Actually, that let's-get-to-know-each-other-first is usually the girl's line, he thought, bemused, as she flounced back to where her sister lay.
Slowly a smile spread over his face as he lay back and pulled up his blankets. His body was giving a sharp protest at what he'd done, and a big part of his mind was agreeing, yearning for the sheer comfort of closeness. The rest of him…
Maybe she didn't just set out to make me feel better, but for some reason I do!
TheScourgeofGod
CHAPTER FOUR
Astrid Larsson, Hiril Dunedain, frowned upward at the curiously graceful bulk of Castle Todenangst. The great fortress-palace of the Arminger dynasty had been built around the slopes of Grouse Butte in the first Change Years, a little east of the town of Newberg. Built by thousands glad to haul concrete on their backs and claw away earth and rock for a regular bowl of gruel from Portland's commandeered grain elevators and a taste of the whip from the overseers. In those days of the great dying it had been a good bargain.
Still a symbol of tyranny, I suppose, she thought. Complete with dark tower. But…
Now it looked as if it had been there forever, a great circuit of crenellated concrete wall and tower covered in shining white stucco, the gates like castles in themselves and the broad moat bright with water lilies in coral pink and white and purple. The high mass of the inner donjon loomed over it all where the builders had carved away the central butte and cased it in ferroconcrete, covered with pale granite salvaged from abandoned banks and rearing hundreds of feet higher than the surrounding plain of dark forest and green pasture and yellow stubble-field, vineyard and orchard and village.
Towers higher yet studded the oval wall, the greatest of all on the southern height nearest them, sheathed in black stone with glittering crystal inclusions that made it sparkle in the bright sunlight of a September dawn. Its roof was conical and tapered to a spike, but not green copper like the others. It was covered in gold leaf, and it blazed like a flame as the sun cleared the forested Parrett Mountains to the eastward, a monument to the dark and ruthless will of the man who'd reared it amid the death-agony of a world.
He's been dead twelve years. Does his spirit still linger here?
Proud banners flew from the towers, and lords and ladies in bright finery stood on the battlements to look down on the assembled armies of the Meeting. Several thousand peasants and townsmen crowded around the lowered drawbridge in their best Sunday-go-to-Church dress of jerkin and hose and cap or double tunic and wimple, ready to wave the little Lidless Eye flags they carried. A rank of soldiers stood on either side to keep them back, facing outward with their spears held horizontally.
"I have to admit, though, it's almost… like something out of Gondor, isn't it?" she said with grudging admiration in her silver-veined blue eyes.
That she used Sindarin kept the conversation private from outsiders. It was even more so because only she and her husband, Alleyne, and her anamchara, Eilir Mackenzie, and her man, John Hordle, stood near her. The rest of her Rangers were in a solid mass behind her two hundred strong, each standing at their horse's head, clad in light armor and spired helmets. The White Tree with its surround of seven stars and crown flew from a tall banner a proud ohtar held beside her own dappled Arab.
"Possibly like Minas Tirith," Alleyne said, smoothing a finger along his neat blond mustache. "Or possibly more like the offspring off a fleeting romantic encounter between Carcassonne and San Simeon. I'm certainly glad we never had to try and storm it."
Eilir nodded, and Hordle grunted agreement around the last mouthful of a massive smoked-venison-and-pickled-onion sandwich.
"John!" Astrid hissed under her breath. "Do you always have to be eating? You're as bad as a hobbit!"
He swallowed and licked fingers like great sausages backed with red furze, and belched comfortably.
"Takes a bit to keep a Halfling my size going, m'lady," he said mildly, and leaned on the ball pommel of his heavy four-foot sword. "Can't roitly expect me ter live on just a bit o' lembas, now can you?"
There was some truth in that, since he was ten inches taller than her five-nine and weighed over three hundred pounds, with shoulders as broad as a sheathed sword and a face like a cured ham atop a wedge of muscle where most men kept a neck.
"Besides, it'll be all jerky and hardtack soon enough, with raisins if we're lucky. Maggoty dead horse if we're not."
She nodded. The allied army was drawn up on the great open fields that sloped down from Todenangst's south gate towards the forest of oak and fir along the Willamette River; they served as green pasture for the castle's horses in peacetime, and now they blossomed with orderly rows of tents and pavilions. The smells of any war-camp-woodsmoke, scorched frying pan, slit trenches inadequately shoveled in after use, horses, leather and metal and sweat-mingled with the mild sweetness of the crushed grass.
The Rangers had the center station since she'd be in command. To her right were the thousand Mackenzie archers that Juniper had brought, beneath the banner of the antlers and Crescent Moon; beyond them were the two hundred and fifty Bearkiller A-listers with their black bear's head on crimson, all full-armored and equipped with lance and horseman's bow; flanking them were a hundred knight-brothers of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict from Mt. Angel, with the cross-and-raven emblazoned on their shields.
To her left was the Corvallis contingent, standing with their burnished armor and equally shiny field catapults, and the orange-and-brown flag of that rich city-state, with the letters PFSC above for the People and Faculty Senate of Corvallis. The flag bore the image of Benny the Beaver, a rodentine head scowling ferociously and baring chisel teeth. Her brother-in-law Mike Havel had called it dorky beyond words to use the university's football flag as a battle emblem, and she had to agree, but at least today they didn't have those cheerleaders in short skirts leaping and cavorting and making pyramids in front of the troops. She'd always hated that, particularly on serious occasions.
The Portland Protective Association's contingent was on the far left. Several hundred were armored lancers on destriers, knights and men-at-arms riding great steeds that themselves wore armor on head and neck and chest. A thousand were footmen, half with spear and shield, the rest crossbowmen. The Association's men stood a little apart from the others-all of whom had fought the Protectorate during the War of the Eye twelve years ago.
Or at least their parents and elder siblings did. That's going to be awkward, she thought. Far too many of us have the memory of friends or kin killed by those men under the Lidless Eye banner. And vice versa, I suppose.
There was a stir in the crowd of commoners. Heralds in bright tabards and plumed hats marched in a double rank through the open gates of Castle Todenangst, formed lines on either side of the roadway and raised their long flare-mouthed silver trumpets. From behind them came the white glitter of polished armor and the glow of embroidered silk and vestments, and the flutter of heraldic banners. The trumpets screamed in high sweet unison, and then a great voice cried out as the echoes died among the walls and towers:
"Our sovereign liege-lady, Sandra Arminger, Regent of the Portland Protective Association for Crown Princess Mathilda Arminger! Lord Conrad Renfrew, Count of Odell and Chancellor of the Realm! The lady Tiphaine d'Ath, Grand Constable of the Association! His Grace, Abbot-Bishop Dmowski of Mt. Angel and Head of the Commonwealth of the Queen of Angels! Lady Juniper, the Mackenzie of Clan Mackenzie!-"