“And in return you get our backing if anyone tries to attack you,” Tiphaine pointed out. “The Association’s knights, the Mackenzie archers, engineers and pikemen from Corvallis or the Yakima League. We are most assuredly not interested in anything to the east of you but we’re willing to push the border that far, and help hold it. As part of Montival you’d have enough weight behind you that even Iowa would have to think three times before tangling with you.”
“And we could have our reservation as long as the grass grew and the sun shines,” Red Leaf said dryly; his voice was skeptical but not utterly hostile.
Juniper shrugged. “If you call everything you’ve got now a reservation,” she said. “And that’s what. . half the Dakotas and chunks of Wyoming and Montana and Colorado and a bit of Nebraska? Which is more land and more people than ever you had in the old days.”
“Including. . ah. . volunteers,” Sandra observed. “There are more of you than there are Mackenzies.”
“Which means you’d also be a fairly big element in the High Kingdom as a whole,” Tiphaine said. “Not least in the number of troops you could field. Nobody would be in a position to bully you, even if they were so inclined.”
“What about Boise? And New Deseret?” Red Leaf asked. “They’re between us and you as well as the Cutters.”
Sandra steepled her fingers and raised her eyes slightly. “You may have noticed that the late General-President of the United States of Boise had more than one son. The elder killed his father and usurped his position. The younger. . you met. Traveling with Mathilda and, um, Artos.”
“Oh, ho,” Red Leaf said, and gave her an admiring look. “Well, yeah, that’s a definite possibility. You think Boise may come apart over that?”
“That and their alliance with Corwin, which we understand is not popular. Martin Thurston is trying his best to pin the blame on his brother, but the true story has been circulating. . aided by us. And New Deseret is desperate, what’s left of it. We’ve been helping their guerrillas in the occupied territories as we can. They’re very. . upright people. Usually gratitude is worth its weight in gold, but they actually seem to practice it. Marvelous are the works of God.”
Red Leaf nodded and rubbed his hands together; the heavy stockman’s calluses bred of rope and rein, lance and shete, went scritch against each other.
“OK, whoa, this is going to take a bit more thinking. I can’t commit all of us to this. Some of it sounds good, but I’m not going to say yes or no yet, and it’s above my pay grade anyway.”
“Oh, certainly,” Sandra said. “We’ll have to have extensive talks even for a temporary alliance, and you’ll have to consult your Council about anything more. But. . we do need the Iowans. And we need them to march in, fight, and then turn around and go back with hearty thanks ringing in their ears. And we need them now.”
“What do they get out of it? Besides hearty thanks and gratitude. . which, you’re right, are usually worth their weight in gold. Or diamonds.”
“A long-term menace disposed of,” Sandra said. “And in terms of their internal politics, in which my daughter had a hand, they get unity behind House Heasleroad-there’s nothing like a successful foreign war to rally support. Now let’s start with a few details-”
She settled into her chair, as content as one of her Persian cats confronted with a bowl of fresh cream and salmon on the side. Juniper sighed silently and settled herself as to a task that had to be done.
Rudi, my son! Where are you now?
CHAPTER EIGHT
NORRHEIM, LAND OF THE WULFINGS
SIX-HILL FIELD (FORMERLY AROOSTOOK COUNTY, MAINE)
MARCH 25, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
Bjarni Eriksson saw his death rising with the heavy curved sword. Thunder pounded in his ears; it echoed in the ground beneath his back like hooves. He struggled to raise his sword and meet the blow still fighting. A man lived until he died, and not an hour more.
“Fare You well, Thor, until the weird of the world!” he choked out. “Harberga-I come, father-”
The thunder was hooves. A great black horse whose head and neck and shoulders gleamed silvery breasted the slope, and Bekwa scattered aside like sandy soil before the coulter of a plow, like birch leaves in an autumn wind. In the saddle was a man with the head of a raven, and in his hand was a lance. The trollkjerring turned, raising his shield. The lance struck it and shattered, with a sharp stuttering crackling impact that seemed to strike his own head between the eyes. The red-robe staggered back, but the great warhorse staggered as well, almost falling.
Bjarni blinked, even then. It was like seeing a hammer hit an egg and watching the hammer bounce. The man in the high war-saddle kicked his feet out of the stirrups and threw himself to the ground, landing even as he drew his sword.
Shock ran through the world.
The flash that came with the long blade shone through his flesh to his bones, making him transparent as fine glass of the ancient world, without being anything his eyes could see at all. It lit the mind, as if his inner being had stared into the sun. Bjarni saw the way the smooth curve of the man’s visor drew down into a point that almost hid his bared teeth. Eyes of cold blue-gray glinted through the narrow space of the vision slit.
The sorcerer crouched, snarling. “You. . can. . slay. . the vessel. . but. . not. . Us,” he said, in a voice like the world ripping. “For. . we. . are. .legion.” “I don’t have to,” the man said, his voice like a trumpet. “I have only to put you back where you belong, in my time and in my land; for even you are a part of things. The which I will do, now, so.”
The red-robe screamed and struck.
Shock.
The world shook again, as if it were a painted drawing whose fabric trembled in a high wind. Steel met the Sword and shattered, and the blade looped back. A hand spun away in a rising arc, and blood trailed behind it and spouted from the wrist and in a circle from the follow-through of the Sword. Bjarni stumbled upright again, as if released from bonds; his leg hurt badly, but he could make himself move. Everyone about him was moving too. The red-robe clutched at his severed wrist; the cold malevolence was gone from his face, leaving nothing but a vast bewilderment as he sat down to die.
Artos let the momentum of the strike carry him around. The Seeker of the Church Universal and Triumphant was no threat anymore-just a man, and a dying man with no heart to fight, at that. A spear thrust at him, a length of rusty steel pipe with the end hammered and filed down to a point. The thing was too massive to be agile, but the thick-shouldered savage had already begun a two-handed smash that would have driven the mass of metal through anything a man could wear. It scored across Artos’ shield and left a peeling thread of the facing sheet behind it; the Sword struck upward and the front three feet of the crude weapon went pinwheeling away. There was a tug on his sword-wrist as the Sword of the Lady cut through the tough alloy, like the hesitation he’d feel if he lopped off a dried reed. The thrust that followed snapped out faster than a frog’s tongue, crunching through the thin bones of the man’s face between the eyes and back before he even began to crumple.