Could it be him, here? BD wondered. He's around thirty, that's the right age… medium height, brown beard, hazel eyes… Trouble is, that's a description of Every-man just as much as it is of the Prophet Sethaz!
He was certainly more sociable than the others, smiling and chatting easily with a succession of Pendleton VIPs. Some of the Ranchers avoided him-the Mormon ones, in particular, who were a fair scattering of the total. And the smaller minority who'd taken up the Old Religion as it drifted eastward were even more frankly hostile.
And that's Jenson's cowboy… George, she thought, puzzled.
The young man was in one of the dull-red robes, his head newly shaven. Their eyes met just for an instant, and BD shivered. The rage she'd seen was still there, but it was transfigured, focused like light from the edge of a knife, a gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun.
The other clutch of outlanders were even more exotic. BD's lips quirked; they were exotic because they were so like things she'd seen in her youth. The green uniforms with the service ribbons, the berets, the polished black shoes, the archaic shirts with collar and tie, even the neat high and tight haircuts. The only thing different from the old Army of the United States was the swords at their belts; shortswords, or cavalry sabers for a few. Young men, mostly from their mid-twenties to their thirties, and notably hard-faced even by modern standards, with impassive rock-jawed features and wary, watchful eyes.
Their commander turned, the four stars of a general on his shoulders. BD's eyes went wide in shock, and she turned naturally to place the wineglass on a tray.
Martin Thurston himself! she thought; self-promoted since his father's excessively convenient death. Oh, Astrid, I think yo u 've let yourself in for more than you thought!
"My Lady Grand Constable, there's a deserter," her squire Armand Georges said. "She's asking to see the commander, and she has documents."
"She?"
"It's a woman, my lady. A cavalry sergeant; Boisean army."
Tiphaine d'Ath's brows went up; that was rare in the interior.. . and of course in the Association territories. And the Meeting had sent this army here because they were afraid the US of Boise and the Prophet might be intervening; apparently they hadn't been worrying without cause.
"I'll see her here."
She flipped the empty porridge bowl back to the scullion, yawned and finished coffee brewed snarling-strong to wash down the taste of the bland mush and dried fruit and the scorched bacon that had gone with it.
At least coffee always smells good brewing, she thought. Even when it tastes like soap-boiler's lye.
She was feeling a bit frowsty this morning, with wisps of her pale hair still escaping from the night's braid. The black arming doublet she wore-like a jacket made up of vertical tubes of padding-and the leather pants tucked into her boots both had the faint locker-room smell that never came out once they'd been worn under armor, with metal-and-oil from the patches of chain mail under the armpits that covered the weak points in a suit of plate. The leather laces that dangled from strategic spots to tie down the pieces of war-harness always made her feel like an undone boot at this stage, but there was no point in putting on sixty pounds of steel just to look spiffy. Not yet. It tired you fast enough when you had to wear it.
That freedom and the coffee were about the only mark of rank, that and a private privy. You didn't take pages or hordes of servants or a pavilion on campaign-at least, she didn't, not even when they were operating along a railway-and her tent was barely big enough to serve as a map-room when her bedroll was tied up.
The war-camp of the allied army was just waking, a growing brabble across the rolling plateau as light cleared the far-distant line of the Blue Mountains beyond Pendleton. The high cloud there caught the dawn in streaks of ruddy crimson that faded to pink froth at their edges. Fires smoked as embers were poked up and stoked with greasewood and fence-posts and brush. Faint and far to the south she could hear the Mackenzies making their greeting to the Sun:
"… 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.