called it hereabouts. The branches of the cottonwoods mingled overhead, turning the creek bed into a tunnel of green that sparkled with moving golden flickers.
It was cooler here, too, and easy walking. No water showed, but the sandy bottom was damp in spots, and insects buzzed and clicked. This was a fair-sized river in the winter rains, to judge from the height of the banks; it might flow at night even in August, when the cottonwoods weren’t sucking water and pumping it into the air. It was a convenient place to be safely out of sight in daytime right now, but it would be dangerous a little later in the year; he’d spent enough time in arid areas to understand what a flash flood meant.
“My lord… is there going to be a fight?” the boy asked after they were out of sight and hearing of his friends and neighbors.
Ingolf stopped himself from barking: I’m not a lord!
He was a Sheriff’s son back home-his father had been the one who organized his remote rural district after the Change and led the effort to deal with the failure of the machines and the wave of city folk fleeing chaos and starvation. He’d become a powerful landowner in the process, a giver of judgments and leader of the local Farmers and their dependent Refugees in war and peace. Now Ingolf’s elder brother Edward held the position.
And actually does a pretty decent job at it. I… well, I can’t wish we hadn’t quarreled when Dad died. If I hadn’t stormed out, I wouldn’t be where I am now, which is not such a bad place. I’m glad we made it up when the Quest passed through, though. Glad I got to see Wanda again and my nieces and nephews even if young Mark is a pain in the butt sometimes.
Being a Sheriff didn’t mean quite as much back in Richland as a title of nobility did around here and they were a lot less formal about it, but he was roughly equivalent to the younger son of a baron in Association terms.
The whole feudal folderol is pretty damned silly to my way of thinking, names from books and all, but they take it very seriously indeed here in this part of Montival. And they outnumber me about six, seven hundred thousand to one and I have to stay here for now, so they can call themselves whatever the fuck they please, right.
“Probably there’s going to be more than one fight, kid,” he said instead. “Those bastards aren’t invading your land ’cause they love you.”
“I’m not scared, my lord,” the boy said, lying transparently. “It’s just… my family’s not far. My mom and my brothers and sisters and all.”
“Then don’t let them get past you, that’s all I can say. Kill the other bastard before he can kill you and your home and family are safe. Running from a fight just means it follows you. It’s as simple as that.”
The boy’s grimy knuckles tightened and went white on the spear shaft; he’d probably take the advice to heart. Ingolf had long since seen that it was a rare and lousy specimen of a man who couldn’t show willing with his back to his home and kin.
And probably he’ll get himself killed and die still a virgin, poor brave little clod. I’ve also seen how much willing counts for when amateurs go up against real soldiers with real gear, who know what they’re doing when the amateurs don’t.
Another set of sentries stopped and identified them, and then they began to pass horses picketed on either side of the arroyo, tethered to ropes strung from pegs driven into the sandy soil. Most simply stood hipshot, their tails swishing regularly; others were being watered, with buckets filled at holes dug in the lower parts of the sandy bed of the seasonal watercourse. The homey, familiar smell of horse-piss, horse-sweat and manure added to the odors of damp sand and sun-baked earth and grass and sagebrush.
Lord Maugis de Grimmond, Baron Tucannon and enfeoffed vassal of the Counts Palatine of Walla Walla, was a year or two younger than Ingolf, which meant he’d been four or so at the time of the Change. His parents had both been SCA members in Oregon who threw their lot in with Norman Arminger and ended up with a barony here.
Mathilda is a fine person, but her dad was one heap big bad badass, from all I’ve been able to gather, Ingolf thought. Still, needs must. Those were hard times. Mary’s father, Rudi’s dad Mike Havel, killed Arminger.
Though he’d only survived it by about forty minutes before dying of the wounds Arminger inflicted; and now Rudi was married to Norman Arminger’s only child. The family politics here got twisty, and he was still learning his way around them. For one thing, Rudi’s mother Juniper Mackenzie hadn’t been married to Mike Havel, either. Mary’s mother, Signe, had married him. She still wasn’t what you’d call overenthusiastic about Rudi or Juniper, though she and the outfit Havel had founded and she ran, the Bearkillers, had accepted High King Artos gracefully over around Larsdalen on the other side of the Willamette from Clan Mackenzie. Mary and her twin Ritva had moved out from there in their teens to live in the woods with their Aunt Astrid, who was… strange. Even by comparison with other people who’d had a rough time in the first Change Year.
Like most Changelings his age Ingolf had elastic standards when it came to what was or wasn’t outright barking madness, having grown up among an adult population many of whose members had been strained beyond the breaking point by what they’d seen, suffered and done to survive. They were functional most of the time or they’d have been bones in a ditch somewhere, but screaming sweating nightmares or people who suddenly burst into tears or rages at odd moments were pretty common, and every year brought a trickle of suicides done one way or another. His own father had just taken a bottle out to a barn and drunk himself unconscious now and then; you could see it coming on in his eyes, when he got to remembering.
And Mike Havel wasn’t nasty like Arminger, or crazy like Arminger, but he was a hard man and no mistake. Dad did what was necessary back then too, so I’m not going to be too snippy about this baron guy’s parents. They lived, and so did their kids. And if it helped to plaster everything with names out of old books, so be it.
Their son had coarse, curly bowl-cut red hair of a dark copper color like an old penny, pale skin of the sort that turned ruddy rather than tanning, slightly buck teeth, a big nose and ears like the handles of a jug. He also wore a full set of Western plate armor except for the helmet and the gauntlets, which lay beside him, and while he wasn’t particularly large he moved as if the weight and heat and constriction didn’t bother him more than dayclothes.
He was busily engaged in cutting bread and cheese, using a painted shield as a platter. Ingolf dredged up newly acquired heraldic knowledge to read it: Argent, a fess Gules, in chief two greyhounds courant proper while the nobleman stopped and glanced up at the pair. The peasant spearman bowed low in a complicated gesture with something like a curtsy involved. Maugis returned it with a nod that was… literally… lordly.
Mind you, he could have just ignored the kid.
“Thank you, Girars… Bero, get some of this, take it back to the rest at your post, boy… and tell your father I’m glad he’s keeping a sharp lookout,” he said.
“Thank you, my lord!” the youngster said, louting low again as he accepted the loaves and cheese and meat wrapped in a length of coarse sacking.
“And Girars, next time you leave your post, take your shield with you as well as your spear, or you’ll be very sorry.”
“Yes, my lord!”
The nobleman turned to Ingolf, and bowed respectfully with the gesture between equals.
“Colonel Ingolf! Welcome, my lord of Readstown. What news of the enemy?”
Of course, when it comes to people here being polite to me it sure as shoot doesn’t hurt that I went with Rudi all the way to Nantucket and back and am officially now one of the Nine Companions of the Sword- Quest in song and story. Or that I married his half sister on the way, Mary being a big wheel among the Dunedain Rangers and now a princess, more or less. Since Rudi is High King Artos these days. I didn’t realize quite how important she was, and it wasn’t why I married her, but since it’s a fact… well, use the mojo where you can get it, Ingolf old son. Sure as shit beats being a wandering paid soldier the local Farmers wouldn’t let in the front door and the Bossmen treated like something nasty you scrape off your shoe on a hot day.
“Looks like we’ll have company the way I thought, my lord Tucannon,” he said aloud.
“You saw them?” the nobleman said eagerly.
“Saw one of them, and he saw the sheep. It was an enemy scout, all right; I caught the sun-blink off his binoculars. I sent my aide back to alert our own scouts and they should be reporting in… an hour to three.”
The baron nodded. Binoculars were an expensive specialty tool and among the most prized of salvage from the old world; the modern replacements just starting to appear were bulkier, not nearly as good, and almost as expensive. Field glasses ended up in the hands of those whose missions really demanded them, or those of extremely high status.
Ingolf went on: “And you can bet he’s part of the screen for a cavalry outfit. One gets you ten they take the
