Dust smoked from the fields where the fall plowing was underway, teams of oxen or mules or big platter-hoofed horses pulling double-furrow riding plows and disk-harrows and seed-drills through stubble or clover-ley. It had rained hard yesterday, but there wasn’t the constant grey drizzle he was used to in the Black Months of his home in the northern Willamette, west of the Cascades on the wet side of the mountains. The clumps of elm and oak and beech around the villages and manors were streaks of brighter yellow against the dun-gold and brown and faded green, with only their size to show that the landscape was not much older than he. The straight lines of candle-shaped Lombardy poplars that outlined the great common fields with their villagers’ strips were bright as well. Vineyards scattered here and there had just finished yielding their last grapes to the harvesters, and the leaves drew notes of scarlet and orange.
Huon gave a quiet chuckle as he glanced at the plow-teams. Next year…
“What’s funny?” the squire next to him said quietly, as the horses stamped along the picket-line behind them.
“Just thinking that the crops ought to be good around here next year, with all the crap the army left getting plowed in. You can follow the path of glory by the trail of shit it leaves.”
The other boy chuckled. He was younger than Huon, about fourteen, but already slightly taller and with big hands and feet that promised six feet or better eventually; a little gangly, and you could tell that his white-blond hair had just recently been sheared from the pageboy’s bob to a squire’s bowl-cut. The surcoat over his light mail shirt had the arms of Barony Ath, a delta Or over a V argent, quartered with a blazon: Gules a domed Tower Argent surmounted by a Pennon Or in base a Lion passant guardant of the last. The arms of Forest Grove, the barony just north of Ath.
“You’re one of the Grand Constable’s household?” Huon said, a polite statement of the obvious as a way to start.
“I’m Lioncel de Stafford, heir to Forest Grove. Squire to the Grand Constable, Baroness d’Ath.”
“Huon Liu, heir of Gervais,” Huon said quietly, blinking a little against the morning sun. “Squire to Her Majesty.”
They fell silent again; it wouldn’t do to chatter too openly while they waited for orders. The Queen and the Grand Constable were consulting with men who commanded units assigned to protect the lines of communications, since the eastern enemy had lots of light cavalry for raiding around the flanks. It was essential work, but Huon didn’t envy them one bit. The great battle was coming, and they would be missing it.
I’m going to be right in the middle of it. Right behind the High Queen, he thought, with a mixture of excitement and longing and a trace of fear. We’ll be moving up tomorrow morning. A day or two, no more, and then the biggest battle since the Change!
A squire cantered up, one of the Grand Constable’s. He dismounted, threw the reins to a groom, and nodded to the two boys since they were formally more or less equals, though the squire in question was at least eighteen and in half-armor like the commanders. Then he passed the sentries with a clank of salutes, bent the knee to Mathilda and handed a dispatch to Tiphaine d’Ath.
That gave them a little cover, and they exchanged a bow. Huon looked warily at the other boy and got the same in reply.
They knew of each other, roughly, though with the way his own life had been disturbed the last couple of years with House Liu’s political troubles he wasn’t sure if they’d ever actually met beyond seeing each other about their duties. But there just weren’t all that many heirs to baronies south of the Columbia. Lioncel was the eldest son of Rigobert de Stafford, Baron Forest Grove, the Marchwarden of the South, and his wife, Lady Delia. His mother was Châtelaine of Barony Ath for the Grand Constable, too.
According to almost-certainly-true rumor Lady Delia was also Tiphaine d’Ath’s girlfriend and had been for fifteen years, which the Baron of Forest Grove didn’t mind at all since he liked men himself. The three of them seemed to be the best of friends, too, insofar as the Grand Constable had any friends…Lady Delia’s modest tally of three children (with one on the way) all looked respectably like her husband or her own dark comeliness. Mother and children mostly lived in Barony Ath when the family wasn’t at court in Castle Todenangst or Portland, but visited Forest Grove frequently.
They…all three of them…must have serious pull to keep the clergy from getting on their case, Huon thought.
He supposed he disapproved himself, though it was really between them and God and none of his business; he hoped he was a good son of Holy Mother Church, but didn’t pretend to overmuch sanctity and he’d never seriously entertained the thought of a vocation.
And judge not, lest ye be judged is really sort of scary when you think about it. I’m not that brave, or maybe not that self-confident.
Lady Delia was beautiful in a lushly feminine way, and much admired as a leader of fashion; Huon had seen her a few times at Court or social events, and felt the same awed goggle-eyed lust as any boy his age. Baron de Stafford was ruggedly handsome, a noted champion in the lists, victor in two duels, and a respected leader in the field. Lady d’Ath was known as Lady Death; she’d been the Regent’s hatchetwoman for years before she became a commander, and she was victor in more than a dozen duels, about which rumor told equally credible and really, truly hideous details. Not many people liked her and a fair number hated her bitterly, but he’d never heard an Associate nobleman refer to her with anything but wary respect shading into outright fear.
She certainly scares me, he thought. Of course, if things had gone a little differently, the Regent might have sent her to kill the rest of House Liu; I’m pretty sure she was the one who…executed…Mom.
He grimaced slightly at the thought. His mother hadn’t really been herself that last year or two before things fell apart; it had been like living with a stranger who just looked like the mother he remembered. A dangerous and utterly unpredictable stranger. According to rumor, again, she’d been possessed, a thing of evil. He could believe it-though he very much didn’t want to-and a lot of his nightly prayers were for her soul. He couldn’t even really resent the way the Regent had dealt with her.
On second thought, with the Spider of the Silver Tower behind them, it’s no wonder nobody makes trouble for d’Ath and de Stafford, even if they’re not scared of ending up in a dueling circle. Which I would be. But the Regent’s mind scares me even more than Lady Death’s sword, now that I’ve seen Lady Regent Sandra Arminger in action at close range.
“Were you with the Grand Constable at Walla Walla?” Huon asked Lioncel, a little enviously.
D’Ath had commanded the Montivalan vanguard there, the army screening the gathering of the High King’s host and turning to snap and slash at the eastern invaders as they advanced. The war-camp was full of the news of their deeds, and the way the High King had led a charge to rescue them when they were surrounded by the Prophet’s cavalry just before they reached safety a few days ago. Huon had been part of that, but you didn’t see much even if you were involved; it was all a whirling confusion, not the neat lines and duel-like blow-by-blow encounters of which the troubadours sang.
“Yes,” Lioncel said; his face was sober as he replied, as if he were suddenly looking somewhere quite different. “My lord my father was too. It was…there were so many of them, the enemy, even when they split up to try and trap us. If we’d made one big mistake, none of us would have gotten away. It was…like dancing backward while someone really big tried to hit you with a war hammer, but my lady d’Ath never let them get a grip on us. And we hurt them, hurt them badly.”