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!-"
"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.