A Meeting At Corvallis

"To Count Conrad and to the Protector. But neither of them's going to be what you'd call real happy with us if we don't handle this on our own."

Jabar grunted; he was still uncertain of his standing at court after the fiasco with Princess Mathilda. That might be forgotten now that the astonishing news about her rescue had come through; on the other hand, it might not. Nobody in their right mind expected Norman Arminger to forget a grudge, and Lady Sandra:

Emiliano hid a slight shudder with another sip of coffee. "OK, what we got to be careful of is getting mousetrapped the way that hijo Piotr was."

Jabar traced lines on the map with a thick finger. "He tried stomping eight hundred Mackenzies with a hundred lancers," he said. "Even if there's four hundred of those light horse, they're not going to ass-fuck four hundred knights. Not if we can pin them against something for a charge so they can't run away and shoot us up as they go. Those sheep-fuckers can't stand up to us hand-to-hand."

"Yeah, but there's a chance-just an off chance-that the Mackenzies might be up here, too."

The ca

"Think? Bro, I know Renfrew doesn't have his dick on the chopping block here, whatever the hell he thinks."

Jabar rubbed his jaw; his coif rested loose over his bullock-broad shoulders and down his back. "Eight hundred archers: even with, say, four hundred CORA riders, that's still not enough to take us on. Not even close. Yeah, their bowmen are good, but there's a difference between charging eight hundred with one hundred and charging eight hundred with four hundred. Without they got some spears or pikes or something, we could smash their ass, open-field. And that's just the lancers. We got the infantry, two thousand men, and the Pendleton scouts."

He was starting to look enthusiastic; Emiliano raised a cautionary hand. "My lord, let's not get a hard-on so all the blood runs out of our heads, like that little white-ass Mafiya cocksucker Piotr. We got the monks to think about too, you know."

Jabar's brows knitted. Emiliano had worked with him a number of times over the years, and knew the brutish appearance was a false front. Nobody had stayed on top through the turbulent early years of the Association without plenty of smarts, and not just the street variety.

"We got more men than we need to keep them bottled up," Jabar said at last. "There's no quick way to get out of the Abbey. They got to send men down the switchbacks on the north side of the hill into the town before they can sally. That takes time."

"So let's find the motherfuckers, my lord."

The round head nodded. "And then, if we can kill them before they get away, the war is over."

Near West Salem, Willamette Valley, Oregon

March 5th, 2008/Change Year 9

Ooof, Michael Havel thought, closing a jaw gone slack. It's a pleasant surprise, but it's still a hell of a surprise. He felt disoriented for a moment, with a whirling vertigo, as if his whole body had been prepared for a step at the bottom of a ladder and had instead run into a hard floor. Actually, I was prepared for death. A momentary surge of nausea surprised him, and he spat to clear his mouth.

The Bear Lord recognized the first pair of the men pulling up their lathered horses before him. Behind them troops were pouring down out of the ruins of West Salem onto Brush College Road, moving at the double-quick and making the earth shake with the uniform pounding of their boots. Pikes bristled above them, waving like ripe wheat in July, light glistening on the steel.

"Major Jones," he said, returning the man's salute. "Let's be understated and say it's good to see you."

"Edward Fi

He was in his late forties, stocky and weathered, wearing first-class armor- breast-and-back of overlapping articulated plates, lobster-style, mail-and-plate leggings and arm-guards, a visored helmet on his head-with a sword at his hip and a long war-hammer slung over one shoulder. It wasn't gear Havel would have cared to wear on horseback, but from the weapon that wasn't the way he fought, either, and the horse was for mobility. Two much younger men with a strong family resemblance and similarly armed rode behind him, probably his sons. An even younger woman followed-barely old enough to take the field- in lighter gear, with a trumpet and a crossbow slung over her back.

"Ah, you're a friend of Juney's," Havel said. A mental file clicked: Big yeoman farmer down south of Corvallis city, the son of old Luther. Influential guy. "So, the Faculty Senate finally got its collective thumb out?"

"Nope," Fi

"That back there is the First Corvallis Volunteers; two thousand of them, half crossbows, half pikes and heavy infantry, a couple dozen mounted scouts. Could have had more, but we didn't want to wait, since that message you read on your veranda the other day sounded pretty time-constrained. It was obvious Turner and Kowalski would keep the Senate chasing round in circles and biting its own ass with amendments to secondary clauses to reports of special committees on the Whichness of the Wherefore, so we convened an overnight emergency session of the Popular Assembly-your man Hugo helped a lot getting the word around quick. That man's got contacts!"

"The Assembly can't declare war or order mobilization," Havel said, surprised. At least, if I know as much about the way Corvallis is set up as I think I do.

"But it can authorize people to go off as volunteers without a declaration of war."

"It can? "It can now, because we just did exactly that, and it hadn't occurred to the Economics Faculty that we could. We rammed through a vote, and most of the people voting showed up with their armor already on, which was sort of a hint-Ed here turned out a good five hundred from south of town, and another farmer friend of Lady Juniper's did the same out around Philomath, and Bill Hatfield and I have some pull in town. Somehow nobody wanted to get in our way when we pushed our bikes up to the Northgate."

Havel gri

"Yeah. We geared up, got in the saddle before dawn this morning and started pedaling like mad while the Bobbsey Twins of the Faculty of Economics waved their arms and screeched about unconstitutional actions and threatened us with paper-armored lawyers. Christ, watching their faces was worth it all by itself! Not as much fun as smashing the butt end of a glaive there, but still worth it."

"You didn't happen to run into my reinforcements on the way here, did you?"

Jones nodded. "The guy in charge there decided to go up and reinforce Will Hutton instead, since he hadn't got the last of his people in, and we were going to get to you first."

Havel fought down a surge of irritation; he wanted his subordinates to exercise initiative, and it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

"Where do you want us, O Lord Bear?" Jones went on.

Havel shook his head again, looking westward along his line and then north at the enemy. No time to be flabbergasted. The enemy had frozen in place when they saw the reinforcements coming up behind him; there was a lot of trumpeting and flag-waving and messengers riding back and forth.

"You're already up there, so form up on my western flank."

He put out his left arm, pointing it at the Corvallans as they poured out onto the road, then swung it around to his front. "We'll come in on them like this, and see if we can catch Alexis nose in the door."

"Or his thieving fingers," Edward Fi

"Or his dick," Jones added, and the younger Fi