once more, Artos thought.
He stood as hands lifted a long tunic-coat of quilted linen over his head; it had mail sleeves, extended to cover the vulnerable spot beneath the armpit. Mail-covered chaps laced onto its skirts, covering the outside of his legs; plate greaves went on his shins, with linked steel splints to protect his feet. He slapped the vambraces onto his forearms; after the brigandine was buckled back over the padding on his torso he ducked his head for the coif, more leather covered in mail, making a tight-fitting hood and covering his neck and a semicircle of chest and back.
Then, wryly: Or he wasn’t just obsessed with the days of the knights, sure. And if he hadn’t been obsessed, he wouldn’t have learned those skills in a world where they were no more use than tits on a boar. I don’t blame him for loving the ancient stories, either. For being a red-capped brute of a powrie in the flesh, yes, now there I do blame him. Yet Matti his daughter and I Mike Havel’s son will wed, if we live, and our children will unite the blood of the Bear Lord and House Arminger and Clan Mackenzie. Let the dead past bury its feuds. We Changelings have our own wars to win.
Mathilda looked at him as she adjusted her own coif, smiling a little as the lustrous titanium-alloy mail framed her slightly, pleasantly irregular strong-boned face.
“Are you sure you’re not going to set me to waiting and cooking stew instead of fighting?”
He grinned at her, lifted a little out of his thoughts. “When you’re pregnant or nursing, that I will, by the Blessing! If I have to chain you to a rock to do it, too. Or lock you in a castle solar to look out the tower window and comb your hair and pine, like a princess in a story.”
“You could try!”
“Ah, but acushla, beat of my heart . . . then we’ll be married, and by your Christian rites that means you’ll have to promise your God to obey me, won’t you? The which our Mackenzie witch-girls do not, by the way. And I’ll be able to command you as High King to vassal lord.”
She stuck out her tongue at him; he winked back and settled his sallet on his head, tightening the chin-cup. Twin tufts of raven feathers stood upright from each temple of the helm, and the surface was scored in patterns set with niello that made more feathers. Close-tailored pads of old sponge rubber and new felt gripped brow and head within; he flicked the visor down and up. Then he twisted and bent, squatted and sprang upright, to make sure everything was settled and nothing was going to shift at a—critically—wrong moment. Uncoiling, his long legs drove him to a chest-height leap before he landed again; not exactly lightly, but with a tensile grace on the balls of his feet and flexed knees.
One of the Norrheimers behind him swore softly in amazement. Artos—Rudi for that moment—caught Mathilda’s eyes as she lifted one eyebrow; yes, it was a bit of a boast, but why not?
The gear weighed about seventy pounds, not counting his slung shield, and hung mostly from his shoulders; a suit of the latest modern plate would have been no heavier, better distributed, better protection and just as flexible, but it would also have been impossible to repair in the field away from the Association’s experts. Any good smith could fix what he was wearing; he could do most of it himself, given the tools.
“Ready,” Ignatius said.
“Ready,” Mathilda said.
“Ready,” Artos replied.
“Ready,” Ingolf said in turn.
They checked each other’s gear, squire’s duty back in Montival. The four of them were the ones with the mounts and training to fight knight-fashion.
“And we lugged this stuff all the way from home,” Mathilda said. “How many times have we used the full set in all that time?”
“Three or four, that I recall, my child,” Ignatius said calmly. “But when we’ve needed it, we’ve needed it very badly, Your Highness.”
Virginia snorted. She and Fred were in western light-horseman’s gear of the sort used all through the ranchlands of the Plains and the mountain-and-basin country, waist-length mail shirts with short sleeves and bowl helmets, armed with recurve bow and curved sword.
“That stuff slows you down,” she said. “ ’Specially the tinware on the horses, and in snow at that. If God”—she glanced at her husband—“the Gods had meant horses to be arrer-proof, they’d have given ’em