance, and there were no heralds or trumpeters. Each horse reared and came down moving fast, building speed in lines of dust across the reaped grain stalks. The black-armored figure grew with shocking speed, only a pair of eyes visible on either side of his helm's nasal bar, and the shield expertly sloped. Arminger wasn't a kid jagging out on testosterone and dreams of glory; he was a man not long past his physical peak, trained to a hair and immensely experienced.

So, gotta think outside the box,
went through him as the lancehead came for his life.

Then:
Crack!

He caught the lance on his shield, just. The force of it punched him back and sideways, out of the saddle. The ground came up and hit him with stunning force, and he tasted blood. Doggedly he shook off pain and struggled to his feet, spitting to clear his mouth. A half-dozen yards away Norman Arminger struggled to free himself from the wreck as his horse sank and threshed and screamed, with three feet of lance driven into its flank; the broken stub protruded just in front of Arminger's left knee. Havel took a step forward, and hissed at the sensation in his left leg and hip; it was like nerves being stretched out naked and scraped with serrated knives. He made himself move nonetheless, the backsword coming out as he advanced, the targe on his left forearm.

“Pain is weakness leaving the body,” he muttered to himself. “
Shit.
Let's go, Marine.”

The lord of Portland managed to get himself free of the high, massive saddle, but at the cost of abandoning his shield beneath it; the Bearkiller would have been on him while he pulled and tugged otherwise. He drew his heavy dagger with his left hand instead, holding it point-up with his sword overhead, hilt-forward. His eyes fixed on the limp Havel couldn't quite keep out of his walk.

“You swine,” Arminger said with quiet sincerity. “You aimed at my horse. Deliberately!”

The northern army seemed to share its lord's prejudices; a huge chorus of hoots and groans came from them. Laughter and roaring cheers came from the allied host behind him.

“Why is it,” Havel said, grinning, “that you evil bastards always get indignant when you find out you don't have a monopoly on ruthlessness? It's only a horse, Norman—and you're better than I am with a lance. If God had meant us to be lancers, He'd have given us hooves.”

“Haro! Portland!”

“Hakkaa Paalle!”

The longsword flashed down.
Crack
and the curved leather of the targe shed it, but he didn't overbalance, and the smashing punch of the Bearkiller's backsword caught on the dagger. The hilts locked and they strained against each other for an instant, face panting into face in a perverse intimacy.

Christ Jesus, he's strong!
Havel thought, as they disengaged and Arminger blocked a cut at the back of his knee, turning the longsword from the wrist like a ribbon-saber.
Got the edge on me there, only by a bit, but it's there.

He'd counted on better speed and endurance, but the wrench to his hip was slowing him, draining away agility. The other man's lack of a shield would help—he couldn't just tuck his shoulder into it and try and overrun with a rush. It balanced out…

They circled, Arminger moving on the outside of the curve, Havel turning on his right heel. Engage, a flurry of strikes, back. The Portlander was breathing harder, sweat runneling down his face, but Havel felt the weight of his armor too. Try a stepping lunge for the slit in the hauberk exposed by the lack of a shield—

The hip betrayed him, and Arminger's dagger knocked the point wide. He snarled and reversed the strike, slamming the pommel of his sword up at the other man's armpit. The strike hit, but not quite on the nerve center, and the armor and padding muffled it. Arminger's fingers flew open, and the dagger went flying, but the arm wasn't disabled; he grabbed at Havel's shield, dragging it down and pinning that arm as their swords locked. Swaying, pushing, and he hooked an ankle around the bigger man's and
pulled
.

They crashed to earth, side-to-side. Arminger wasted an instant trying to shorten the sword and stab; the edge grated over Havel's hauberk, and then he raised it high to hammer the pommel down.

Crack.

Something gave in the left side of Havel's chest, and the coldness of it radiated out into his body like cracks in ice on a winter pond. But he'd dropped the long sword and had his dagger out now, and as the brass ball on the pommel crashed down on him again he let the rest of his body go limp and focused, draining the strength into his right arm. And
thrust,
the will a point of rage and effort like the knife, and the narrow point punched into a ring of the hauberk and broke it, sank deeper.

Crack.

The pommel struck in the same place, and Havel's mind went blank for an instant in a sheet of icy white fire. Arminger fell forward onto him, gauntlets scrabbling at the wheat stems. Havel pushed, pushed again, slowly and laboriously climbed to his knees. He took up his sword and used it to climb erect, right hand only—the left was limp, and the whole upper left side of his body was coming and going in waves that washed out farther and farther.

The Lord Protector looked at him, and one strengthless hand fumbled at the dagger driven up under his short ribs. He tried to speak, or perhaps only to scream. Havel took a staggering step, and placed the point of his backsword on the coif at the base of the other man's throat, and leaned all his weight on it.

“Signe,” he wheezed. “Mary, Ritva, Mike…Rudi.”

Something crunched beneath the steel. Havel's hand slipped away and he went to his knees. Blackness.

Aaron Rothman was bending over him, fingers infinitely gentle in their probing. Tears were falling into the stubble on the doctor's face.

Mike Havel said nothing, squinting against the sun. He felt clear-headed, but weak, and there was an enormous weight on his chest that was just this side of pain. Gradually he grew aware of other faces around him—Signe on one side and Juniper on the other, looking unaware of each other for once, Eric Larsson and Will Hutton, Luanne. More stood at a distance, silent, waiting.

Definitely not good,
he thought, and tried to raise a hand. It took considerable effort; someone took it, Signe.

“Arminger's dead,” she said, knowing what he'd want to be certain of. “Some of his men are leaving already.”

He sighed, and turned his head to the doctor. “The word, Aaron.”

“Oh, God, Mike, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, there's not a damned thing I can do that wouldn't kill you quicker—ribs, heart—if I had a pre-Change trauma room, maybe—”

“The
word
.”