It was all exciting, and would be even in peacetime compared to the quiet routine of a castle or manor, though he didn’t think he’d like it for more than a visit. The great walls and towers that surrounded Portland made it immensely strong, but they also gave an uncomfortable sense of confinement. You could get out of a castle quickly, at least, and most of them had green fields right up to the moat.
A swift look at the menu chalked on a blackboard made him dither a bit, but Yseult had been teasing him about always getting the same thing; he forewent the double-bacon cheeseburger and had the souvlaki and pita with fries and a Portland Crown Ale. Yseult chose the batter-fried sturgeon with a salad and a glass of white wine, and Dmwoski settled for bread and a piece of grilled fish.
“It’s not a fast-day, is it, Most Reverend Father?” Huon asked, with a prickle of stricken embarrassment.
He wasn’t as devout as his sister, but he tried to do the right thing. Yseult shook her head doubtfully, then pulled out a little bound Book of Hours and checked the reference table at the back as the platters arrived to be sure. Dmwoski chuckled.
“Just Father will do, my children. No, it’s simply that at my age the fire needs less fuel. Fat monks are figures of fun for good reason.”
He pronounced a short brisk grace and they fell to; Huon was feeling hungrier than usual, since he’d been too nervous to do breakfast any justice. Dmwoski nodded at his appetite.
“You, on the other hand, are building bone and muscle yet, my son. Give me your hand for a moment.”
He did, and they squeezed. The soldier-monk’s grip was astonishingly strong for a man his age, and felt as if it had been carved from an ancient dry-cured ham.
“Good,” the cleric said. “Lord Chaka’s report did say that you were shaping well. What is the first thing you wish to know?”
Huon opened his mouth, closed it again, and thought. He was warmed and irritated both when Yseult gave him an approving look, and though Dmwoski’s face was calm he thought there was something similar in the monk’s blue eyes.
“I’d like to know what really happened with our-with Barony Gervais-contingent at the Battle of Pendleton. With my uncle.”
“Sir Guelf Mortimer, your mother’s brother.”
“Yes. I know something went badly wrong, Father, at the battle or just after, and there are all sorts of rumors. But our men are not cowards!”
“No, they are not,” Dmwoski said. He frowned, tapping his fingers together. “In fact, they did rather well.”
When he went on his tone was dry, the voice he would have used to speak to an adult: “What happened was this: the allied powers of the Corvallis Meeting-we were not yet Montival then, Rudi Mackenzie and the Princess and the other questers were still struggling through eastern Idaho-tried to steal a march on the CUT and Boise and seize Pendleton. That was just a little under two years ago now. We meant to strike before its Bossman could make a pact with them and they could send troops to secure the city and its territories. Unfortunately, it turned out that they had stolen a march on us. As nearly as we can tell, from reports and interrogations later, what happened is…”
Huon leaned forward as the old soldier-monk spoke. The room around them faded away; he could smell the oiled metal of armor, feel the fierce interior sun-
PENDLETON ROUND-UP TERRITORY CITY OF PENDLETON (FORMERLY NORTHEASTERN OREGON) SEPTEMBER 15, CHANGE YEAR 23/2021 AD
This is not going to be a good day.
Sir Guelf Mortimer of Loiston Manor frowned down at the map spread over the gritty soil and weighed down at the corners with chunks of volcanic rock. It showed the city of Pendleton, capital of the Round-Up territory, or the Associated Communities of the Pendleton Emergency Area if you wanted to be technical, which he didn’t. He could look up and south across the river and see the low rough-built walls with bits of rusty iron showing where the reinforcement cropped out through the concrete and rubble and odd angles where buildings had been incorporated into the defenses. Modern Pendleton was a rectangle, roughly, on the south bank of the Umatilla River; that acted as a natural moat on three sides.
Sir Ruffin Velin was delivering the bad news. He was the Grand Constable’s second-in-command right now, a hard-looking man in his thirties with thinning brown hair, and one of her vassals and hatchet men. You had to be careful around them. They’d been the Lady Regent’s kill-squad before Baroness d’Ath went into the mainline military. He wasn’t going to take Ruffin on lightly. Tiphaine d’Ath… made his skin crawl. He wasn’t the only one. Nor was the Regent called the Spider without good reason.
In fact, it’s going to be a very bad day, Guelf thought.
He was head of the Barony Gervais contingent here today, as senior fighting vassal in the absence of his nephew Baron Odard… who was off somewhere to the east on a quest like something out of one of the Dunedain storybooks, hopefully making the runaway Princess Mathilda helpless with admiration of his heroism as they tailed along behind the Mackenzie brat.
And what I’m doing today won’t be in front of a beautiful… well, passably good-looking… Princess who’s heir to immense wealth and power. Hell, let Odard get her flat and I’ll be content to be his uncle and shake the patronage tree in his shade.
They’d been up before the dawn, working like mules to set up the siege machinery along the bank of the Umatilla. He was sweating like a pig inside his suit of plate and wishing he’d switched to an old-fashioned mail hauberk; the interior was still beastly hot this time of year, and they were a long way from the Pacific’s cool breezes. Plate might as well be waxed canvas as far as keeping the air out was concerned. All he was getting was the occasional tantalizing draught through the joints when he moved. Little metallic clanks sounded as men jostled around the map and their harness rattled, or the leather straps and padding beneath creaked.
The stated objective- Right up till now, thought Guelf, casting an irritated eye at the quarter high sun-had been to install the machines to sweep the bridges across the river, then advance to take out the city wall of Pendleton by the Emigrant Gate when the beaten forces of the Round-Up tried to hold the city. Meanwhile the rumor was that the Dunedain were to do something unspecified but wonderful, if it worked.
“The whole operation got blown,” Ruffin said bluntly. “They pushed in more forces at precisely the wrong time for us. We don’t have very much information yet, mostly from enemy deserters, but the Grand Constable…”
Sir Ruffin was looking at Sir Erard Renfrew, who was also Viscount Chenoweth, heir to the Count of Odell, and his younger brother, Sir Thierry Renfrew, who was something of an artillery specialist.
Sir Guelf allowed himself the luxury of a grimace of distaste and a quick turn of his head and spit. With enough dust to make your teeth gritty every time you swallowed no one could prove it was a statement of opinion. Of the Grand Constable, and of House Odell, d’Ath had been Conrad Renfrew’s protege as well as the Lady Regent’s; the families were tight, part of the glacis around the Lady Regent’s position.
“… says we also have intelligence that we are facing almost twice the numbers we expected, say two or three thousand men each from Boise and the Church Universal and Triumphant as well as the Pendleton troops we knew about.”
That brought grunts. Everyone here could add.
“They suckered us and got their forces in here first. We can’t fight this one and win with what we’ve got here and there’s no way to get meaningful reinforcements in time to do any good. We need to break contact and retreat as far as Castle Hermiston, on the old border. The fortifications there will give us an edge and we can put in enough additional forces to make them think three times about trying to invest the castle.”
Guelf growled at the thought of giving ground. He knelt next to Thierry and traced the bridges over the Umatilla north of the walled city of Pendleton.
“They can cross these and flank us. We control the 18th Street bridge and the footbridge next to it. But 10th, 8th and Main are weak points. If we can cut those off, they’ll have to go all the way up to Fulton”-his gloved finger traced north, over the river and then back down-“and sneak back down Highway 37 to get near us. Which will give us the time we need.”
Sir Ruffin nodded. “So, here’s what we’ll do-Sir Guelf, you’ll take your men and neutralize those bridges. Caltrops, barbed wire, oil slicks, burn them, saw them, fucking piss on them, whatever it takes. Just make them
