Mathilda chatted a little to relax them; Huon grew enthusiastic about the gear and horses he’d picked up in Portland, and the prospect of going on his first real campaign after training to war all his life, and his swearing ceremony as a squire. That was natural enough, since it was big step and one that was overdue. After a few minutes he was also wolfing down the chicken empanadas. Yseult nibbled on one and agreed that she was up to transferring to a forward field hospital of the type the Sisters were setting up here in Goldendale.
“Ah… do you want to take my oath now, Your Majesty?” Huon said.
Mathilda shook her head. “Tomorrow, and publicly,” she said decisively. “That will be better, if you think about it.”
She watched them carefully; Yseult grasped the point first, but Huon was only a second behind. A public oath would be a public statement: I trust Huon Liu at my back, or more specifically I trust Huon Liu at my back with a dagger, twenty-four/seven. Neither was obvious about it either, which was good.
People might, would, still talk, but they’d do it in a whisper and not where he could hear. More important, they wouldn’t do it where the High Queen or anyone close to her could hear it either.
“I understand that you’ve been eager to hear the results of the Most Reverend Father’s investigations,” she said after a moment’s quiet contemplation. “Besides being most helpful.”
“Ah… not exactly eager, Your Majesty,” Huon said.
He and his sister exchanged a glance.
Those two are allies against the world, Mathilda thought. A little wistfully, since she’d been an only child. And necessarily a little isolated from others her own age by her birth, except for Rudi.
Though that only child thing may have been for the best. Still, I’m glad my children will have lots of brothers and sisters. Kinship is… not everything, but close.
“But we do want to know,” Yseult said. “It’s, ummm, hit us so often and so badly, but a lot of it was just bewildering, especially at the time. We only knew the bits that happened to us, Your Majesty, and then it was like… we had to realize that all this had been going on around us without our knowing.”
Mathilda nodded. “That’s part of growing up, but this is a pretty extreme case. You’ve earned the right to know,” she said. “I’m going to tell you what happened immediately after Pendleton. That was when my letter arrived back home, about how Alex Vinson betrayed us… betrayed me and Odard to the Cutters. Unfortunately, that was also when the CUT decided to activate your uncle Guelf. Whether he liked it or not. They probably knew the news would get back, after Odard and I were rescued.”
Dmwoski nodded. “As I’ve said before, there is no spoon long enough to sup safely with them. I heard a little of this from a Mackenzie who was involved.”
“I debriefed the Renfrews,” Tiphaine said. “And handled a lot of stuff later that revealed what had been going on at Hermiston. Chime in if I’m missing anything, Most Reverend Father. What apparently happened is that Guelf got desperate because-”
HERMISTON, COUNTY HERMISTON (FORMERLY UMATILLA COUNTY) PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION (FORMERLY NORTH-CENTRAL OREGON) SEPTEMBER 17, CHANGE YEAR 23/2021 AD
Sir Guelf Mortimer felt he was doing a good imitation of a brooding falcon as the pedal car rumbled into the Hermiston station and orderlies rushed forward to take the badly wounded away. The brooding was keeping his chatty squires away from him, at least. He hoped they were still smarting from his tongue-lashing.
“Off and down, off and down, clear the line!” someone shouted.
No word from the Ascended Masters, he thought. Was it because I was always with the Odell crowd, or that they don’t have any word for me?
Odo was clinging to him as they jumped off the pedal cab. The boy was shaking and had bruises under his eyes, emphasized by the light of the flaring torches that supplemented the alcohol lanterns; the sun was nearly down, though the western horizon was still eye-hurting crimson. As soon as the Gervais men were clear a party came running up with loaded stretchers.
On another siding, reinforcements were jumping down off a train of eastbound horse-drawn rail wagons and falling into ranks, their three-quarter armor incongruously clean and their eyes wide as they stared about at the filthy blood-splashed scarecrow figures, the limping walking wounded and the grisly shapes on the stretchers. Corvallans, from the Benny the Beaver image on their breastplates; their knockdown pikes or crossbows were still slung over their backs as they formed up and marched away.
“OK, Odo. Tonight you will camp with us. But tomorrow you and Father Stanyon are taking Terry home for burial. I don’t want you slipping out of that.”
And in this heat, we’ll have to get a well-sealed coffin.
His heart ached for the boy as he shook his head, dark greasy hair clinging to his skin, tear tracks down the dirty cheeks, mouth gapping as he yawned so wide Guelf wondered if he’d crack the jaw joint. And while disobedience couldn’t be tolerated, at least he’d done it from an excess of spirit.
“Let’s go find Father Stanyon,” he said firmly, suppressing his own wide yawn.
“Charlmain! You and Brandon get the men bivouacked and set up sentries. I don’t care how safe you feel; we’ve left a lot of angry enemies behind. They thought they were going to swallow us down and they didn’t and they’ll be feeling cheated.”
The squires knuckled their foreheads and went in search of Sir Thierry’s provosts and directions to the campgrounds. Guelf found Stanyon a block away, after pushing his way through streets that were a mass of troops and horses and vehicles almost to the edge of the castle moat; the little town was so insignificant it didn’t even have a wall, and the few locals were like chips on a torrent. One of the warehouses was being used as a field hospital. As he walked into its lantern-lit dimness there was a heavy smell of spoiled blood from the bandages heaped in corners, heat, sweat, pain and disinfectant. Healers from half a dozen of the allied powers were sorting and doing emergency surgery on a set of bloodstained tables. A line of volunteers stood ready to lie down next to the injured and provide transfusions.
Odo slitted his eyes to keep out as much as he could. Even Guelf gulped a little. He was well used to the butcher-shop horrors that happened when men hacked and stabbed with edged weapons, but there was something chilling about this in an entirely different way. Moans and shrieks sounded every now and then, not often enough to be disregarded, so that every new one hit you fresh.
The seven wounded from Gervais who’d survived and three bodies of those who’d died here were laid together. Father Stanyon and a Mackenzie medic were standing toe to toe over one unconscious figure. The kilted clanswoman was slight but bristling, her brown braid swinging as she shook her head emphatically.
“And what part of no is it that’s too complicated for you to be understanding the now, you cowan blockhead?” she shouted in a Mackenzie lilt, arms windmilling the way they did.
“Here’s my Lord, talk to him, pagan bitch!” the priest shouted back.
Guelf grunted; he felt as if his eyes had been taken out and the backs sanded, then the sockets dusted with hot ash before they were replaced. He glared, but neither quailed.
“Out,” he snarled, and turned on his heel. “Now!”
Outside, Father Stanyon spoke in an angry, even tone. “She dosed that man we picked up with laudanum. Dosed him heavily, forced it suddenly down his throat.”
Guelf frowned. “So?” he asked.
Even he knew that was standard if you didn’t want to inject a wounded man with morphine, which was expensive even for military use and had to be saved for the most urgent cases. Ones who were unconscious or who couldn’t keep an oral medication down.
The Mackenzie medic nodded at him. “Not going to apologize, my Lord. Both the Father and I agree, the spalpeen isn’t actually one of your Gervais men.”
Baffled, Guelf’s stubbled face swung back and forth. “He isn’t?”
“No.” Father Stanyon hesitated. “He’s dressed in the bloodstained clothing of one of ours, however. Blood all over the right kidney.”
Guelf growled. That was the mark of an assassin; a knife in the kidney was the fastest and quietest way to kill quickly. There was a whole knot of big blood vessels there, and if you stuck the blade deep, in just the right place, and twisted sharply, unconsciousness followed almost instantly. It was a lot easier and less obviously messy than slitting a throat too, if you left the knife in for a moment.
“Killed one of ours to sneak in one of their spies?” he grated.
