The Sword of the Lady (49 page)

Signe′s breath hissed out. The gate of a big castle was a mini-fortress in itself. They′d known that the enemy alliance had good special operations troops, but this was a nasty confirmation.

″Bribe?″ she said.

Brother Jerome shook his head. ″I don′t think so. It was a rather elderly Dominican; a harsh man, one of Antipope Leo′s appointees, but not a corrupt one. I knew him slightly.″

″Why not?″ Signe said. ″It wouldn′t be the first time a priest of your Church caught gold fever. And
knew
? He′s joined the majority?″

″No, it would not be the first time a priest was bribed, my lady,″ the monk said, with that steady courtesy that was more irritating than irritation. ″All men are sinners, and priests are men. However, the priest in question then cut off his own testicles and stabbed himself eight times in the belly before he died. And the first enemy through the postern was in a red robe—a High Seeker of the Church Universal and Triumphant. He killed armed men with his hands and they did not resist.″

For once the monk′s trained calm seemed to waver. ″I . . . was there. I saw it. I . . . fought him. Not so much with my sword . . . I have never felt anything like it. Never anything so strong, or so foul. As if I were prisoner in my own mind, and my mind was in Hell. Only by the grace of God was I able to give the alarm and close the inner doors to the bailey long enough for the garrison to arm.″

A chill silence fell; they′d all heard the rumors about the Corwinite adepts. Several made the protective signs of their various faiths. Then Ivo spoke, his voice shaking slightly:

″That′s all that let any of us escape.″

″Ivo got most of the garrison out,″ Tiphaine said crisply. ″Given the initial situation, he did quite well. But that unhinges our position in the western Palouse and it gives the enemy another foothold on the navigable Snake River. It′s . . . troubling. We′ve been counting on our fortifications to even things up.″

″If we can′t rely on the castles to keep them off the Columbia, what the hell can we do?″ Signe said, looking around for a moment as if armies could be conjured from raw need.

One of the squires blurted: ″Artos has to return with the Sword. Only that can save Montival!″

″He′s right, Mother,″ Mike Havel Jr. said, before Tiphaine could blast her subordinate for speaking out of turn.

Gray eyes met blue. Tiphaine spoke slowly and reluctantly.

″I have a horrible suspicion that may be correct.″

A Bearkiller couldn′t show weakness. ″It would be a help,″ she said. ″An army or two with it wouldn′t hurt either.″

Being impatient and not showing it is even more of an unpleasantness than being impatient alone
, Rudi thought.

He suppressed an impulse to jig from foot to foot, like a small child in school bursting to ask permission to visit the jakes.

The best cure for it being some sweat. Luckily that also serves our purposes, since we want to be well remembered here. Not just remembered kindly, but remembered
well,
as folk worthy of respect. Worthy of alliance against a common foe.

He kept a smile on his face as he strode out to the drill field. Partly that was natural to him—he liked most places and most people he met—and partly it was politics.

The which I will
never
be able to escape, now, all my life. Fortunately I′ve been assured that won′t be overlong . . .

Most of the drill field was exactly that: fields, now reaped and empty of crops, but busy with the local folk. Some of it spilled up into the forested edges of Readstown, to give a realistic variety of ground. Only parts of it were permanent, like the row of oaken pells—thick posts used as targets for practice with sword and ax. Mathilda and Odard were at a pair of them.

″How′s the arm?″ he asked.

″Healing,″ Mathilda said shortly. ″Nearly healed. Still hurts a bit, but it needs to be stretched or it′d heal tight.″

What′s got into her?
he thought. Aloud:

″Well, careful while it′s still weak,
acushla
—you always did push yourself too hard when you were injured.″

She nodded without meeting his eyes and continued the routine she′d started with a light wooden practice blade. This was an overcast day and chilly, but sweat was still running down her face, and doubtless down her flanks beneath the mail hauberk and the padding. He didn′t bother repeating the warning to Odard as the baron slammed his own drill sword into the pell again, smashed at it with his shield, set himself and repeated the pattern. The young lord of Gervais worked conscientiously at maintaining his skills at the warrior′s craft, but he didn′t have Mathilda′s driven will and was less likely to overwork.

Over to the archery range . . .

Edain had just lowered his bow after a ripple fire that left the pop-up targets shaped like outlaws and Eaters neatly feathered.

″And how′s Aylward the Archer?″ Rudi asked.

″Doin′ well enough, Chief. Just showing these lads and lasses how it′s done, so to speak, and keepin′ me hand in.″

That got him a chorus of groans and hoots from the locals; he grinned at them and replied with a mocking gesture. It had taken only a day or so before he couldn′t find anyone willing to take a
friendly bet
on a session at the butts. Jake sunna Jake and his Southsiders leaned on their bows and basked in the young Mackenzie′s reflected glory. Those bows had been substantially improved; Edain had run joyously amok spending Iowa′s gold in Readstown′s well-equipped archery shop, and had ordered a set of portable bowyer′s tools as well to take with them. They should all be ready before the party left.

The former wild-men had also become noticeably better archers with Edain to instruct and bullyrag them; already they were as good as the average run of the Readstowners.

Rudi took a deep breath of the chilly late-October air laden with the damp smell of fallen leaves and turned earth; it smoked when he exhaled. Then he passed on to the practice circles where the trainees worked with the sword; they were sensibly marked out on sections of irregular pasture, complete with low brush in some or set around trees or big rocks. In his experience, battles rarely took place on neatly level ground raked and rolled for good footing. The Readstown arms master—they called him a Drill Instructor here—gave him a slight wink. They′d already met.

He was a thickset man about ten years older than Rudi and three inches shorter, with hair of dark yellow closer-cropped than most locals and the tip of his nose missing. His father had been a retired Marine noncommis sioned man, like Rudi′s sire, Mike Havel, and had run a martial arts club and store in Racine before the Change came and set him on a road that ended here. His son had fought in some of the same wars as Ingolf, but returned home to inherit his father′s employment and pass on what he′d learned. A scar from the slash that had marred his nose also split a lip and drew a corner of his mouth up into a constant sneer, turning a face not notably lovely to begin with into something most men would blink to see.

″Hello, Mr. Mackenzie,″ he said.

Then he indicated three big young men in practice gear. That meant mail shirts to the thigh here, and helmets like brimmed hats, with round shields and wooden drill shetes.

″Care to give some of our local boys a bout?″ he said, elaborately casual. ″I see you′re kitted up.″

The Mackenzie was wearing his brigandine, plus mail sleeves, mail-clad leather gorget, plate vambraces and greaves, visored sallet helm and breeches beneath his kilt with mail on the outsides. It was all more elaborate than anything Readstowners were likely to have seen before and enough to let him fight like a knight afoot or ahorse, though it gave a bit less protection than a modern suit of articulated plate and weighed slightly more. The gear did have the advantage of being modular, and you could put it on yourself.

″It would be less than a guest′s duty should I refuse,″ Rudi said gravely. ″That being the work of the season.″

October wasn′t exactly the easy time of year here. There wasn′t such a thing, amid the thronging tasks of a farming settlement that also made most of what it used and wore. But it was as close as any, with the grain and root crops in, the last hay and silage cut, and stock culling over and the meat steeping in the vats of pickle brine or turning in the smokehouses or freezing amid underground blocks of ice. What was left was the sort of thing that could be attended to anytime, mostly even in the hard dark cold of winter.

That gave time for the arts of war; like any manual skill, they rusted if not used. Their main rival in the fall was hunting. Which also trained you in fighting, and doubly if the quarry were boar or bear or wolf.

″Just a moment, then,″ he went on, and hung up his sword belt.

He′d had a training sword made up in precisely the length and balance of his longsword, an oak batten around a rod of old rebar, the wood thickly wrapped in wool rags. Now he tossed it up spinning, caught the hilt with a slap of leather on hard callus, and slid the big kite-shaped Association-style shield onto his arm.

″Which one of us first?″ the brashest of the young men said.

″All of you at once, I think,″ Rudi said pleasantly.

He snapped down the visor, and the world shrank to the narrow horizontal bar of the vision slit; by reflex his head began to turn slightly right and left, to make up for the way it cut his peripheral vision. The Readstown youths suddenly looked a little thoughtful as his smiling face disappeared, and left them confronting only the smooth curve of the steel. The visor tapered slightly on the bottom edge in a way that suggested a beak, and its surface and the helm as well were scored and inlaid with niello to hint at raven feathers. A real spray of those black pinions stood up at either temple. Rudi went on:

″Why waste time when we can all fight at once? Ready?″

They spread out uncertainly, looking at each other. Another breath, and he attacked. His face suddenly twisted and the racking Mackenzie shriek burst from him stunning-loud. A crack of shields on shield, the hard
clack
as one blade met another, a dull thud of a blunt wooden point on mail over padded leather and hard stomach muscle, and—

The oaken practice sword glanced off a Readstowner′s kettle helmet, twisting it half around to break the chin strap and dropping him like a steer hit between the eyes with a sledge. Rudi stepped back and sloped the steel-cored oak lath over his shoulder.

One opponent was down, curled up like a shrimp and giving faint hoarse gasping whoops as he tried to draw breath through a diaphram half paralyzed by a thrust to the pit of the belly; another rolled about with his hands to a head still ringing from the blow that had set his helmet flying with a sound like some dull unmusical bell, and the third was white-faced and shaking from the hard rake across his leg just below his crotch, and from the thought of what it would have meant with live steel—which thought hit more like a
message
, flashed from gut and balls.

″You fellows are far from bad,″ Rudi said.

His breath was deep but not panting. The world came back in its autumnal bleakness as he flicked the visor back up.

″But you′re being too much the gentlemen there. If you′re fighting a man three on one, just surround him and flail away, get in more strikes than he can block; even the Sedanta couldn′t fight two, as the saying goes. Don′t give him a chance to deal with you one at a time.″

″Listen to the voice of experience, you lambs still sucking at mommy′s tit,″ said the Readstown arms master.

The three youngsters were all big rangy young men, but a few years shy of twenty. Even in their discomfort they managed to look sheepishly embarrassed. Their fathers were Farmers hereabout, which gave them more time to practice than common folk, and they were well equipped and supposedly well trained. In Rudi′s judgment they were on the better side of middling, as far as formal drill was concerned. Certainly they were strong, quick and fearless.

″He doesn′t use our moves,″ one of them complained, when he could stand and speak. ″And he′s a southpaw.″

The arms master′s smile was a wonder to see as he crossed his arms on his chest and stared at them; it reminded Rudi of one Sam Aylward had put on when he was fifteen and had done something truly stupid on Dun Juniper′s practice field. The kind that made you feel as if you were six and playing at warriors out behind the stable with a rotten stick for a sword and an old fence board for a shield, rather than training for the real thing. When the older man spoke his voice was like a flaying knife:

″Yah hey, if someone attacks you using different moves, or if they′re a leftie, you′re just going to say you′re taking your bat and ball and going home ′cause it ain′t
fair
? Christ, Weiss,
I′ve
known you were a dumb little punk for years, but do you have to show it off in front of strangers?″

Rudi laughed, in friendly wise. ″If you travel, you do meet different ways of fighting, the which can be an unpleasant surprise. Surprises can kill you in this trade, for there′s no time to think things out when men fight to kill. I had the advantage of you, for I′ve trained with Ingolf Vogeler for some time now and know the Readstown style. Here, let me show you what happened. Half speed.″

He ran them through the moves of the fight. ″See, when I sidestepped I put
you
out of line with your shield, and in the way of your friend here so he couldn′t strike while I took you out with a lunging thrust, then rammed him off-balance shield-to-shield on the next step.″

The DI nodded. ″I keep telling you, Weiss, you can use the shield to
hit
with, not just block. So can the guy you′re fighting.″