“The Bearkillers come fairly close. Nobody else has anything like the Mackenzie Archers, either,” Tiphaine said and shrugged. “Our knights are more use on campaign than they are back home beating on each other at tournaments and hawking and boozing, and only a little more expensive.”
“You don’t have to find the money to pay their stipends,” Renfrew said. “Or pay to replace their beloved destriers when the bloody things die in the field-you wouldn’t think something so big would be so fragile. Those damned gee-gees cost more than a suit of plate and they wear out a whole hell of a lot faster.”
Lioncel was mildly shocked at the way the Count was talking about the noble beasts. Nearly everyone he knew loved their destriers and coursers, but you had to make allowances for the older generation. It took six years to breed and train a charger fit to bear an armored lancer into battle wearing armor of its own. He’d been unpleasantly surprised to find out that their average life expectancy on active campaign was around ten months. Even the High King’s fabled steed Epona, who’d gone all the way to the Sunrise Lands and back with him on the Quest, had died at the Horse Heaven Hills.
“The knights pay war-tallage anyway,” Tiphaine said. “So it’s out of one pocket and into another. And the Crown owns a lot of the horse-breeding farms, plus we have insurance. The Counts aren’t complaining really seriously either, it’s just the usual moaning bitchery and mine-is-bigger bickering. Ah, the delights of feudalism.”
“If you think this is bad, you should have seen what SCA politics were like before the Change. Truly murderous, at least as far as emotions went.”
“Society politics? With so little at stake?” Tiphaine asked.
“Because so little was at stake by modern standards. And notice that the Counts bitch to me,” Conrad said. “Not to you.”
“They’re not as afraid you’ll kill them, my lord Chancellor. And you are a Count, of course.”
“Nobody likes paying taxes. . also of course. Wait until they see what Matti plans to levy on them for the reconstruction program,” Conrad said, using the familiar form of High Queen Mathilda’s name.
Of course, he’s been around her since she was a baby, Lioncel thought charitably. And the older generation. . well, you have to make allowances.
The Count of Odell shuddered slightly for effect, then rubbed his hands together and grinned. “Sandra’s drawing up one of her little lists.”
“You seem to be working well with Father Ignatius, by the way,” Tiphaine said.
“He’s very capable,” Conrad Renfrew said, nodding and running a spade-shaped hand over his head, mostly naturally bald now rather than shaven as had been his custom for decades. “Even if he disapproves of me.”
“Ignatius disapproves of me a lot more,” Tiphaine said. “I can’t say he’s my favorite person in all the world either, though he and Matti are close. And he’d better be able, with his job. He gives it everything he’s got, I grant him that.”
The Knight-Brother was a Lord Chancellor too, but of the whole of the new High Kingdom of Montival. The warrior cleric had won great glory and ringing fame for himself and his Order of the Shield of St. Benedict at the High King’s side on the quest to Nantucket. He’d had a vision of the Virgin, too, which was awe-inspiring.
But Their Majesties gave him high office for his talents, Lioncel thought. The Order are scholars as well as warriors.
They’d also been leaders in the old wars. . on the side against the Portland Protective Association, despite the Lord Protector’s championing of the Faith. Of course, technically the Protectorate had been in schism in those days; all contact with Rome had ceased on the day of the Change and for better than a decade after, and Norman Arminger had found a bishop willing to claim the Throne of St. Peter. Rome was a haunted ruin now, but a legitimately chosen Holy Father ruled the universal Church from the Umbrian city of Badia.
Curiosity as to why the Lord Protector’s chosen antipope Leo had survived him by less than a month was strongly discouraged in the Association lands. Officially it was a heart attack, providentially easing the task of reunion.
Unofficially, from things overheard at home, Lioncel knew Sandra Arminger had sent one Tiphaine d’Ath to untraceably turn him from a problem into a memory, though it had been before he was born. That sort of thing didn’t happen nearly as often nowadays. .
Conrad laughed. “Though unlike me, Ignatius only has to bust his ass for the Crown metaphorically.”
“That joke was funny the first seventeen times, Conrad,” she said in a coolly neutral voice. “And you started the minute the field medics told you what the problem was.”
“Not until they got the morphine into me; before that I just screeched and swore. And I paid for that joke with months of my ass being literally in a sling and I’ll use it as often as I damned well please,” he said cheerfully. “Still, it’s all more fun than it was in the old days.”
He nodded out the pointed-arch window that lit the dayroom. That looked south across the courtyard to the glittering gold-tipped black height of the Onyx Tower, the Lord Protector’s old lair.
Tiphaine snorted slightly, but Lioncel thought it had a wealth of meaning.
“Granted Norman blossomed into a tyrant’s tyrant when he got the opportunity, but he wasn’t all bad,” Conrad said a little defensively.
Conrad of Odell had also been a fixture of Lioncel’s life-besides his duties, his Countess and her daughters were good friends of Lioncel’s mother-but at times like this you remembered that the unofficial uncle who’d played “bear” with you in front of the hearth had also been the Lord Protector’s right-hand man. He was beginning to suspect that being disconcerted that way by sudden shifts in perspective was another. . disconcerting thing about being his age.
Mother told me once she’d heard from the Countess of Odell that the Armingers stood by him when he got those burns on his face, way back before the Change.
“Ninety percent absolutely rotten bad,” Tiphaine said shortly.
“Except that we’d all have been gnawed bones without him. I sure as shit had no earthly idea what to do when the Change hit and the machines stopped, and he did. Ah, well, it’s ancient history. I think we’ve wrapped up all the essentials and you’ve had a chance to look over the replacements we’re sending forward. They’re eager enough.”
“They’re ironhead macho imbeciles who need to be bled, to correct the balance of their humors,” she said crisply. “Which I will see to. Not to mention learning that there’s more to war than couching a lance and sticking spurs in a horse’s ass.”
“Better to restrain the noble steed than prod the reluctant mule. Give my regards to Rudi. . His Majesty. . when you’re back in the cow-country.”
“The Prophet’s men did a good cloud-of-locusts imitation out there to slow pursuit. It’s gnawed bones country, since you brought up the phrase, with cows pretty scarce. The buzzards there have to carry their own rations,” she said.
“Speaking of which, here’s the grant,” he said, pulling a last formidable-looking document out of a folder and tossing it in front of her. “That’ll keep you travelling out there the rest of your life!”
“Joy,” she said. “Thank you. . I suppose.”
“Hey, it’s free! That’s always a bargain.”
“Like getting fifteen million tons of undelivered Arizona sand for sixpence ha’penny,” she said dryly. “Don’t work yourself to death while I’m gone, Conrad. I’d rather snog wolverines in a confessional booth than be saddled with the job you’ve got now.”