Rudi sighed; and again when he pivoted the binoculars westward. Barely two miles in that direction was trackless forest. Literally trackless since the hand of man was withdrawn, as lumbering roads were overgrown, and clearcuts sprawled into impenetrable tangles of undergrowth taller than a man through which Douglas fir and hemlock and red cedar saplings pushed. He could:
Nah. Make a realistic threat appraisal, the way Unc' Sam does. I'm a kid. Sure, I'm really, really good in the woods for a kid my age, but they've got some real woodsmen here. And Lady Tiphaine isn't just good, she's scary. They'd catch me and then they'd lock me up all the time. If someone does come to rescue me, that could screw everything up. The Luck of the Clan will help me, if I'm smart and wait for the Lord and Lady. Gotta be like Coyote, always waiting for the right moment for a trick.
The top of the tower was a featureless rectangle, fifty-five feet by forty-five, covered in thick asphalt paving, broken only by the trapdoor and a metal chimney in the middle of the eastern side, and by the turntable-mounted throwing engines crouching under their tarpaulins at each corner. They walked over to the western edge and looked down, Mathilda sitting casually in the gap between two merlons, with Rudi leaning by her side. The fighting platform on the inside of the circuit wall ended a dozen feet short of where it joined the tower's second story; the gap was covered by removable footbridges that ended in thick steel doors. A full-scale metal drawbridge joined the ground floor of the tower to the courtyard over a ditch bristling with sharpened, rust-reddened angle iron that surrounded the tower-keep on the inside. The drawbridge was down now, and the gates wide open, but two spearmen stood by the entrance.
Houses and barracks and workshops lined the inside of the wall, along with a chapel, all built in thickly plastered and whitewashed cinderblock, plain and serviceable; there were paved pathways, but most of the courtyard was graveled dirt. Savory smells came from the kitchens; scullions bustled in and out, and outside over pits full of white-glowing oak coals two yearling steers turned on spits, along with shoats, sending wisps of blue smoke skyward as cooks basted and brushed. Others rolled barrels up pairs of beams thrust slantwise through cellar doors. There was a cheerful bustle in and out through the main gates; relief was in the voices as well, for nobody had lost their post, and the new seigneur had ordered a feast on a scale that showed she wasn't the sort to squeeze every silver dime until it squeaked. The tenants and peons would pay for all in the end, but at least the staff would get a good feed out of it.
A female knight was very rare, but not enough to be bizarre or totally unheard-of, even as a fief-holder. And this one had the prestige of rescuing the princess, and capturing none less than the son of the Witch Queen, and having the favor of the Lord Protector and Lady Sandra.
Tiphaine d'Ath was busy at something else, over by the pells and targets where the castle garrison trained. Rudi grinned, and Mathilda did too: one of the men-at-arms froze in midstroke. Even at this distance they could tell how his face went white as new cheese under a weathered tan. The razor tip of his new liege-lady's sword rested very lightly against the throat of his mail coif; a slight push would crush his larynx, or even pierce the mail-she used a sword with a lighter blade and a longer point than most in the Protectorate.
"Not bad," she said, stepping back. "But you can all use some work with the blade, particularly the pointy bit on the end. A hint: it's supposed to go into the other guy. Any of you infantry care to try a bout? You'll have to use a sword sometimes as well as crossbow and spear."
Sir Ivo and Sir Ruffin were grinning as well, where they stood with their shields slung over their backs and their crossed hands resting on the pommels of their own drawn blades. None of the men-at-arms had been able to beat either, even Ruffin with his not-quite-completely recovered left arm, but some of them had lasted more than a few seconds. Then the new Lady of Ath had offered a hundred rose nobles and a promotion to anyone who could beat her:
"Tiphaine made them all look like dancing bears," Mathilda giggled.
"Yeah. She's good," Rudi said; he blinked away a memory of Aoife's neck suddenly running red, and her eyes going wide in shock. "I think maybe Aunt
Astrid's better, and maybe Lord Bear, but maybe not. And she's smart, too. Now they'll all go around boasting about what a swordswoman their new liege is."
Mathilda gave him an odd look. "I thought she was just making them look silly, and they'd hate it," she said.
"Well, yeah, she made them look like clowns. But they don't: you know… feel silly if she's Scathach come again with a sword," he said, blinking a little; he'd thought it was obvious. "Warriors are like that. If their leader can beat them, they want to believe they can beat anyone else easy, and that makes them feel sort of proud. It's a bit funny when you say it out loud, but that's the way it works, I guess here too."
"Yup," she said thoughtfully. "And I suppose 'cause Tiphaine's a girl, she has to show that she's better than anyone real quick."
"Well, yeah, around here, I suppose so. Dumb."
"I wonder if we could get her to tutor us with the sword, while we're here?" Mathilda said, still thoughtful. "Mom said we'd have a tutor for book stuff soon but she didn't say anything about phys-ed. I want to be real good. Like you say, it'll be handy someday. And it's fun anyway."
Matti's no dummy, Rudi thought with approval. A Chief has to think of things like that.
"Her friend Katrina was your tutor, wasn't she?"
"Yup," Mathilda said. "Arms, gymnastics, and riding. I don't know if she was that good-" She nodded towards the exercise ground. "I was only just eight back then, you know, too little to know much. But she and Tiphaine used to spar a lot, and people would come to watch. They did all sorts of things together."
"Like Aoife and Liath," Rudi said absently.
Down below, the row of spearmen and crossbowmen were respectfully declining more practice bouts with Tiphaine d'Ath; several of them were smiling as they did so. She nodded to the two knights, and both of them attacked immediately, not wasting time on preparations beyond unslinging their shields. He leaned over the parapet and wished he were a little closer, absently hooking a hand into the back of Mathilda's belt as she bent forward as well.
There was a fast, violent clash, steel-on-steel and beating in sharp cracks on the big kite-shaped shields, and then Ruffin's blade went flying as a shield edge slammed into his forearm just above the wrist. People dodged the pinwheeling length of sharp metal; sparring with real battle swords was a bit of a show-off thing. But even then they kept looking as Tiphaine drove Ivo before her; at last he leapt forward, trying to knock her back shield-to-shield, and she spun like a dust devil, tripped him neatly and tapped the point of her blade between his shoulders before helping him up.
"Well, not really like that," Mathilda said; then her brows flew up in shocked surmise.
Rudi looked up at her. "Oh? I thought it was probably like that-I can usually tell things about people, you know. But I can't be sure, 'cause I never, like, saw them at the same time."
She frowned, and looked over to see that the varlet was out of hearing distance. When she spoke it was quietly: "You'd better not tell anyone else you think that," she warned. "You could get her into a lot of trouble."
"Oh? Oh, yeah. Sure, no problemo. Tiphaine's not so bad."