"… my soul follows Hawk on the ghost of the wind
I find my voice and speak truth;
All-Father, wise Lord
All-Mother, gentle and strong…"
Her mouth quirked. Some of her own troops were praying too- Queen of Angels, alleluia -more of them were just scratching and stretching and getting in line by the cookfires, or turning in and trying to sleep if they'd been on the last night-watch. A few were singing, a new song "He spoke to me of the sunrise lands
And a shrine of secret power
Where the sacred Sword of the Lady stands
And awaits the appointed hour;
The hero's right, Artos his name…"
The quirk grew to a small cold smile. That was Lady Juniper's work, if she'd ever heard it. It didn't do to forget that the Chief of the Mackenzies had been a bard-a busker, they'd said in those days-back before the Change. For that matter, half the troubadours in the Association's territory trained down South, for all that it prompted rumors you were a witch. And that story about Rudi's secret name, Artos, had been circulating since the Protector's War. Sandra knew with the top part of her mind how powerful song-born tales could be, but Tiphaine thought the Lady Regent had trouble believing it down below the neck.
Her squire made a signal. "Rodard has the deserter, my lady. Here are the documents she carried."
Armand was a tall young black-haired blue-eyed man in his early twenties, ready for knighting and hoping for it during this campaign. He and his younger brother Rodard were also the nephews of Katrina Georges, who'd been Tiphaine's companion from the time the Change caught their Girl Scout troop in the woods until she was killed in the War of the Eye… by Astrid Larsson. It gave Tiphaine a little twinge to look at their boldly handsome faces, though the resemblance wasn't as strong nowadays.
He was already in half armor, breastplate and mail-sleeves and vambraces on the forearms; his brother wore the older-style knee-length mail hauberk. She took the packet of sealed papers and turned back into the tent, and looked at the T-shaped stand that carried her war gear and shield.
This will be my last war, I think, at least for leading from the front, she thought with cold calculation; she'd lost just a hair of her best speed, and it would get worse. Now, let's see if I can go out with a bang.
The folding table had been set out, and canvas stools. She sat on one and waited; by reflex her fingers itched to open the report on the table, which was the one about reconditioning the railway to here from the Dalles. Keeping four thousand troops fed and supplied out here in the cow-country wasn't easy, and the Protectorate had agreed to take on the logistics as part of its share. But paperwork would eat every minute of your time if you got too obsessed with detail work, and questioning a valuable prisoner was also important.
She liked to keep her hand on the pulse of intelligence; possibly because she'd been as much a spy as anything in the first years of her work for Lady Sandra.
Not to mention a wet-work specialist, she thought wryly, and touched one of her knives-not the obvious one on her sword belt.
Rodard had his sword out as he showed the prisoner in; his brother stood outside the tent flap to make sure nobody got within earshot without permission, even if they had the rank to muscle through the perimeter of spearmen. With the east-facing flap back there was good light and she was sitting to an angle to it so she'd be in shadow.
Always an advantage, to see without being seen.
The deserter had a square dark olive Hispano face and black eyes and coarse straight bobbed hair so dark there were iridescent highlights; around five foot six or seven, Tiphaine thought, and in her late twenties or early thirties-hard to be sure when someone spent their days outdoors in this dry interior climate. Lean, wiry and tough-looking, probably quick and very dangerous with a sword… Which was no surprise; in their line of work a woman had to be extremely good to compensate for the thicker bones and extra muscle men carried. She wore breeches and boots that had the indefinable look of uniform, dyed mottled sage green, and a waist-length mail-shirt with chevrons on the short sleeve: light-cavalry outfit. The belt held laced frog-mounts for a saber and dagger, and there was a slightly shiny patch in the mail on her right shoulder where the baldric for a quiver would rest.
She came to attention and started to salute, looked down at her bound hands, and shrugged.
"Ma'am, I'm Sergeant Rosita Gonzalez-"
"That's my lady d'Ath," the squire whose sword hovered near her back said.
"Gently, Rodard, gently," Tiphaine said, her voice empty of all emotion, like water running over smooth rocks. "She came to us."
"I'm looking for Grand Constable d'Ath," the prisoner said. "I've got messages from, ah, Princess Mathilda and-"
Tiphaine didn't sit bolt upright. Rodard didn't raise the sword or swear; he and his brother had been trained in her household for more than a decade, as pages and squires. Instead the Grand Constable untied the bundle of letters and looked at the seal on the first. It wasn't the usual shapeless blob of tallow, but a crimson disk from a stack of premade blanks, the type the Chancellor's office used. And the seal-ring was one she recognized, the Lidless Eye crossed by the baton of cadency.
"Seals can be duplicated, Sergeant," she said softly. "Or taken from prisoners."
The other woman looked at her warily; not afraid, exactly, but obviously conscious of the sword behind her, and of the pale gaze on her. A poet had once described Tiphaine d'Ath's eyes as the color of berg-ice floating down the Inland Passage on a sunless winter's day.
"The Princess said you'd say that. So she gave me a message that only you two would know, and nobody would think to ask her."
Torture out of her, Tiphaine thought, and was slightly surprised at the surge of anger she felt. Well, I did help bring the girl up from her cradle…
She nodded, and the prisoner approached. Rodard rested the needle point of his longsword over her kidneys, and Tiphaine leaned forward to hear the whisper:
"She said that you met Delia at the party, when she was serving at your feast when you took seizin"-the woman from Idaho mispronounced the feudal term-"of Ath, and Delia asked if you wanted to look at the embroidery on something."
Tiphaine's eyes narrowed a little, as close to a smile as she would get here-and-now. Mathilda had been there at that first feast at Castle d'Ath; it had been just after she rescued the girl from the Mackenzies, and was ennobled for it and given the fief. For that matter, Rudi Mackenzie had been there too, since she'd captured him in the same raid, and Sandra had wanted to get him out of Todenangst and from under Norman's eye. She hadn't thought Mathilda had known… but Delia had always gotten on well with the Princess, and had a perverse sense of humor.
"Right, you're from the Princess, Sergeant," she said. "What were the circumstances?"
The noncom gave her a brief precis; the noblewoman's eyebrows went up.
Lady Sandra is going to have kittens, she thought. Matti prisoner of the Cutters… and Odard's man working for, or with them. Which means Odard's mother still is… Hope the headsman sharpened his ax after the last one. Or it might be the rack and pincers…
"But there's more," Gonzalez said. "President Thurston… Martin Thurston is here. Four battalions of regular infantry and one regiment of cavalry-that's how I got here-and a lot of field artillery. And the Prophet Sethaz, he's got about the same of his goons, all cavalry. About a third of them the Sword, the household troops, the rest of them ranch-lander levies, but they look like they know what they're doing. They got a lot of experience in the Deseret War."