The Protector's War Page 4

  The king had thought it would introduce an element of tradition and continuity into the countryside. Nigel didn't think the effect in front of him was quite what Charles had had in mind…

  "'Ullo, Bob," Hordle called, as they rode into speaking distance. "Told you I'd be dropping by with some friends."

  "Hey, mon, I see yuh," the farmer replied. "Little John an' he friends always welcome at Jamaica Farm. I don' forget who get we out of London."

  He was black—not exactly a startling sight even these days, but rare; there hadn't been all that much of a New Commonwealth immigrant presence on the Isle of Wight, nor on Man and Anglesey and Arran and Orkney. The yawny-drawly Caribbean accent was strong in his deep bass voice, turning it soft and pleasant. Standing side-by-side, his head would have been a few inches below Hor-dle's, which made him merely tall instead of towering, and he was strongly built, corded muscle moving under the sweat-slick ebony skin on his forearms.

  The dreadlocks do rather clash with the smock frock, Nigel thought fleetingly. So does that gold hoop earring.

  An equally big blue-eyed man leaned on a long-hafted billhook. He—Nigel blinked—had a leather rugby goalie's helmet on his head, set with a pair of bull horns above his ears and tufts of his white-blond hair sticking through the straps. Beside him a lean redhead set his bow down and looked dourly at the three riders; he wore a Scots bonnet and by his weathered face was nearer forty than thirty, the oldest of the three by most of a decade.

  "Nice pinnie you've got on there, Bob," Hordle said, grinning and nodding at the smock frocks. "Fetching, it is. Though maybe it'd look a bit daintier with some flowers embroidered about the edge? And a lace collar?"

  "Dese dress de national dress," Bob replied. "King Charlie, he say it get we in touch wit' our English roots. Mon, English roots be strong!"

  He pointed to where his machete rested, amid a tangle of arching brambles taller than a mounted man's head. "Dese, dey got canes grow't'ree inches a day, and grow new roots where da hell dey touching; you leave one bit of root, dey grow up again. And we out of weed killer—use de last from Wyevale Garden Centre, two,'t'ree year ago. Feeling de English roots more and more on Jamaica Farm."

  "Oach, aye, indeed," the redhead said. "And it is often on Skye I felt the hankering for just such a smock frock as this, so English I was. Archie MacDonald, at yer sairvice, sair."

  His voice had a soft West Highland lilt, almost Irish save for the rolled R's.

  "Ja," Gunnar Halldorsson put in, naming himself as well. "Me too. Studying marine engineering in Reykjavik, sometimes I felt naked without a smock." His thick-fingered hand tented the coarse linen away from his body. "In memory of my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother carried off by Vikings in the year 900, ha? So, the hat too." He flicked thumb and forefinger against one of the bull horns.

  Bob fished in his pockets and came out with a cigarette made from a twist of paper, snapping open his lighter.

  "The smocks, I don' make no trouble, I say, fine. Easy to make and clean. The 'thatch on every roof order, it don' bother me—thatch on me Jamaica Farm to start wit' anyway. But when decree straight from Highgrove say we have to learn de morris dancing..." He took a long drag on the short, fat smoke. "Then I say to de king, 'Charlie, mon, you kiss my fine royal Rasta ass!'"

  "And when my land is cleared, he can kiss mine," the Icelander said, grinning. "Remember, we start on it this year."

  "And on mine," the Scot reminded him. "In the meantime,'t'waur better we get these gentlemen under cover. The old south barn, until sunset; that'll rest the horses, the which will do them hairm."

  The barn had been one of the outbuildings of Wavendon Manor; the rather undistinguished manor house itself had burned not long after the Change. The floor below was loose-box stabling, now holding their mounts, and an open space where lay a horse-powered threshing machine—remade to ancient patterns since the Change—disassembled for maintenance after the recently completed harvest. Chickens and turkeys wandered in to peck at odd grains on the floor; families of swallows flitted through the openings under the eaves, to and from their mud-built nests.

  The second floor held mountains of loose hay over rafters and an open slatwork of boards, and the fugitives had bedded down in the middle of it, invisible unless someone climbed up the ladder and poked around with consid-erable determination. The hay made a deep soft bed, sweet-smelling with clover, well-cured and hardly prickly at all; the loft was dark and warm, with slits of hot light moving through the gloom. From where he'd set his horse blanket he could see out between the boards towards the farmyard, and with only a little movement over the edge of the hay down into the ground floor.

  Sir Nigel long ago acquired the soldier's ability to sleep whenever he had the opportunity, in circumstances far less comfortable than this. When he awoke it was an hour past noon, and his hand was already on the wire-and-leather-wrapped hilt of his sword as he sat up. The bright metal came free of the sheath with a hiss of steel on wood and leather greased with graphite and neat's-foot oil. Alleyne was already awake and armed. The bleak lines newly graven in his son's face made Nigel wince slightly; losing one's mother was hard enough in the natural run of things…

  Then the younger Loring shook his head slightly and nodded towards the ladder. Hordle woke on his own a moment later, his soft rasping snore cutting off instantly as he reached for the great hand-and-a-half blade that lay beside him.

  Nigel looked through the fringe of hay. A girl was climbing the ladder with a large basket over one arm. She was the one he'd seen feeding the poultry, and was rather obviously the farmer's daughter, with skin the color of milky tea and dark hair that tumbled in loose curls beneath a kerchief. The eight-year-old's head came over the edge of the piled hay as she climbed the ladder and stepped off onto the lath flooring of the loft. The solemn eyes went a little wider as she saw the three longswords in the hands of the men who crouched there, and she gave a little eek!

  Then she smiled in delight as they slid the blades back into their sheaths, obviously entranced with the secret importance of it all.

  "Hello, sir," she said to Nigel, holding out the basket and dipping her head to the others. "I've brought you sommat for dinner. Me mum said I should stay and bring back the basket when you're finished." A pause. "It's like Flora Macdonald and the Young Pretender!"

  Well, Archie MacDonald's been talking, Nigel thought, smiling. I hope she doesn't expect me to wear a dress as a disguise.

  "Thank you very much, my dear," he said. "What's your name?"

  Her accent was a curious mix of Caribbean and broad Yorkshire; at a guess her mother'had been born in Leeds or Bradford, from generations of factory workers. And there was something else there as well, a singsong lilt Nigel had noticed among many of the youngest post-Change generation, doubtless the product of the mixing-pot southern England had become. He rose and then went down on one knee to take the wicker basket with its checked cloth cover.

  "Di," she whispered, looking down shyly. "Diana Bramble, Sir Nigel."

  Probably named after St. Diana, Nigel thought, amused; the king's first wife had grown still more popular in retrospect. Of course, compared to Camilla, and still more to Queen Hallgerda…

  The girl's wondering eyes went from his lined and weathered face to Alleyne's blond, fine-featured handsomeness to Hordle's great red ham of a countenance. "And you're Little John and Alleyne, aren't you?"

  "Err…" The man may be trustworthy, but he hasn't much sense of security. Still, I suppose it's impossible to keep secrets in a place like this—trying would simply make everyone curious. "Err… yes, Miss Bramble, we are," Alleyne replied.

  "Do you know the king, sir?" she asked suddenly.

  Nigel's eyebrows went up. "I do, young mistress," he said. "We've worked together since the Change."

  "Is't he really a bad man? I mean… he's tha king."

  Hordle snorted, and whispered sotto voce. "No, he's the soul of Christian charity, and we're running away
from him because we're a roit wicked bunch of frighteners."

  Nigel frowned at him and spoke gravely: "No, but he's…

  ah… been under a great deal of strain, and I'm afraid it's made him… strange."

  "You mean 'e's gone raving bonkers, like Archie's Uncle Willie?" she said inquiringly, then went on: "Uncle Willie talks to people who aren't there, and cries a lot."

  Hordle gave a shout of laughter, strangled off into a snort, and Alleyne chuckled despite himself.

  "His Majesty's a bit strange, this last little while," Nigel told the girl. "And he's made some bad decisions because there are people around him who tell him what he wants to hear, instead of what's true."

  She nodded. "Bad people like that there wicked queen," she said.

  Nigel forbore comment; as far as he'd been able to tell Queen Hallgerda was wicked, if being ruthlessly ambitious and power hungry counted—and unlike some, he didn't think her admittedly rather stunning looks and undoubted charm made up for it. Doubtless if she'd stayed a junior clerical employee at a fish-processing plant on Heimaey off Iceland's west coast it wouldn't have mattered much. With a kingdom to play for, it became a matter of life and death.

  Maude's death, he thought grimly, and then schooled his features before the child was frightened. Dealing with our dear queen is the only thing that might tempt me to stay… no, not worth more destruction.

  Di sighed. "I'd like to see the court, and Winchester. It moost be bee-yootiful."

  Her eyes were wide at the thought of the metropolis. Nigel smiled; Winchester was the capital these days, and had all of ten thousand people year-round, the largest city in the British Isles after Cork. That was just enough to keep the eighteenth-century core of the cathedral town from falling completely to ruin. To this child and her generation, whose horizons were bound by the farm and the enclosing wilderness and the little hamlet of Wavendon to the west where she went to church on Sundays and school in the winter months, Winchester was what London had been to him. Only far more distant and unobtainable—a trip there a wistful daydream rather than an hour or two on a train or in a car.

  "Perhaps you will take a trip there, one day," Nigel said.

  Another solemn nod, then she looked at him more closely, and at Alleyne. "Dad says you're a hero, for standing up to the king," she said, and he blushed. Then she frowned. "But you don't look like a hero. You're too old, and you're going bald. You look like a daddy. He"—she pointed at the younger Loring—"He looks like a real hero. Right dreamy, he is. Laak fold pictures."

  Nigel laughed outright at that, and Hordle turned redder than ever as he suppressed a bellow of mirth. The younger Loring brushed hay from his tousled yellow hair and smoothed his mustache in furtive embarrassment.

  "Thank you," he said. "But he is my daddy, and he's far more of a hero than I. Let's have our dinner, shall we?"

  The basket contained a pair of farm-style loaves, stone-ground whole meal baked that morning and still a little warm, butter out of the churn, two roasted chickens, their skins golden brown and crisp, potatoes done in their skins and a salad of fresh greens and tomatoes, a seasonal delicacy nowadays. Diana Bramble said a brief grace; John Hordle converted his reach for a leg into a vague gesture and clasped his hands as she spoke, then compensated by spinning lurid tales of Alleyne Loring's heroism—mostly true, if highly colored—until Diana gazed at the young man with a worshipfulness that doubtless made him hideously self-conscious. They finished with cheese-and-apple tarts and clotted cream; then the girl packed the plates and cutlery back in the basket with care and went to the ladder.

  "'Bye, Little John!" she said. "I've got to go and do my jobs now. Carding and spinning." She made a face, and then a little curtsy. "Boring! 'Bye, sirs."

  "What a charming young miss," Nigel said. We always wished we'd had a daughter as well, he thought, and sighed slightly.

  "Reminds me of my sister's kids," Hordle agreed, yawning.

  "I'll take first watch, then," Nigel said, and grinned at his son. "You've made a conquest, it seems. Dreamy, indeed!"

  Alleyne snorted and they settled down again, but it was he who first lifted his head a few minutes later. "Hooves," he said.

  Young ears, his father thought, and said aloud: "How many?"

  "Half a dozen, at a guess, one more or less. Hordle?"

  "Horses it is, sir. Not likely to be the neighbors dropping in for a cuppa, either, is it?"

  Tension crackled through the loft. They looked at each other and began preparing with silent speed, the two Lor-ings helping each other into their complex harness as Hordle pulled on his padded tunic and the chain shirt over it. The great muscles in his arms coiled and bunched as he strung his longbow, and then he slipped the leather-and-steel guards on his forearms and counted the arrows in his quiver. They left the helmets for last; it would take only a few seconds, and they needed every fraction of sight and hearing to avoid having to use the gear at all.

  "Thirty-nine," the bowman said quietly, his sausage-thick fingers deft on the feathered shafts.

  "I don't want any of Bramble's people hurt," Nigel said in the same tone, but with a snap of command in it. "For any reason whatsoever. That's clear?"

  The other men both nodded. By then the hooves were clear to the older man as well, a dull hollow clopping on the dirt and broken pavement of the A5130. Alleyne wormed through the hay to put his eye to a knothole, moving cautiously to spare the laths under them—there were sixty pounds of steel on him now, in addition to his own whipcord hundred seventy-five.

  "Half a dozen and a packhorse," he whispered. "Just turning onto the lane to the farm. They're hobelars."

  That meant mounted infantry archers, like the bulk of the regular army, equipped as Hordle was. Six made a section, the smallest unit; adding two mounted men-at-arms made it a lance. Nigel caught sight of them an instant later, jogging their mounts up the laneway, turning east at the dogleg that led past the pond and barns. A woman was there, the farmer's wife, a solid figure with a long rake in her hands and her brown hair done up in a bun under a wide-brimmed straw hat—real wheat straw, with a frayed edge.

  She turned for an instant and shouted in purest West Riding, confirming Nigel's guess: "Di! Roon and fetch yer dad!" Then she went on to the soldiers: "Don't water yer 'orses there, lads. There's flax in't'pond, we just put it in ter ret and it's reet mucky, ba 'eck. Cum on oop't''t'ouse and use trough in't'yard instead,'t'gate's open. There's soom apple tarts left over from dinner, if ye'd laak, and a jug of cold cider too, 'appen."

  That brought delighted smiles to the fresh-faced young men; one thing that hadn't changed was that army field rations were fit to gag a stoat. Nigel Loring realized with a start that only the section leader had been old enough to shave when the Change came—in fact, it looked as if most of them hadn't had their voices break by that day eight and a half years ago. They seemed younger than their years to him as well, despite the weather-beaten skins of outdoors-men.

  "It's a kindly thought, Mrs. Bramble," the section leader said." 'Tis a hard late camp we'll hae tha night."

  His patrol were all dust caked, with sweat runnels through the brown dirt on their faces, and their horses looked worn as well; the mounts wore leather barding on their chests and leather socks strapped to their fetlocks, but they'd still suffered the odd scratch.

  Nigel was close enough to hear him well. The accent was Scots, but not the gentle lilt of a Highlander; he'd pronounced the ght in "thought" with an almost guttural sound, not a simple hard T, and "night" as ni'cht. An Orkneyman, at a guess, and from somewhere remote like Westray at that, with bright blue eyes and a close-cropped black beard that had the white line of a scar through it. There was a corporal's chevron riveted to the sleeve of his mail shirt. The men took off their helmets at his waving gesture and swung down, leading the beasts over to the metal trough, joking with three girls only a bit younger than themselves who came out of the farmhouse kitchen bearing the promised food and drink. One Junoesque blonde had
a tray of mugs and a stoppered jug, and two freckled redheads carried heaped plates of tarts.

  Gunnar's sister and Archie's daughters, I'd say, Nigel thought.

  "Drink water first, y' daft boogers," the section leader snapped. The men obeyed, most dumping a helmetful over their heads as well. "And one mug each, nae more. We've work tae do and it's eight hours before sunset." He held up a gauntleted fist. "Any man drunk on duty weil ansur tae my little friend here."

  Then to the girls, in a quite different tone, reaching for the pastries: "Thank you, young misses. Ah'll cheust tak a nave-fil."

  Nigel found himself nodding in approval as the patrol watered their horses and applied salve to their hides; the men hadn't even had to be told to see to their mounts before themselves, and their equipment was as neat as you could expect when working this overgrown country—the green-enameled metal of the mail shirts gleamed with a thin film of oil, and the fletchings on the arrows that jutted over each man's right shoulder were tight and even. There was a charge he recognized on the bucklers slung from their belts, too: the royal arms quartered with a chevron argent, three roses gules.

  Tony Knolles's men, Nigel Loring thought. The family was distantly related to his. Oh, bugger, as Hordle would put it.

  He'd worked with Knolles before the Change, mostly counterterrorist work in south Ulster in the 1980s, and since the Change as well; the last he'd heard of him was that he commanded a company of the Guard working out of the forward base at Stowe. If he'd heard news of the escape he would have moved quickly and decisively—efficiently to boot.

  He's entirely too competent. So is this corporal, on a smaller scale. And Knolles isn't nearly so disenchanted with the king as I, either.