The Given Sacrifice Read online

  “You are one tough scrappy little bitch, I’ll give you that,” he said admiringly.

  He was also careful to stay out of reach. Nobody was safe if they had a knife and were determined to use it.

  “That’s Pilot Officer Bitch to you, soldier,” she said.

  Briefings and rumor had it that westerners talked funny, but apart from the effects of her nose swelling shut she sounded pretty much like people from his part of the world, maybe a little rounder on the vowels. He looked at the glider caught in the rocks and trees, at the pilot, and thought hard. While he did he also looked at his left hand; one of the fingernails was standing up from the quick, mostly torn away. He absently stripped it loose with his teeth and spat it aside.

  “Dang, that smarts,” he said mildly. “Look, girl . . . Pilot Officer . . . what say we call a short-term truce while we fix ourselves up? That bear near enough got a piece of me and I don’t think he meant you any good at all, likewise. I’d feel sort of stupid if I had to kill you now after going to all that trouble.”

  “You’re Boise, aren’t you?” she said; it wasn’t really a question. “Not a Cutter.”

  “Yup, US Army,” he said. “I’m a Methodist, more or less, if that matters to you.”

  “All right,” she said grudgingly.

  There was a spring seeping out of the rock not far away. He ended up donating some material from his medical kit, and then slitting the sleeve of the leather flying suit she wore along the seam to examine her left forearm. It was thin, though the slight muscles on it were like wire cords, and he couldn’t feel any gross break. She hissed as he touched one spot.

  “Ulna,” he said. “Not a compound, and the elbow isn’t dislocated. Nightstick fracture, I’d say, right about midway. Doesn’t feel bad.”

  “Doesn’t feel bad to you,” she said. Then: “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

  He trimmed some deadwood branches into a set of immobilizing splints, bound them on, and arranged a sling. After that she sat sullenly brooding while he used his climbing rope and a half hitch around a tree to pull the glider down, breaking off the other wing in the process. The cockpit was disappointingly bare of anything useful; there was a map, but the only things marked on it were the suspected locations of his side’s troops. Two that he knew about were pretty accurate.

  Cole wasn’t surprised at the lack of data, since whoever was in charge of enemy glider doctrine would have anticipated something exactly like this. If the enemy were stupid they wouldn’t be winning. There wasn’t anything in the way of emergency gear, either. Every single ounce of weight was precious in these things.

  “Look . . .” he paused to give his name and rank.

  “Pilot Officer Alyssa Larsson, on the A-List of the Bearkiller Outfit, flying for the High Kingdom of Montival,” she said.

  “OK,” he said, organizing his thoughts. “Name, rank and serial number, right? You’re not one of the castle freaks.”

  “A PPA Associate? I should hope not.”

  He nodded. “We’ve got two options here. I can just let you go, in which case you’ll starve or get et by something or die of exposure. Unless your base is close—”

  He lifted an enquiring eyebrow, and she laughed sourly at the invitation to fall into an elementary trick.

  “OK, or you can surrender and I’ll take you back to my base.”

  “How far, and in what direction?”

  He snorted a chuckle. “I’m not an idiot either,” he said, then nodded when she just smiled.

  It was a wry expression, but then, it had to hurt with those injuries. He went on:

  “Right. If you come with me, I want your word you won’t try to backstab me or give me away to your people.”

  “I’m not going anywhere near the Cutters,” she said flatly. “I’ll take my chances with the wolves and bears and tigers first.”

  He kept his face neutral; his impulse was to say well, of course, the Cutters are fucking mad weasel lunatic neobarbs, but it wasn’t something you could say to the other side about your sort-of allies. For that matter most of the westerners were officially neobarbs too. Instead he thought hard, and went on slowly: “My CO . . . Captain Wellman . . . ah,” Hates the Cutters like poison, he didn’t say.

  They’d tried to put a Church Universal and Triumphant chaplain in with Battalion about three months ago, now that Boise didn’t have a President to keep them at bay. The man had just disappeared two days after he arrived, and nobody had known a thing. He suspected that Wellman and the sergeant-major had taken care of it personally and buried the body in a latrine about to be filled in.

  “. . . ah, the CO is an absolute stickler for the rules.”

  Which had the advantage of being true; scuttlebutt said it was the reason Wellman hadn’t switched sides, which some of the men thought he should do. Cole hadn’t wanted to believe the stories about Martin Thurston, but with his own mother and his wife, for God’s sake, defecting to the enemy and screaming that they were true . . . and he was dead now anyway, which left Fred Thurston as the old General’s only living son, and he was on Montival’s side.

  Fubar squared.

  The glider pilot looked at him searchingly for a long moment, then nodded slowly.

  “My chances right now with a busted arm and no gear aren’t much,” she said. “OK, but I will take off if I get a chance and think the odds are good. I’m not giving a general parole. We’re not allowed to, anyway.”

  “Fair enough, neither are we,” he said. “Now, what about something to eat?”

  She snorted and pulled out a paper-wrapped something from one of her many pockets. The wrapping had Rat. Bar stenciled on it.

  “This is the sum total of my supplies. As the label suggests, it’s made from dried rats.”

  Cole did a double take before he was sure she wasn’t serious. He had a couple of pounds of hardtack and some dried fruit in his pack, along with some salt and half a bag of dried chili flakes his mother had sent him. He grinned anyway and felt the edge of his smaller knife, the one he used for general camp work, including skinning. Special Forces were supposed to live off the land in the field—they were known as snake eaters for that reason—but right now he didn’t have to settle for reptile meat anyway.

  “We won’t starve today; pity the rest will go to waste and we can’t take the hide, but the coyotes have to eat too. Bear tastes like pork.”

  “I always thought it was a little gamy unless you soak it in vinegar a while,” she said. “Or beer.”

  The pilot started to smile, then winced as scabs pulled. “Not a feast at Larsdalen or Todenangst,” she said. “But sort of . . . fitting.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Castle Todenangst, Crown demesne

  Portland Protective Association

  Willamette Valley near Newburg

  (formerly western Oregon)

  High Kingdom of Montival

  (western North America)

  June 15th, Change Year 26/2024 AD

  Squire Lioncel de Stafford’s muscles still ached very slightly from the morning’s run in armor up and down the endless flights of stairs, with a shield on his left arm and a weighted wooden practice sword in his fist. Just enough that it felt good standing at parade rest behind the Grand Constable’s chair, where she sat with the document-and-plate-laden table between her and the Lord Chancellor of the Association, Conrad Renfrew, Count of Odell.

  The Silver Tower had the exotic luxury of a functioning elevator, powered by convicts on a treadmill in the dungeons, but Baroness Tiphaine d’Ath didn’t believe in letting her menie go soft merely because they were stationed at HQ for a week.

  She’d led the run, of course.

  A confidential secretary from the Chancellor’s office took notes in shorthand, with an occasional no, not that! to halt the pen about to render permanent an embarrassingly frank opinion about some exalted personage. One of the Count’s squires stood behind his wheelchair, and the Grand Constable’s pages were serving a work
ing lunch when they weren’t standing silently against the far wall out of earshot; still, it was a sign of the trust attached to Lioncel’s position that he was present as the two most powerful officials of the Association conferred in private.

  Just now Tiphaine tapped one finger on a note signed in crimson ink:

  ���Sandra’s gotten a complaint from the Seneschal’s wife at Castle Oliver and passed it on to me with a flag for action after consulting you, Conrad.”

  Both the nobles lifted their eyes slightly at the mention of Sandra Arminger, formerly Lady Regent of the Association and now Queen Mother. There was nothing above this level save her apartments, the crenellations, cisterns, a heliograph station, a detachment of the Protector’s Guard and the roof. The Queen Mother was doing pretty much the same work that she had as Lady Regent, and from the same places.

  Lioncel carefully didn’t look up. Lately she’d actually been noticing one Lioncel de Stafford a little beyond the pat-on-the-head level. Not in a bad way, but it could be alarming when things shifted like that.

  “Castle Oliver . . . middle of the Okanagan . . . barony held in Crown demesne . . . twenty-two manors, the castle and a lot of grazing and woodland. The Seneschal would be Sir Symo Herrera,” the Chancellor said. “His wife . . . Lady Aicelena of the Chelan Dennisons. Aicelena’s running the place while Sir Symo’s away, the usual.”

  Conrad of Odell was nearly sixty and built like a squat muscular toad, with a face that would have looked coarse-featured and rugged even if it hadn’t been terribly burned long ago. A bit gaunt now, without the spare flesh he’d had before the Battle of the Horse Heaven Hills last year. He’d been smacked off his destrier there and suffered a hairline fracture of the pelvis. He was out of traction, but still wearing a long embroidered robe with wide sleeves, informal garb for an invalid, which looked rather odd with the massive gold chain of office.

  Tiphaine nodded. “Sir Symo’s at the front with the Oliver levy . . . he’s been doing quite well, too.”

  “So has she,” Conrad said thoughtfully. “Deliveries on time, no major complaints, the books balanced last time I send auditors around, and she doesn’t keep asking to have her hand held. What’s her problem, and why didn’t it come direct to me? Why does the military side need to get involved?”

  “Apparently a party of men-at-arms on their way south from County Dawson, seventy-three lances and followers plus some light horse, stopped there. Lady Aicelena quite properly invited the chevaliers and esquires in for dinner and had an ox-roast put on in the courtyard for the rest.”

  “Ouch,” the Chancellor said. “I think I can see what’s coming.”

  Another nod, this one short and curt. “They repaid her by dropping the drawbridge and then emptied the storehouses in the castle bailey and the barns in the home manor of everything a horse could eat. Nobody hurt and nothing else taken except for a couple of chickens, but from the description it was as near as no matter robbery at spear-point.”

  Conrad nodded in turn. “After the Crown emergency requisitions, that was probably the last surplus the area has,” he said thoughtfully. “Except what can be bought in at wartime prices.”

  “Right. That cupboard’s going to be bare when the next legitimate call comes.”

  The Lord Chancellor and the Grand Constable both had suites on the level just below the Queen Mother; it made conferences like this easier. Much of the Portland Protective Association’s government was handled from here in the great fortress-palace of Todenangst, and the hierarchy of status was quite literal; the higher up the massive ferroconcrete bulk of the Silver Tower you were, the more exalted the rank and the less there was of the tomblike gloom usual in castles. This high there were pointed-arch windows and balconies, letting in a flood of afternoon light through the Gothic tracery along with plenty of fresh air slightly laden with smells of woodsmoke and flowers.

  Lioncel still felt a slight chill at the tone of his liege’s voice; calm and even and . . . angry. There were reasons her title of Lady d’Ath was usually pronounced Lady Death.

  “That was also Royal property they took, especially if they didn’t pay,” the Chancellor said.

  “Not a penny. Our northern heroes just made noises about military necessity and hightailed it on down the main rail line towards the Columbia, radiating innocence and dribbling stolen alfalfa-pellets and cracked barley.”

  “Who was the Dawson commander?”

  “Sir Othon Derby,” Tiphaine said.

  Conrad Renfrew closed his eyes, consulting some inner file before he spoke:

  “He’s the second son of Lord Hardouin Derby, Baron de Taylor, one of Count Enguerrand of Dawson’s major vassals. Arms: Argent, on a bend azure three buck’s heads cabossé d’or. With a crescent of cadency, of course. Twenty years old, reputation as a hothead, engaged to one of the Count’s daughters. Bit young for an independent command, I’d have thought.”

  “Temporary command; Enguerrand sent him back north to bring in this bunch as replacements for others we’re letting go home for one reason or another. The new levy were mostly men who’ve come of age since the Prophet’s War started.”

  “How long since they were called up?” the Chancellor asked.

  “When they arrived at Oliver it was twenty-three days since they took the oath at Castle Dawson’s muster-yard,” Tiphaine said, a hint of satisfaction in her voice.

  Ah, Lioncel thought. That’s the official start of their period of service.

  Landholders, from counts and barons down to footmen holding fiefs-minor in sergeantry, were liable to war-service whenever their overlords or the Crown called. That was what being an Associate was about, after all—fighting to protect the realm, which was why a special dagger was the mark of belonging to the Association. The first forty days after a summons to the ban were at the fief-holder’s own expense, though. Only after that was the Crown obliged to furnish maintenance, with a right to draw on Royal storehouses.

  So they wouldn’t be able to plead even a shadow of lawfulness, he thought.

  Unexpectedly Tiphaine turned slightly. “Lioncel,” she said. “Your opinion—concisely.”

  Lioncel gulped; having questions like that shot at you was one of the less attractive parts of moving up from page to squire.

  “Umm . . . definitely unchivalrous conduct towards a gentlewoman, my lady, unworthy of a knight. And a violation of the terms of service. This Sir Othon was obliged to see to his men’s provisioning, but that doesn’t mean he can act like a bandit on Association territory . . . or anywhere in Montival. Plus it will leave a hole in our supply plans in that area, and it’s a major north-south corridor. My lady.”

  “Correct,” Tiphaine said, making a small gesture that stiffened him back into anonymity.

  “Sandra so does not like getting ripped off,” Conrad of Odell said, looking upward. “We used to call it an aggressive zero-tolerance policy.”

  “You don’t say,” Tiphaine said dryly, glancing in the same direction. “She is my patron too, Conrad.”

  She snapped her fingers without looking around. “Boy! The Count of Dawson’s status reports,” she said.

  The Baroness of Ath was forty and looked ageless in the way people who spent their days outdoors in all weathers often did, a tall woman with a build like a swordblade, her sun-faded silver-blond hair cut in a bob much like those worn by pages, and eyes the gray of sea-ice. Her male-style court dress of curl-toed shoes, hose, shirt, jerkin and houppelande coat were as plain as ceremony allowed and mostly shades of rich dark fabrics, relieved only by her chain of office and the small golden spurs of knighthood. A round chaperon hat hung on one ear of her tall chair, the liripipe dangling.

  Lioncel slid the logistics file she’d called for forward and stepped back behind her chair, standing in the formal posture with one hand on the hilt of his sword and the other over the heavy cut-steel buckle of the sword belt. That let him feel more than hear the rumbling of his stomach. He’d had a very substantial lunch a
nd he was hungry again hours short of dinnertime; everyone laughed and told him it was being fourteen and shooting up like a weed.

  “Oh, by Our Lady of the Citadel,” Tiphaine said after a moment, flicking pages.

  Odd, Lioncel thought. I’ve never heard that used as one of the Virgin’s titles before.

  She went on: “Did the man seriously expect to ship fodder all the way south from Dawson for his destriers? Without the railway draught teams eating everything they were pulling by the time they got to the Okanagan country? Enguerrand’s a Count these days; it doesn’t give him supernatural powers.”

  Conrad flicked through the same file and grinned, an alarming expression as the thick white keloid scars on his face knotted.

  “They’ve got a lot more oats than money in the Peace River country and Dawson levies haven’t fought down here in the south much. At a guess, back when the ban was called out at the start of this war my lord Enguerrand told his quartermasters to get the fodder wherever it was cheapest and then forgot about it. Then they tried to draw on his own elevators full of nice cheap tribute grain before they realized how shipping costs would screw their cash flow, and ever since then they’ve been robbing Peter to pay Paul. Coming up short now and then, which was where young Sir Othon found himself, I’d wager. And there’s not much coin circulating up there even now, too remote. Just not used to paying cash for grain.”

  “The Count will pay for this, and a fine, plus compensation-money to Lady Aicelena for the abuse of her hospitality,” Tiphaine said flatly. “Or Baron de Taylor will. And the bold Sir Othon can see how he likes a month of attitude adjustment in Little Ease.”