"The glory of the Elder Days, and the hosts of Beleriand," Astrid murmured softly, as the Protectorate commoners uncovered and bowed, or sank into deep curtsies before their rulers and those of the allied realms of the Meeting.
"Yet not so many, nor so fair," Alleyne replied in the same quiet voice. "And they're coming to us, and not vice versa."
"And not enjoying it at all, some of them," Astrid said happily. "It hasn't been a nice day for Tiphaine, at all, I imagine."
Even here in the midst of the castle, in the arming chamber of the Grand Constable's quarters, you could hear the low grumbling surf-roar of voices from the walls and the field to the south. It was time to go; she had to meet Sandra and Conrad and do the ceremonial necessities. Tiphaine d'Ath wasn't looking forward to it, but that had been true of a lot of the work she'd done for Sandra since the Change. You couldn't complain about the pay or benefits, and it was usually interesting.
"And they say I'm obsessed with fashion!" Delia de Stafford said.
"We've all got to look pretty to keep up the Association's credit in front of the foreigners," Tiphaine said, then looked down as the last buckle snapped home.
"Very neat, Lioncel," the Grand Constable said to her page, who was also Delia's eldest son. "But you musn't touch the plates with your bare palms; just the fingers. They smudge a lot more easily than the old chain mail did."
The harness was her parade armor, the same design as her field kit and just as practical in terms of stopping sharp or pointy or heavy things wielded with ill intent, but a good deal more showy, since the plates were made of chrome steel and burnished- white armor, the term was.
The page blushed painfully as only an eleven-year-old boy could do, and buffed away the marks with a chamois. He stood back after a moment; his younger brother Diomede knelt and wiped down her greaves and the steel cover of her riding boots. Unconsciously Lioncel's hands clenched in admiration as he stared at the slender form of steel and black leather he'd helped arm, her pale eyes nearly the color of the burnished metal.
That all showed to better advantage because of the tailor's-style three-valve wall mirror. The rest of the room was mostly bare and lined with sheets of salvaged marble and shelves bearing spare parts, polish and tools. Empty armor racks like skeletal mannequins showed where her field kit had been packed up. The room had a rich clean odor halfway between metallic and that of a saddler's shop.
Maintaining a chevalier's armor was something pages worked on, under the supervision of squires, as part of the noble career path. The two boys walked around her with anxious eyes and ready cloths, to see if anything needed touching up, from gorget to the golden rowel spurs of knighthood.
"Now make your devoir to your lady mother. And then go and tell my lords the commanders that I'll be along shortly," she said, picking up her gauntlets. "Lioncel, take the helmet for me. Diomede, my sword belt."
They did, glowing with pride and pacing side by side, making a pretty picture in their dark liveries and brimless caps, one black-haired and the other almost as white-blond as Tiphaine herself.
Nice kids, she thought. Even if they are males.
Tiphaine had never had the slightest impulse to reproduce, even via turkey baster; Delia was enthusiastic about children, though, enough to use that venerable pre-Change technology. And the proforma marriage to de Stafford had served to ennoble her as well as to make her offspring respectable.
" I'll do this part," she said.
She stood, a little awkwardly in her seventh month and the maternity version of the long-skirted cotte-hardi; the pregnancy had fleshed her delicate brunette prettiness out a bit, too. Tiphaine bowed her head for the flat, round black hat with its roll about the brim, and then stood as Delia arranged it on the Grand Constable's straight blond hair, twitching the broad tail to fall down past a steel-clad shoulder. A small livery badge at the front bore the d'Ath arms, quartered with Sandra Arminger's.
"And this," Delia said.
She unwound a long silk scarf from her headdress-a tall pointy thing with a passing resemblance to a brimless version of a witch's hat Which is ironic, Tiphaine thought.
– and looped it around the Grand Constable's neck, tucking the ends beneath the mail collar. Tiphaine fell to one knee for an instant, took her hand and kissed it; their goodbyes had to be private.
And since I ended up in this Paleo-Catholic feudal wet dream of Norman's, that's the way it's going to stay, dammit…
"Come back safe," Delia said, fighting to smile.
"With my lady-love's favor to hearten me, how can I fail?" she said whimsically.
Her hand touched the silk. For a single moment, as their eyes met, the neo-chivalry didn't seem silly at all.
"And if you start dallying with any pretty cowgirls, it'll choke you," Delia said, smiling through eyes shining with tears. "I've enchanted it… and I'm a witch, you know."
They both smiled; Delia actually was a witch, albeit closeted in that respect as well. While the Old Religion wasn't illegal in the Protectorate anymore, it wasn't anything you advertised if you were a member of the nobility, either.
"Never, my sweet," Tiphaine replied over her shoulder as she turned to go. "I don't like the smell of the rancid butter they use as face cream out East."
Signe Havel noticed that Chuck Barstow, First Armsman of the Clan Mackenzie, was humming under his breath as they walked towards the banner of the Dunedain Rangers-protocol said the commanders of all the allied contingents should be there for this. Technically she should have been riding out from the castle with the other heads of state, but damned if she'd spend even one night beneath the same roof as the widow and partner-in-crime of her husband's killer.
And since Mike killed Norman Arminger too, I don't think Sandra Arminger feels very hospitable where I'm concerned, either. Though she'd hide it faultlessly.
Then Chuck began to sing, very softly indeed beneath the crowd-noise, his eyes on the splendors of Castle Todenangst and the feudal state of the party riding out through the gates amid caracoling horses and the snap of lance-pennants:
"Em Eye Cee, Kay Eee Wy, Em Oh You Ess Eee…"
He was a lean sinewy man in his early fifties, with thinning sandy hair and long muscular legs showing beneath his kilt, and he'd been around thirty when the Change struck. It took Eric Larsson and his sister a bit longer to recognize the tune; the Bearkiller leaders had been only eighteen then, forty now. Eric coughed into a fist like an oak maul encased in a steel gauntlet to conceal his initial bellow of laughter, the plates of his composite armor rattling, and Signe shot them both a scandalized look.
Well, yes, it does all have a touch of Disney, but this isn't the moment!
And that castle wasn't a fantasy for children made of plaster and lath; the walls were very real mass-concrete many yards thick, and the towers held murder machines and flame throwers and lots of completely serious soldiers with spears and swords meant for use, not show. If you had the men-at-arms, you got to decide what constituted reality.
Eric grinned, a piratical expression with his Vandyke beard and yellow locks flowing to his armored shoulders. A golden hoop earring glittered in his right ear.
"Says the man in a kilt and a feathered bonnet," he said to the Mackenzie Armsman. "Not to mention a golden torc."
Chuck snorted. "Hey, the torc's just our equivalent of a wedding ring, nowadays. And I was doing this stuff"-his fingers tapped the hilt of his sword-"when I was eighteen."
"Geezer! So was I, but by then it was real life, not fantasy," Eric said cheerfully.
"Says the man whose younger sister thinks she's the greatgranddaughter of Aragorn son of Arathorn and Arwen Undomiel," Chuck shot back.
"It's not quite that bad; she just thinks she's their remote descendant," Signe said. "Anyway, we Larssons do come from a very ancient line of sand and gravel magnates in the eastern part of Middle-earth."