They unhitched their fast coursers from the picket line, vaulted into the saddle and cantered off northward, turning west along a rutted lane bordered with London plane trees to avoid the city wall, riding off onto the verge now and then to dodge the odd cart or wagon and once sweeping off their hats and bowing in the saddle as a lady went by on her palfrey, with maids and guards in attendance. She nodded back at them and smiled regally, teeth white against her brown face.
Lioncel had stuffed the package in a saddlebag after sniffing hopefully at it.
“My lady my mother is always sending me stuff,” he said. “Little things, but it’s usually stuff I really need as well as being cool.”
He slit the note open with his dagger, a thin-bladed misericorde, and read it. Huon caught a slight waft of scent, some cool floral fragrance, maybe verbena.
“Oh good, thanks be to the Virgin. The accouchement went easily-like a watermelon seed, she says, and they’re both doing well. Lady Valentine Renfrew was there at Montinore with her-the Countess of Odell-they’re old friends. And the Renfrew daughters were there, all three; they’re nice girls. It must have been a lot of comfort to Mom. And them. It’s hard on women, waiting, when there’s war.”
“Bearing children is like battle,” Huon said, which was a cliché but had the advantage of being true. “You’re lucky to have three brothers and sisters.”
The smile ended as Lioncel read the end of the note, and Huon could see a flush spread up to the other boy’s ears, along with an audible grinding of teeth.
“Oh, sweet Saints, Dolores sends her regards!” he muttered angrily under his breath, and started to crumple the letter before he smoothed it out and tucked it into a pocket in his trews.
“Ah…who’s Dolores?” Huon asked.
They were thoroughly alone. The only sounds were the creak of saddle leather, the dull hollow clop of hooves on dirt, and the wind in the trees. Yellow-brown leaves fell around them, and a flight of starlings went by. Through town would be the most direct route, but impossibly crowded and slow. The witches-hat tops of the town’s towers and the taller ones of the castle on its northern fringe edged by, with the green slopes of the low mountains behind. You could see the peaks of Adams and Ranier from here, and sometimes the cone of Mt. Hood southward and west.
Lioncel’s face had relaxed a little. “A girl,” he said ruefully. “A really pretty girl. Friendly, too.”
Well, at least it is a girl, Huon thought. “Your leman?” he said.
Lioncel was distinctly young to have a recognized lady-love and he wasn’t wearing a favor-ribbon on his arm, either, just a plain mail shirt and surcoat.
“Ah…no,” he replied, and his mouth quirked, apparently halfway between humor and embarrassment. “She’s a servant girl at Montinore manor house. Part-time, boon-work, you know. Her father’s a blacksmith, and her mother’s a midwife.”
Huon nodded; he did. All peasant families on a manor owed labor-service as part of the rent for their holdings. Usually the skilled upper house-servants were full-time retainers who moved with the nobles they served from manor to castle to court, but the routine scrubbing, potato-peeling and fetch-and-carry was done by young women from the nearest estate village, fulfilling part of their kin’s obligations. It wasn’t as hard as working in the demesne fields and there were other advantages.
But Lioncel was rather too young to have an acknowledged mistress, either. Even if his parents were very indulgent.
“And…well, Mom…my lady mother…caught us in a linen closet,” Lioncel went on doggedly.
“Ouch,” Huon said sympathetically, trying to imagine his mother’s reaction…even when she’d been herself. “Trouble?”
“Well, no. I mean, Dolores was nice about it. She didn’t try to pretend I’d made her do it which could have gotten me into trouble and her out of it; my lady my mother and Baroness d’Ath are both really strict about good lordship. Mom laughed at first, but…then she teased me about it. She’s still at it, and that was months and months ago.”
“Oh, ouch, ouch,” Huon said sympathetically. “Totally ouch.”
And I mean it. It would be bad enough having a brother tease you about something like that. Having your mother do it…you’d want to turn into a vole and crawl into a tunnel and never come out.
“And then Lady d’Ath just looked at me and said that if Dolores’d gotten pregnant, the compensation money would have come out my allowance for the next three million years. And then I had to confess it to Father Lailard and got this unbelievable penance. And I didn’t even get that far! I just had my hand under her outer tunic! And Dad…my lord my father…he killed himself laughing.”
Huon laughed himself, but slapped the younger squire on the shoulder to show it wasn’t unkindly meant.
“They probably think embarrassing you is the best way to keep you on the straight and narrow,” he said.
Lioncel laughed too after a moment. They fell silent as they turned off the rural lane and through a gap in the row of trees onto a trail that meandered through rocky grassland northward. The mountains were much closer now, and they were leaving the settled zone where people were omnipresent. Which meant…
“Time to arm up,” Huon said.
They both stuffed their hats in the saddlebags and put on their helmets, coalscuttle sallets with flared neck-guards, but the lighter open-face type without visors. The felt and leather pads closed around his head. He’d adjusted them carefully, but you still got a headache if you wore it all day; though that was better than getting your brains spattered by a mace. The chin-cup and straps had to be just right too, so he swiveled and tossed his head to make sure everything was firm without being too tight. They half-drew their swords and daggers and re-seated them with a slight hiss of steel on wood and leather greased with neatsfoot oil. Lioncel slipped the crossbow off his back, worked the lever set in the forestock to cock it and clipped a quarrel in the firing groove. Huon preferred a saddlebow, and he pulled the horn-and-sinew recurve out of the boiled-leather scabbard at his knee and set an arrow on the string.
They were coming up through meadows to the Little Klickitat River and a thick scattering of trees along it, big cottonwoods and willows, pale-barked white alder, the odd elm or beech someone had planted since the Change and a thick understory of bush and saplings. Their trail led down to the water and up the other side, and from the tracks was made mostly by cattle and sheep. The water was shallow, gravel and riffles showing as often as pools, but the rainy season had started in the Simcoes to the north and it was rising from its summer lows.
“You first,” Huon said; it was his mission, so he was in charge. “Cover! Move!”
Lioncel crossed as Huon brought up his bow and covered him, eyes flickering along the edge of the riverside woods for any telltale sign of movement. There wasn’t any, save for a badger trundling off with a ground squirrel in its jaws, and the usual birds, including a bald eagle perching on a lightning-killed pine and ignoring them. Once he was across the blond boy turned his horse right and dropped the reins on the mount’s neck. The well-trained animal stood stock-still, not even bending its head to crop at the green grass that grew in clumps by the river’s side.
“Cover!” Lioncel called, bringing the crossbow up to his shoulder. “Move!”
It was a heavy weapon for someone the young squire’s age, but he kept it steady. Huon let his weight shift forward slightly, and Dancer walked into the water, placing his feet carefully and raising his knees high. He wasn’t using a knight’s saddle, which cut you off from contact with the horse for the sake of locking you into a standing position. This was a light pad type, and of course he’d trained in all the equestrian arts under experts since he was old enough to walk.