Conqueror

'Hail! Hail! Hail!'

* * *

'I'd rather rut with a boar and farrow piglets!' Marie Welf shouted through the locked door.

She gripped the pistol more firmly. On either side of the door one of her gentlewomen waited, one with a tall brass candlestick in her grip, the other with a jewel-hilted but perfectly functional stiletto.

'Please, Mistress Fo-ah, Mistress Welf.' The house steward's voice quavered, his Spanjol accent stronger than usual. 'The soldiers say that you must open the door.'

'I'll kill the first five men to step through it,' Marie said. Nobody listening to her could doubt she would try.

Silence fell. Riding boots clumped on the parquet floors outside, and the strip of light under the door brightened as more lamps were brought.

'Marie, this is Teodore,' a man called.

'What are you doing here, cousin?' Marie said.

She was a tall full-figured young woman, with strawberry blond hair in long braids on either side of a face that was beautiful rather than pretty, high cheek-boned and with a straight nose. Spots of anger burned on either cheek now, and she held the pistol with a practiced two-handed grip.

'Talking to you. And I'm not going to do it through a closed door. Watch out.'

Shots blasted, and the brass plate of the lock bulged. A man yelled in pain in the corridor outside, and a chilly smile lit Marie's face. The door swung out, and a man stood there; in his mid-twenties, five years older than the woman. His bluntly handsome features were a near-match for hers under the downy blond beard, and he wore a cuirassier officer's armor. The plumed helmet was tucked under one arm, half-hidden by the deinonosauroid cloak that glittered in the lamplight. At the sight of her leveled pistol he spread the other arm away from his body.

'Shoot, cousin, if you want to see one less Welf in the world.'

Marie sighed and let the pistol drop to the glowing Kurdish carpet. 'Come in, Teodore,' she said, and sank down to sit on one corner of the four-poster bed.

The ladies-in-waiting looked at her uncertainly. 'Thank you, Dolors, Katrini-but you'd better go to your rooms now.'

Teodore set his helmet down on a table and began working off his armored gauntlets. 'You wouldn't have any wine, would you?' he asked. 'Cursed cold night and wet besides; a coup is hard outdoor work.'

She pointed wordlessly to a sideboard, and he smiled as he poured for both.

'You're making a very great deal of fuss about something you'll have to do anyway,' he pointed out, handing her the glass and going to sit by the fire.

The velvet of the chair dimpled and stretched under the weight of his rain-streaked armor. The wall beside him held the fireplace, burning with a low coal blaze, and a bookshelf. That carried a respectable two dozen volumes; the Canonical Handbooks in Wulf Philson's Namerique translation, lives of the Avatars, and histories and travelogues in Spanjol and Sponglish.

'You'd fuss too if you'd been kept a prisoner since that beast murdered my mother,' Marie said. The wine was Sala, strong and sweet. It seemed to coil around the fire in her chest.

'I was fond of Aunt Charlotte myself. 'That beast' is now off the Seat, and running for his life,' Teodore pointed out. 'Something which I had my hand in.'

'Ingreid is a pig. And he supported Forker. I'm certain he was one of the ones who murdered Mother for that coward.'

'That was never proven. And Ingreid is a strong pig,' Teodore said, casting a quick look at the door. They were talking quietly, though, and he had told his men to move everyone down the corridor. 'The fact that he supported Forker tells in his favor; the alternative was civil war. The alternative now is civil war, unless Ingreid Manfrond has an unassailable claim to the Seat. If you don't think that civil war is possible with invaders at the frontiers, then you've read less of our history than I thought.' He waved at the bookcase.

'Can Ingreid read at all?' she said bitterly.

'No, probably,' Teodore said frankly. 'That'll make him all the more popular with the backwoods nobles, and the petty-squires and freeholders. Civvies will keep the accounts as usual, and he's got advisers like Carstens and-' he rapped his breastplate '-for the more complicated things. He can certainly lead a charge, which is more than you can say for that pseudo-scholar Forker.'

He leaned forward, a serious expression on his face. 'I'm ready to fight and die for him, as General. All you have to do is marry him.'

'You aren't expected to go to bed with him, Teodore.'

'There is that,' the young man admitted. 'But you'd have to marry somebody sometime; it's the way things are done at our rank.'

'I'm a free woman of the Brigade; the law says I can't be married against my will,' Marie said.

Teodore spread his hands. She nodded. 'I know. . but he smells. And he's fifty.'

'You'll outlive him, then,' Teodore said. 'Possibly as Regent for an underage heir. And you will marry him tomorrow. If necessary, with a trooper standing behind you twisting your arm. That won't be dignified, but it'll work.'

'You would make a better General, cousin!'

'So I would, if I had the following,' Teodore said. 'So would you, if you were a man. But I haven't and you aren't. The enemy won't wait for me to acquire a majority, either.'

'And how much will my life be worth, once I've produced a healthy heir?' Marie said. 'Not to mention the question of his own sons, who'll have Regent ambitions of their own.'

Teodore went to the door and checked that his cuirassier troopers were holding the servants at the end of the corridor.

'As to the heir,' he said, leaning close to Marie's ear, 'time will tell. In a year, the war will be over. Once the grisuh are back across the sea. .'

Marie's eyes were cold as she set down the wineglass. 'All right, Teodore,' she said. 'But listen to me and believe what I say: whatever I promise in the cathedron Ingreid Manfrond will get no love or loyalty from me. And he'll regret forcing me to this on the day he dies, and that will be soon. Spirit of Man of This Earth be my witness.'

Teodore Welf had broken lances with Guard champions on the northwestern frontier, and fought the Stalwarts further east. He had killed two men in duels back home, as well.

At that moment, he was conscious mainly of a vast thankfulness that it was Ingreid Manfrond and not Teodore Welf who would stand beside Marie in the cathedron tomorrow.

Thunder rippled through the night, and rain streaked the diamond-pane windows of thick bubbled glass. Teodore looked away from his cousin.

'At least,' he said, 'the enemy won't be making much progress through this. We'll have time to get our house in order.'

* * *

Thunder cracked over the ford. The light stabbed down into a midday darkness, off wet tossing trees and men's faces. Oxen bellowed as they leaned into the traces, trying to budge the gun mired hub-deep in the middle of the rising river; they even ignored the dogs of the regular hitch straining beside them. Dozens of infantrymen heaved at the barrel and wheels, gasping and choking as water broke over them. Others labored at the banks, throwing down loads of brush and gravel to keep the sloping surfaces passable. Wagon-teams bawled protestingly as they were led into the water; men waded through the waist-high brown flood with their rifles and cartridge- boxes held over their heads.

One of the work-crews was relieved, and stumbled upslope to the courtyard of the riverside inn.

'Wat's a name a' dis river?' one asked a noncom.

'Wolturno,' the man mumbled, scraping mud off his face. It was a winding stream, meandering back and forth across the flood-plain where the road ran. The Expeditionary Force had already crossed it several times.

'Ever' fukkin' river here is named Wolturno,' the soldier said. They slouched into lines before the kettles.

'Thank'ee, miss,' the infantryman said, taking his bowl and cup.