The High King of Montival: A Novel of the Change - By S. M. Stirling Page 0,82

a trade after the Change she hadn’t realized how much craftsmanship there was to it, as opposed to simple derring-do.

And archery and horsemanship and swordplay, but I started those when I was a little girl, when I first read the Histories. The rest of it . . . is more like a combination of chess and tennis, more or less. You are playing against your foeman’s mind, when you are in command.

Her brother-in-law Mike Havel had started her education in that, and she’d learned diligently from many instructors over the past generation. Including the people she’d fought.

The Montival light horse spurred down the long slope towards the Boisean troops. Their equivalents came to meet them, and arrows twinkled as they arched in long flat trajectories between the two formations of horse-archers. The Association men-at-arms walked their horses forward at a steady pace, halting just out of practical catapult range of the fort, about three times the distance of a long bowshot. The enemy mounted archers withdrew, with Eilir and John Hordle and their troop chivvying them north and west; they were outnumbered, and anyway had no place on a confined field where armored lancers and heavy infantry might clash, any more than a wasp did between hammer and anvil.

Over the crest of the hill behind Astrid poured a stream of soldiers on bicycles, puffing as they pumped at the pedals in low climbing gear. Their leader was on horseback; he spurred over to the Grand Constable, then stood in his stirrups and waved to his command, about six hundred men. They skidded to a halt, laid their cycles on the kickstands and ran to deploy between the Portlanders and the smaller group of Dúnedain. One carried a red-white-and-blue flag on a tall pole; it streamed out in the cool breeze, showing . . . she blinked.

“Ah, they did make it,” Astrid said. “And in time, too, for a wonder. Thanks be to the Lord and Lady.”

“Hazards of coalition warfare . . . Is that a bloody teapot on their flag?” Alleyne asked. “Surrounded by seven stars? I call that cheek!”

Their eyes went immediately to their own banner; the silver tree on black, surmounted by the winged crown of the Sea-Kings and surrounded by seven stars also.

She fought down a stab of irritation, and went on: “It’s . . . yes, that’s Zillah’s banner. One of the Seven Free Cities of the Yakima League. Manwë and Varda alone know why they use a teapot. Wait, wait, there’s a famous building there shaped like a teapot. Quite an old building, as Men of these later ages count years. Tourists used to come and see it.”

“They’re rather out of the way there. Doubtless some story behind it originally.”

“Yes, they’re a little like the Marish beyond the Eastfarthing,” she said, running a soothing hand down the silky dapple neck of her horse, Arroach. “Full of odd notions and queer customs. I wouldn’t mind paying them a visit after the war. I understand it’s very pretty country, and the wine is certainly good.”

Astrid watched with interest as the infantry deployed; the Yakima valley’s prosperous but rather insular little cities—towns, by the old world’s standards—hadn’t come in her way much before. Their close-settled, intensively farmed irrigated countryside didn’t need the Rangers to put down bandits or beasts or guard caravans or convey messages and parcels through dangerous territory, and they were surrounded on all sides by Portlander fiefs anyway; they’d fought valiantly in the wars against the Association in Norman Arminger’s time. The troops were armored catch-as-catch-can, brigandines mostly, with mail shirts and some leather jackets sewn with washers; reasonable for infantry, though a bit old-fashioned except for the modern turtlelike sallet helms, which were probably recent issue and looked as if they’d been bought en masse from a Portlander arsenal, or someone else who had pneumatic presses.

About what you’d expect from a prosperous farmers’ militia.

The weapons were more standard, sixteen-foot breakdown pikes, glaives, and sword-and-buckler at their waists. There was a long rattling clatter as the two sections of each long polearm were fitted together in their metal collars, and then a shout as the pikemen raised them in unison. Suddenly what had been a collection of anxious tillers of the soil a long way from home was a bristling hedge of foot-long steel points each on an ashwood shaft more than twice a tall man’s height; the formation was six men deep and ninety wide. A bugle called, one of the type that high