“Now, Rudi, don’t be silly. You have to see that it’s sort of fated that-”
“I risked my life for this! Men died for this! You are not renaming the Sword of the Lady Anduril Flame of the West and the suggestion itself is enough to warrant a hiding-”
Artos was very fast. Mary and Ritva were very nearly as fast and fifty pounds lighter per head; they accelerated more quickly, and they were even able to fit their climbing claws from their belts to their hands as they ran, inches ahead of his swatting scabbard. Each picked a tree and leapt, scampering upward like cats a stride ahead of an angry dog.
“Rudi! You’re being unreasonable again!” Ritva called.
“Ingolf! Do something!” Mary shouted.
“What, help him?” Ingolf called over his shoulder. “It’s a fucking silly idea, sweetie, and I told you so. Told you he’d be pissed off, too.”
Artos stopped, suddenly conscious of how many people were looking at him. Then he began to laugh, tossed the sheathed Sword into the air and caught it by the hilt and pointed the chape on its end at his half sisters.
“It’s a bargain I’ll be making with you,” he said.
“What?” Ritva said suspiciously.
“You agree to never mention this nonsense again.”
“We still think. . well, and what do you do?”
“I agree not to whale the stuffing out of you both and throw you in a mudhole.”
He was still chuckling when he settled back on his bedroll and watched Mathilda combing her hair; the rhythmic movement was both pleasing and soothing somehow. Garbh lifted her head and growled slightly, but he’d been aware of ex-Major Graber’s approach. The man had stayed in the background, helping to look after the little boy living in the shell of the High Seeker and doing his share of camp chores uncomplainingly and skillfully despite being alone and unarmed among those whose feelings towards him ranged from indifference to bone-deep hate. Nobody had dared attack him against Artos’ order reinforced by Bjarni’s, but it could not have been an easy passage. Now his face had more of its customary granite rigidity than ever.
“My lord,” the man from Corwin said. “I am obliged to speak to you.”
“You’re welcome to, Major Graber,” Artos said courteously, laying aside his sword belt wrapped around the scabbard.
Silence still stretched; a muscle twitched on one cheek, and there was sweat across the older man’s forehead. “I. .”* he began.
Artos glanced aside to give him space to speak. He cleared his throat and began again.
“I have been reconsidering many things. I must tell you of the conclusion I have reached.”
“Yes?” Artos said, meeting his eyes steadily now; he stayed seated to remove any possibility of looming over the man.
“I. . have been misled. Those in authority over me have distorted the meaning of the Church Universal and Triumphant’s teachings. I do not think that they are truly in the service of the Ascended Masters at all.”
Rudi sat up cross-legged, conscious that Mathilda’s hands had halted their steady movement; Edain was gaping at the man’s back, Asgerd was glaring, and Father Ignatius looked back down at the pages of a small breviary with the merest fugitive hint of a smile.
“Yes, I would agree with that, Major Graber,” he replied, his voice pleasantly neutral.
This is not a man you can push; he will neither bend nor break, only die. But a rock may move of itself, at times.
“Accordingly, I withdraw my allegiance from them. They have misled me and caused me to mislead others. Many of my men. . my entire regiment. . died in pursuit of a mission I led them on. I must accept responsibility for this.”
“You did as you thought best, given what you believed and as you were raised, in a cause that your men also followed,” Rudi said, choosing each word with exquisite care. “A sorrow it is that they died; but that they were brave and steadfast is a good and lovely thing in itself and by itself. And they were both, as I can testify from my own knowledge.”
Graber swallowed and looked down. “The responsibility is still mine. And my. . my country and my family are still mine, and the men of my service, even if they would kill me for an apostate. And there must be truth in the teachings of the Church Universal and Triumphant, even if it has been perverted. Therefore I must think more on the best course for me to atone for the sins of which I have been guilty. Thank you.”
He turned on his heel and walked towards the small tent he shared with Dalan, the ex-priest of the Corwinite cult.
“Well, well, and three times, well,” Artos said into the silence that followed. “Sure, and no man is all one thing or all of a piece.”
Ignatius nodded. “While we live, there is always the possibility of redemption and atonement.”
“I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him,” Virginia Thurston said with conviction.
“Trust him not to decide he must fight us?” Artos said. “No, that’s possible. But I think I’d trust him to do what he thinks right. And after this, I think I could trust him to inform me if that meant to take up arms against me again. That at least.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
COUNTY OF THE EASTERMARK
BARONY OF WALLA-WALLA, NEAR CASTLE WAITSBURG
PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY SOUTHEASTERN WASHINGTON STATE)
MARCH 31, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
“Were they really evil?Whatlies orthreats brought them here to die. .” she began, looking down at the dead men sprawled beside their dead horses. You’re quoting again, Astrid! Eilir signed. I’ve been listening to you do that since we were both fourteen!
“That doesn’t make it any less true, soul-sister,” Astrid Loring said calmly. “They’re not necessarily bad men, even if they are Cutters and from Montana. Good and ill are not one thing in the Third Age and another now.”
The identity of the men they’d ambushed was fairly clear from their mixed gear, which was the sort of thing a Rancher’s retainers put together from what came to hand, and from the common element: the rayed golden sun of the Church Universal and Triumphant. The younger Dunedain behind her nodded solemnly; those words were from the Histories after all, and apt.
It was the quiet time when sick men died, not-quite-dawn, and the blood of men and horses looked more black than red; chilly enough to make it smoke a little too, though the days were already mild even this far inland. It made an iron undertone to the sweet cool smell of spring and green growth; a few trees beside the roadway had already burst their swelling buds to show a mist of green. A quivering birdcall sounded, and the Rangers on the slope looked sharply southwestward. Another call followed and they relaxed; just afterwards the first clatter of hooves sounded on the old asphalt of the roadway, patched with pounded gravel. A spray of light cavalry went through first, several score local levies riding with arrows nocked on the strings of their recurved saddle bows.
I’ll go with them, Eilir signed. We’ll have to coordinate.
She swung into her saddle and trotted over to the local nobleman leading the horse-archers, who was in three-quarter armor himself; this far east the Association produced its own ranch-style fighters. John Hordle followed-he rode a destrier-bred warmblood even when in light gear, as at present-and a file of a dozen Dunedain ohtar.
Then a heavier drumbeat on the broken, patched asphalt, and a long column of heavy cavalry came up the roadway, the butts of their twelve-foot lances resting on their right stirrup-irons and their kite-shaped blazoned shields across their backs. The riders were knights and men-at-arms in plate cap-a-pie from the sabatons on their feet to the bevoirs that guarded their chins, the metal of their harness bright with the polish and chamois leather and elbow grease of squires and varlets.