bow drew over half again the minimum allowed.
But it’s mostly fair if not entirely, Rudi thought. A fifty-pound draw on a hunting bow will put a broadhead through a bull elk’s body, breaking ribs going in and coming out; I’ve seen it done. Eighty pounds on a warbow will do for a man, sure, often enough even if he’s wearing a tin shirt.
“That is a great whacking lot of arrows,” Bjarni said. “How many do you lug about with you?”
Oak grinned. “You ask the right questions, Bjarni King,” he said. “And the answer is as many as we can. Also the eoghann run out to scavenge as many spent ones as they can from the field, when it’s safe. Food can be foraged at a pinch and you can fight barefoot or even bare-arsed if you must, but a cloth yard arrow needs well- seasoned straight-grained wood for the shaft, good flight feathers from a goose and glue and thread for fletching, horn for the nock and fine hard steel for the bodkin, and all put together with skill in the making. Fashioning arrows is one of the tasks we do in the Black Months, when the farm work is less. It’s part of the Chief’s Portion.”
“The scot, you’d say,” Rudi amplified. “The tax.”
“And nobody skimps the work, when their lives and families might rest on it,” Oak said. He turned his face to Rudi. “And another four thousand archers in the forts in the Cascades, the ones who can fight but aren’t up to much hard marching for one reason or another. The enemy’s withdrawn some men from overmountain and the Bend country, but not all of them.”
Soberly, he met Rudi’s eyes. “This is all we have, High King. If we lose it the Clan dies.”
Rudi nodded, equally grave; all that was a fifth of the Clan’s total population, and a much higher share of its adults.
“I know. It’s still our best chance. Our archers and the Association’s knights are the biggest edges that we have, and sure, I intend to wring every scrap of advantage from both that I can.”
Then he took up a skewer of the wether’s flesh, biting off a chunk. The tender meat was juicy-pink in the center and Judy Barstow’s sauce, tangy with garlic and sage and peppers, was crusted on the seared outer surface. It would have been finer still for marinating a while, but it was better than ample for a war-camp.
“See you, Oak,” he said, gesturing with the remainder of the kebab, “I’ve read your reports on the fighting you did in the mountains west of Bend while I was gone on the Quest. You beat them handily, but don’t judge all that they can do by what happened when they had no choice but to charge you on your own ground in the passes. Or by the poor and pitiful performance of hungry frightened plainsmen clumping in high-heeled rawhide boots through a strange snowbound forest.”
Oak nodded. “From first to last the CUT’s horse-archers were a pain in the arse at Pendleton,” he said. “Much more so when we were forced to retreat, and they had room to maneuver fast. They’re hard trouble in any sort of open country, and that is a fact. That’s how my father died.”
And you took a spectacular vow of vengeance at Chuck’s passing ceremony, Rudi thought. Will it cloud your judgment?
He didn’t think so, and he wasn’t sure whether that was the long knowledge of growing up in the same Dun as this man, or something the Sword of the Lady gave him. He’d always been fair to excellent at reading folk, but with the Sword at his side no man could lie to him, even if the words deceived the speaker himself. He found himself fighting to keep that from souring his view of humankind, sometimes.
“We had a lot of trouble with them in the battle at Wendell,” Fred observed. “And that’s how they beat Deseret-more cavalry and moving faster. You can fight them with infantry but you need some horse-archers yourself, and a shitload of field artillery really helps, since it outranges their bows. Then if they thin out their formations to cut down their casualties they drop the intensity of their firepower a lot.”
“We needed the cavalry and catapults badly to hold them off so that we could break contact,” Oak agreed. “We’d have been surrounded and whittled down to nothing, else, instead of just hurt.”
“Just so, and Lugh of the Many Skills knows the Boise infantry are a bad lot in a fight too. Very disciplined, very well drilled in their maneuvers and it’s an annoyingly persistent set of omadhauns they are to boot.”
Fred grinned. “Yup. If they try charging us, well, we’ll give them as much trouble as they want.”
“Exactly. It’s uncomfortably good at combined-arms work Boise’s army is, and they have no religious scruples about making catapults of their own, unlike the CUT. I’m doing what I can about that stubbornness, breaking their heads from the inside, you might say, and Fred’s been a help. But in the meantime I think you’re going to need a reaction squad of head-bashers in the more usual sense of the word, more than Fred’s band can provide, and I’ve just the men for the core of that.”
Bjarni was mopping up beans with a chunk of the bread. He nodded, still chewing, drank from the mug of watered wine beside him, and spoke: “That we can do. We’re not wizards with the bow like you Mackenzies, but handstrokes are our sport and our delight. And my five hundred are picked men, the best fighters of all the tribes of Norrheim. Well used to fighting side by side by now too.”
Rudi slapped him on the shoulder. “That they are, Oak. For planting their feet in the dirt and locking shields to conquer or die where they stand, I’ve seen that there’s none like the warriors of Norrheim. Pitiless fighters, fell and grim. Also they’re the truest of men to their oaths, and fear does not enter into their actions.”
There was a slight happy growl from the armored hirdmen behind their king; he couldn’t have picked a compliment from all the world’s tongues that would have pleased them more, as long as it came from someone they respected.
The which they do, after the Seven Hills fight, at which all these men shed sweat and many let their blood on the ground from their wounds. And for their pledged oaths many of them will die very far from home, meeting their end on foreign ground with their last sight the faces of angry strangers. I will do what I must, for the kingdom’s sake and the world’s. And for my children yet unborn. The praise will also go a way to reconciling them to being brigaded with Fred’s not-really-turncoats. It’s an acrobat a High King must be!
“Now, when is this battle where we Norrheimers will do our head-bashing to be?” Bjarni said, belching contentedly and handing his plate to the youth. “And where?”
More of the watered wine went around, and a small sack filled with dried fruit and nuts. Oak leaned forward eagerly as well, and Fred’s face had a wolf’s keenness.
“It’ll be as late as I can manage,” Rudi said. “Around Samhain, if I can harry and delay until then. Yule would be too much to hope for.”
He turned aside to Bjarni for a moment: “Samhain’s our festival of the dead and the Otherworld, that ends the sacred Wheel of the Year. The Quarter Day at the end of October. Lughnasadh is the summer festival, just past.”
Oak hissed between his teeth. “Samhain? That long?” he said, obviously thinking of the autumn planting and a hungry year to follow if it was skimped.
“Everyone planted more last fall than normal, I hear, and we can put in more spring grain next year needs must. Time fights for us, remember; time, and the land itself,” Rudi said. “The enemy outnumber us three to two; or they will at the beginning of things.”
“It would have been two to one, if you hadn’t gotten us allies,” Oak acknowledged.
Rudi nodded; it was true. “I’ll make them leave their base of supply far behind, draw them in, with each step making them weaker as they must detach forces to guard their lines of supply and invest the strongholds. Then I’ll bring them to battle at the time and place I choose.”
“Where?” Oak said.
“The Horse Heaven Hills,” he said, nodding eastward.
Bjarni frowned, and Rudi drew in the dirt with a twig, showing how those lay between the valley of the Yakima river and the Columbia, a little east of where they were now.
“Or at least Horse Heaven is my choice,” Rudi said, seeing the lay of those long swells in his mind. “The enemy, the dirty dogs, will have a plan of their own, the which is a reason why we call them the enemy. It’s nicely varied terrain, not too closed in to maneuver freely or use our heavy cavalry, and not so open there’s no element of surprise or choice of ground. They might try to go north of there, up the Yakima, but that would trap them in a cul- de-sac and the Free Cities are too strong to storm with an army still on their flank.”
“It’s rich land, if they’re hungry,” Oak said. To Bjarni: “A great valley, closely tilled-watered by channels from the river, one fortified village and walled town after another, field after field. Densely peopled with strong yeomen, and they good farmers and stubborn fighters both.”
“Rich land but with all that’s edible behind walls,” Rudi said. “Or it will be after my orders are carried out. Taking the Yakima would only make sense in a slow campaign aimed at steady conquest of one bit at a time, but
