The plates were cleared, and then the servants set out platters of pastries and pots of monstrously expensive real coffee, moderately expensive sugar made from locally grown beets, and thick cream and decanters of brandy and discreetly retired. Tiphaine approved as she bit into an apricot tart. Far too many people assumed that servants didn't have ears, though Sandra had never made that mistake, and had any number of them on her clandestine payroll. Everyone looked up as she rapped a knife against a wineglass.
“All right, my lords and ladies, goodmen and goodwomen.”
Public speaking had always been something that she loathed, but she was fairly good at it by now.
“I'm going to say a few words for all of you, and then I'm afraid there will be a private consultation with your lord and his barons and war-captains. I'm absolutely sure that all of you are loyal, but it's a simple fact that the more widely information is spread the more likely it is to leak.”
She stood with her fingertips on the table and slowly looked them all in the eye. Most of their faces were neutral, politely attentive; everyone at this table was a politician, in their way.
Including me,
she thought.
Dammit.
“First, I bring you the greetings of our High King, Artos the First, and the High Queen Mathilda, our own Princess of House Arminger.”
There was a murmur of pleasure, mostly genuine from the expressions. The Associates were generally happy that the grandchild of the Lord Protector would end up ruling the whole shebang, albeit by marriage rather than conquest. The dynasty was popular these days, far more so than it had been in Norman's time. For that matter, a lot of people still thought of him with gratitude. Commoners might be pleased for that reasonâthey were, after all, alive because of what he'd doneâor because the next High King
wouldn't
wholly be the scion of House Arminger. Plenty still remembered just how heavy his hand could be, too.
“Next, I have intelligence to share with you concerning the larger course of this war. As of a month ago, the armies of the Lakota nation . . . now part of the High Kingdom . . . and our allies of the League of Des Moines and the three Dominions have crossed the borders of the territories held by the Church Universal and Triumphant. Those armies are more than ninety thousand men strong, horse, foot and artillery, and they are converging on Corwin, the Prophet's capital in the Valley of Paradise. They've already won several engagements. Taken together, weâthe alliance against the Prophet and Boiseânow have superior numbers. That changes our long-term prospects rather substantially.”
This time the pleasure verged on delight. Tiphaine held up one long hand.
“And the CUT
has
withdrawn some of the troops they were massing in Boise's territories to attack us, taken them back across the Rockies to the Bitterroot country and the High Plains while the passes are still open. We think that shifting forces around to compensate for the new eastern front is the reason we haven't seen a full-scale attack yet this summer. However, that attack
will
come, and very soon. The Prophet has
not
taken all his men out to face the threat from the east and north, and Boise is ignoring it altogether.”
“That's bad strategy,” one of de Aguirre's barons said, a forty-something man with a scarred face that looked as if it had been adzed out of a stump, and very cold eyes. “Dividing their forces in the face of converging attacks? They're risking being weak everywhere. They'd be better advised to defend against us and throw everything they have east. Or the other way 'round, of course, my lady.”
The abbess spoke again: “The CUT are diabolists. They serve the Adversary, the lord of Evil. And the ultimate definition of Evil is
futility
. It may appear strong for a time, but in the end it destroys itself.”
That brought a moment of uneasy silence; the archbishop looked a little annoyed that she had beaten him to the punch, but not as if he disagreed. Tiphaine was glad she had. He would have been far more long-winded and less accurate.
Someone said: “We'd be a lot better off if Castle Campscapell hadn't fallen last year.”
Tiphaine nodded; that had been at the old town of Pomeroy, and it had plugged the area between the northern slopes of the Blue Mountains and the deep canyon of the Snake River. Men had opened the gates of Campscapell and then killed themselves rather unpleasantly, for no reason anyone had been able to find, except that a red-robed magus of the CUT had stood there laughing as they did.
“We would. That was . . . whatever it is that the CUT does. Or did. Note that since this springâwhen Artos took the Sword of the Lady in his hand and drew it by the light of common dayânothing similar has happened. And our holy men and women have rooted out a great deal of the CUT's evil since then.”
The archbishop nodded. He had a soft plump faceâa rarity these daysâbut his hazel eyes were extremely shrewd.
“Our exorcists have been busy. The compulsions their devils lay on the CUT's followers are foul, but we have detected many, and even cured some,” he said.
“As important, no more castles have fallen . . . mysteriously,” Tiphaine said; the thought of such things still offended her tidy soul and bleakly practical mind. “That doesn't mean they can't be stormed or undermined or battered down by trebuchets. The High King directs me to tell you that the defense of this city, and of the strongholds of the Eastermark more generally, are absolutely essential to his larger strategy for victory in this war. You
must
hold and the whole Kingdom will do its best to see that you do.”
“Artos!” someone shouted.
“Artos and Montival!”
The others took it up; Tiphaine waited it out. High morale was important, and besides she agreed.
“The High King is mustering the whole strength of the Kingdom farther down the Columbia, and I've brought out a considerable force. I'll consult with your good Count as to the disposition of our field army here. What I'd like to talk to you about is your role in defending your own homes.”
“We'll fight, my lady Grand Constable,” one of the Guildmasters said in a growl. “We're not noble Associates, but by God and the Virgin and St. Amand our patron, we'll fight for our homes and our children and our city.”
He bowed in his seat to de Aguirre and the archbishop. “And for the good lord who leads us, as his father did before him, and for Holy Church.”
“Stoutly spoken!” she said. “I've brought out considerable equipment for you all, including fortress model catapults and flame-throwers stripped from the western castles, and their crews and ammunition.”
Happy surprise showed at that; she winced slightly at the struggle it had taken. One or two instances had required walking the lord of the keep through the gates with a steel point held encouragingly close to his kidneys to remind him of his obligations as a vassal.
“And we've unloaded four thousand extra crossbows from the Portland armories.”
That brought a puzzled silence. “My lady . . . that's more than our militias can use,” one baron pointed out. “Considerably more.”
Tiphaine nodded. “My thought exactly, but the High King showed me different. Now, we all know it takes a long time to train a soldier. Years for a man-at-arms, or a horse-archer, or for that matter a Mackenzie longbowman. However, you can learn to shoot a crossbow in a couple of weeks. Less, if it's at a big target. A couple of days, if it's just a matter of blazing away into the brown.”
“That doesn't make a soldier!” came a protest from the scar-faced baron. “Not a
real
crossbowman.”
“No, it doesn't, my lord. It doesn't mean being able to march twenty miles in armor and being fit to fight at the end of it, or knowing how to use sword and buckler, or maneuver in units to the word of command or fire volleys, or stand in ranks under fire and close up the files over the bodies of the wounded and the dead, or a hundred other things including being a genuine marksman. It
does
mean, however, that the one you've trained can run upstairs to the wall of a city, aim over the parapet, and shoot at a massed assault column. For that, all you have to be is able to walk and work the cocking lever and see something the size of a battalion in close ranks. Lioncel!”
The young squire had been standing motionless with Tiphaine's sword cradled in his arms. Now he laid it respectfully down on one of the side tables and opened a basket. The crossbow came out and he stood with it at port arms, his young face calm and attentive.
“This is my squire, Lioncel de Stafford. He's a very junior squire, a page until earlier today, and while he is in excellent training for his age and inches he's thirteen years old and as you can see far from his full growth. That is a standard-issue crossbow of the sealed pattern. Lioncel, span and fire!”
The youngster brought the weapon up before his face in the first move of the drill-book sequence. His right hand held the grip, and his left went to a metal loop set into the base of the forestock.
The weapon was still made as the Lord Protector's conscript engineers had designed it in the first weeks after the Change. The stock was hardwood, modeled after an old-time rifle called an M-14, with adjustable aperture sights over the trigger, a groove down the center for the bolt and a spring catch to hold it in place. The prodâthe short horizontal bow bolted into a slot at the endâwas a thirty-two-inch section of shaped automobile leaf spring.
Making the weapons was a Crown monopoly, and charging vassals for the ones they required to outfit their troops a source of revenue. The whole assemblage had a blunt, functional grace, rather like a war hammer.
Lioncel pulled on the loop, and the lever it was attached to pivoted down. Then he worked it, using his grip on the stock to make the two a scissors-style source of mechanical advantage. Click-
clack
, click-
clack
, click-
clack
, click-
clack
, click-
clack
, click-
clack
, as the pawl-and-ratchet mechanism in the stock forced the thick string back; then a louder
click!
as the trigger nut caught it.
The squire slapped the lever back into its slot and held the weapon by its forestock with his left hand as his right snapped down to an imaginary belt-quiver. He mimed pressing a short bolt into the groove, brought the weapon up to his shoulder and aimed at a snarling bear in the mural.
Tung
, and a slight whapping sound as the string vibrated.
“Again.”
He repeated the process. A crossbow didn't have the suave elegance of a Mackenzie longbow; the short prod had to draw at much more raw weight to give a bolt the same speed and range as the superbly efficient spring the long subtly curved yew stave made, and arrows were more aerodynamic than the stubby bolts. Even with the built-in spanning mechanism, a good bowman could get off three shots to the crossbow's one. But it had the supreme virtue that you didn't need to start at age six and practice all your life to master it, and at short range the bolts had a brutal authority that would make nothing of most armor.
“Again.”
When Lioncel had fired three imaginary bolts he came to port arms again. Tiphaine looked around the table.
“Reverend Mother, may I borrow your attendant Sister . . .”
“Sister Fatima.”
“Sister Fatima for a moment.”
“Yes, my lady,” the abbess said.
Sister Fatima stood immediately, standing with her eyes slightly cast down and hands linked before her. Tiphaine nodded approval; she'd seen soldiers less disciplined.
“Sister Fatima, you are . . . what, twenty?”
“Nineteen, my lady.”
Nineteen, and of no more than middling height and slim, though healthy-looking, as far as you could tell with the voluminous habit.
“Your birth?”
“My father has a fief-minor in sergeantry on a manor of the Count's, a day's travel south of the city, my lady. Ferndale Manor.”
That put him in the lowest class of Associate. As an infantry reservist called up a month a year in peacetime he would have a double-sized peasant farm and pay less rent and labor service; his sons would spend a couple of years in the Count's garrisons as young men. Such families were as close to a rural middle class as the Association had.
“Have you ever handled a crossbow?”
“No, my lady. My father and brothers are spearmen.”
“Your occupation?”
“I helped with all the usual farm chores, my lady. Now in God's service
I am an orderly at our hospital, and a student of medicine, and assist with clerical duties in the Mother Superior's office as needed.”
“Excellent, Sister. Lioncel, give the good Sister the crossbow. Sister Fatima, please span and shoot three times.”
Lioncel presented the weapon across his palms with a polite bow. The nun's eyes went a little wide as she accepted it, and it wobbled slightly as she adjusted to the solid nine pounds of weight. Then she settled it in a rather clumsy copy of Lioncel's posture and went through the loading procedure. She was awkward, and made elementary mistakesâholding the butt away from her shoulder in a way that would have given her a painful thump if there had been a bolt to launch. But it was obvious that she was handling the basic effort without much strain.
“Thank you, Sister, Reverend Mother,” Tiphaine said, as Lioncel retrieved the weapon, replaced it in the basket and retrieved the sword.
“And there you have it,” she went on to the room at large as he took up his position behind her. “You can quickly identify the natural shots. Bolts are reusable, so there's no limit on practice. Any laborer, any healthy peasant girl, can load. Have two or three behind the shooter handing forward loaded crossbows. That will augment your firepower quite a bit, especially here with the large circuit of the city walls to hold, and let you use your trained men where you really need them. The enemy are not going to sit down to two-year sieges, or an artillery and combat-engineering duel. If they come, they'll try ramps, siege towers, and plain old ladders, to swamp you with massed assaults regardless of costs. Shoot the guts out of them, break their hearts with losses, and you can stop them. Then your walls will be the anvil against which we'll hammer them to death.”