They’d both grown up in the shadow of those thunderous stories, much more immediate and more real than the tales of the ancient world. Then all their own lifetimes had seen a steadily spreading peace and prosperity in the broad lands of Montival and among the many peoples who hailed her father as liege, paid his scot and kept his laws. What the bards had taken to calling the Age of Gold, when a child with a full purse could walk from the western sea to the Lakota plains unmolested, and old feuds and hatreds receded into song and epic. . or at least into nothing more serious than the odd brawl in a tavern.
It could get a little boring.
She suspected that was why many came south to this new province. It wasn’t crowding, since there was still plenty of good land unplowed even in the Willamette Valley, the heartland of the realm.
Órlaith herself had taken to worrying a little about the hopefully distant day when she had to do the job and maintain what his father had built.
Da at least didn’t have to start with being the beloved father-to-the-land. He got to be a wild youngster first, haring off into the back of beyond with his friends! I’ll be expected to rule like him from the first day, but without the Baraka his deeds brought with them. Lord and Lady pity me. . hopefully I’ll be middle-aged by then. I know he plans to give me more and more of the work, that’s started already.
“You’ll hear more of the old tales tonight,” Oak laughed. “There’s nothing like wine to lubricate song and story, and Goibniu of the Sacred Vat be witness, we’ve plenty of that to go with the roast venison and pastries. All we needed to do for grapes was prune, pick and crush.”
“Chief,” Edain said abruptly, raising his binoculars for a moment; one of his dogs had looked up and whined, then the other pair came to their feet and pointed southward. “One of our scouts is headed back our way, and in bit of a hurry.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
County of Napa, Crown Province of Westria
(Formerly California)
High Kingdom of Montival
(Formerly western North America)
April 29th, Change Year 46/2044 AD
Everyone went from genial to cold cat-alert at the tone. The Bow-Captain of the High King’s Archers was two years younger than her father and looked a bit older, a broad-shouldered weathered man of middle height who shaved his square chin, unlike most clansfolk his age. He made a slight imperative gesture, and the Archers all slipped off their horses and strung their great yellow yew bows with a brace and pull and flex; the beasts were for getting them about where bicycles weren’t practical, but you needed your feet on the ground to use the Mackenzie weapon.
The sound of a horse at a gallop came before the scout reappeared around a clump of oaks, and the muffled thud of a saber-scabbard against a leather-clad thigh and then the rattle of arrows in a quiver. Órlaith saw out of the corner of her eye that Heuradys had leaned over and was giving sharp concise orders to a varlet, who ran for the pack-train, but her main attention was concentrated on the messenger.
The quarter horse was lathered as she drew rein, with foam speckling her light mail shirt. Órlaith recognized her; her father had always said you should know as many names as possible. Nohemi Hierro, a wiry brown-skinned, black-haired young woman from the CORA territories around Bend, on the dry side of the High Cascades. A Rancher’s retainer by birth, with a hawk-nose and a small gold ring in one ear and a dandified trio of coyote-tails at the back of her helmet, spending a few years in the Royal service to see the world and build a stake.
“Your Majesty,” she said, raising her recurve bow in salute and offering a folded message. She pronounced it more like Yer Maj’sty, in the manner of her folk.
“Give us the verbal précis,” he said as he opened it.
Órlaith could see a sketch-map on the paper. Her father gave it a single flickering glance and handed it to her; he had an uncanny grasp of the terrain anywhere in the High Kingdom, as if he could summon up maps in his head or see the living land from a bird’s-eye view.
The sketch was concise enough, and everyone in the High Kingdom’s forces used the same set of symbols for landscape features. There was the marshy strip of beaver-dams and reeds and dense tangled willow-alder-sycamore-cottonwood forest along the river laced together with wild vines, the ruins of ancient Napa town, which were now a wood too, with bits of building sticking up through it, open country just to its north. An X at the western end of two parallel stretches of woods, and an arrow pointing towards it. She memorized and handed it back to Edain, and he to the rest.
The scout obeyed, raising her voice so all the officers and squad-leaders crowding close could hear clearly:
“Captain Hellman reports two groups of outlanders are fighting each other to the south of here, about three miles. There’s at least one beached ship, it’s burning, you’ll be able to see the smoke soon. He thinks two more beyond it, no more than a light watch on either.”
“How many blades?” her father said crisply.
“More than one hundred, less than two, both sides together, but one side outnumbers the other two, three to one. Some of them are Haida-”
There was a growl and a hiss and a rattle from the High King’s party; seaborne raiders from those northern isles had been a plague to the coasts of Montival since not long after the Change, despite defenses and punitive expeditions. They had little enough in common with the ancient tribe except the name, but they were pirates for certain, and vicious enough and to spare, and their hit-and-run attacks were the one problem Montival had never really been able to solve completely.
“But there are two other groups, different gear and banners, nothing we’ve ever seen or heard of. One lot is fighting side by side with the Haida against the third bunch.”
“Well, that simplifies things, just a bit; we’ll judge each by the company they keep, for the present.”
The scout nodded. “Captain Hellman is keeping them all under observation and holding us out of sight; we went in on foot and stealthy to get the information, once we spotted them on our way back from the Bay. They’re not paying much attention to anything but each other. He says that if you want to intervene, you’d best be quick; the fight won’t last much longer.”
“He’s wise to wait, with no more than a dozen scouts. Back with you, tell him I’m following in your tracks and he’s to meet and brief me, screening as he does. Prepare for action.”
He turned to Oak. “How many bows can Dun Barstow muster?”
“Who’re listed for the First Levy? Two-score and three; the folk here are mostly young and fit. Except for me,” he added with a grim smile. “And I’m fit enough. We’ve bicycles enough for them all. Like old times, eh?”
“If it’s all the same to you I’d rather watch sheep eat grass. Turn them out and follow quick as you can, with the usual cautions.”
Oak nodded without bothering to speak, and he and his snatched up their weapons and headed off westward at a run. Most Mackenzies were a loquacious folk by inclination, and loved argument and debate, but they knew when to shut up as well.
The High King went on, writing on his own order pad, tearing off the sheet and holding it out: “Sir Aleaume! A rider to Castle Rutherford. The commander to order a general alert, word to all the settlements in the valley, and his ready company to move out at once. And I want both his gliders in the air, I need reconnaissance of this whole area.”