Though my old friend Thor has lent me his might. And the All-Father can give victory where he pleases.
But even the Gods would go down in wreck at the end, when the horn of Heimdalr blew for the final battle. Then Asa-Loki and the Jotun lords would ride against them to Vigrid plain, on the last morning of the world, when the stars fell from the sky and sea overwhelmed the land. It was for that fight that the High One gathered the spirits of fallen heroes in his hall. A man could strive with all the craft and might and main that was in him, though, and face death undaunted. And so could a woman.
Signe’s son Mike Mikesson-Mike Havel, using the old system that was still popular here-touched his own backsword.
“We’ve made a start on showing Boise and the CUT the point of our arguments in this lawsuit,” he said solemnly, though with a twinkle in his sky-colored eyes. “But we’ll still need some cutting remarks to finally convince them our case is stronger.”
Bjarni laughed aloud. “This cub’s growing fangs, by almighty Thor!” Mike Jr. was just on the cusp of young manhood, perhaps a little short of eighteen years; already tall and broad-shouldered, with a shock of corncolored hair, and already with a few scars on hands and face to show his words weren’t just an untried youngster’s air and wind. He’d be stronger when he got his full growth, there was still a bit of adolescent lankiness to him, but he was more than strong enough to be dangerous already, and Bjarni judged by the way he moved that he’d been very well taught. Between his brows was a small round mark made by a hot iron; his mother had the same. That was a mark the Bearkillers reserved for their best, what they called the A-list, and it was never granted for anything but proved courage and skill in the arts of war.
Bjarni turned to Mike’s mother again. “I was near the Bearkiller land, but pressed for time, when I visited Artos Mikesson’s garth at Dun Juniper. When the war is over, I will come guest you a while at your Larsdalen, if you wish it.”
Her lips thinned a little, but she answered in friendly wise: “Yes, that would be good. Ours is much like the Mackenzie land, but on the other side of the Willamette. Save that the mountains to our west between us and the sea are not as grand as the High Cascades to the east of theirs. My father’s family, the Larssons, held a farm there for long and long, generations before the Change. They did more, but that was the first they took, long ago, when they came west-over-sea from the ancient homelands.”
“Fine fat soil, then, good pasture and plenty of forest and the Gods of weather are kind to you,” he said. “You are lucky. The valley of the Willamette is some of the best farming land I’ve seen, and I’ve traveled far. Better than Norrheim, and especially better weather.”
Though not much better than some of the land I saw lying near empty as we journeyed, some corner of his mind thought. In what the old world called Quebec and Ontario. With Artos Mikesson’s help we beat the Bekwa. Not just beat them but wrecked and crushed them, at the Seven Hills fight. Which opens the way there; Norrheim is a small kingdom now, but it needn’t always be so. Our numbers grow, and there’s room there to make safe our folk and feed our children’s children’s children.
She nodded. “All that my husband Mike, the first Bear Lord, won for us with his craft and drighten might, and died defending.”
Bjarni’s eyes went to the white peaks again, and he thought of the canyons of the Columbia he’d passed, towering above like the walls of Valholl above a river to rival the Mississippi itself, with the waterfalls cataracting down the cliffs.
“Yet all this land of Montival is a fit home for our Gods,” he said. “A giant’s country, made to breed heroes! I have my own land, but I honor yours.”
“For the which I thank you,” another voice said, in a musical lilt. “And it breeds fine horses too, of which it seems you have acquired one of the best.”
Bjarni started a little. Artos Mikesson was a big man, but so graceful and light of step that it was eerie sometimes. And any man who carried the Sword forged by Weyland the Smith beyond the bounds of Midgard had something of that about him anyway. Bjarni had heard the High One confer kingship on Artos himself, through the seeress his spirit possessed.
“Your Majesty,” Signe said, bowing.
“Lady Signe,” Rudi said in turn, returning the bow and hiding his slight amusement. “I’ve just come from reviewing your Bearkiller encampment. May the Dagda club me dead if I could find anything not in perfect order. And you were prompt. Mike Havel would be proud. Corvallis, on the other hand…”
The big fair man beside him snorted. “ We’re all here, ten thousand of us. Fourteen hundred A-listers, eight thousand pikemen and crossbowmen, fifty field catapults. Plus the garrisons we’ve got over in the Cascade forts backing up the Clan’s troops. Corvallis was always a day late and a dollar short in the wars against the Association and they’re keeping up the batting average.”
The war-leader of the Bearkillers had the snarling red bear’s-head of the outfit Mike Havel had founded on the shoulder of his brown cord jacket; in that as in other ways Eric Larsson looked very much like a male version of Signe, which wasn’t surprising, since they were fraternal twins. The sign on a silver chain around his neck was a cross, though. His left arm ended at the wrist, to continue in an artificial hand of metal, which accounted-partly-for his nickname: Steel-fist.
“That’s not diplomatic,” Rudi said, slightly chiding. “And I have good friends in Corvallis. They’re just… a little slow, taken as a whole.”
“Not diplomatic, but it’s true though,” another voice said. “They surprised us in the Association unpleasantly a few times during the old wars. Turning up late can be effective if you’re so late you’re not expected to turn up at all.”
Rudi could see Bjarni blinking at that cool soprano, with its sound like water running over polished stones in some mountain stream. Then his eyes narrowed.
Yes, he’s a shrewd one, Rudi thought. Enough to take in something unfamiliar and not just stick to his first thought.
“Bjarni Eriksson, called Bjarni Iron Counsel, King in Norrheim,” he said in introduction. “Lady Tiphaine, Baroness d’Ath and Grand Constable of the Portland Protective Association. Which is to say, war-leader of their host.”
Tiphaine d’Ath was in full plate, from steel sabatons on her feet bearing the golden spurs of knighthood to the bevoir that protected neck and chin; a mounted squire carried her helmet and gauntlets, and another her lance and her shield with its arms of sable, a delta or over a V argent. Her eyes were the color of glacier ice, level and almost expressionless.
“Your Majesty,” she said to Bjarni, with a thump of right fist on the lames of her articulated breastplate, and a bow; as a noble to a sovereign, but not her own ruler.
Bjarni extended his hand. They exchanged the Norrheimer wrist-towrist grip; his eyes widened a little as he did.
Then she turned back to Rudi. He went on with the orders: “I’m sending you and fifteen thousand troops to Walla Walla, to take overall command in the County Palatine of the Eastermark. A thousand of the light horse will be refugees from the Bend country south of the Columbia, CORA ranchers and their retainers, horse-archers. Also the Lakota contingent, and Colonel Ingolf Vogeler’s Richlanders, another eight hundred together.”
She nodded. “The CORA-boys will be useful and they’re certainly well motivated. The Sioux and the Richlanders are to demonstrate the support we… Montival… have from the east, I suppose?”
“Yes. The Richlanders are good horse-soldiers, and highly disciplined.”
“The Sioux aren’t well disciplined, I take it, Your Majesty?”
“Not disciplined either well or badly; they’re splendid warriors, but not soldiers in our sense of the word at all, at all. And treating them with a heavy hand is as futile as pushing on a rope. Only ropes don’t bite when pushed, and they do… so perhaps pushing on a rattlesnake would be a better metaphor? Also they have a rooted conviction that all the horses in the world belong to them alone. I suggest you deal with them through Ingolf, as much as possible.”
“They’ll take his orders?”
“No. They may well listen to him, though. And he knows the Lakota well.”
“He should,” Eric said with grim amusement. “From what he’s said, he learned his trade fighting them back east.”
“He did. And he and intancan Rick Mat’o Yamni, Rick Three Bears, their war chief, are friends. All of us on the
