A Meeting At Corvallis

They'd made him empty the bucket himself, too.

"Ah: Lady Astrid: "

The militia lieutenant was floundering, but she knew who she was talking to. There weren't many in the Valley who'd fail to recognize Astrid and Eilir together. Then she visibly pulled herself together, shifting her glaive into the crook of her left arm.

"What's the purpose of your visit to Corvallis, Lady Astrid?" she said politely. "And who are those with you?"

"We come to speak the truth before the people and Faculty Senate; what other business we have in Corvallis is our own. And those with me are the Ohtar and Roquen of the Dunedain Rangers," Astrid said loftily.

"Ah: "

Well, when you're with Astrid, things are never dull, Eilir thought, delighted. Then she signed to Little John: Have pity on the nice lady with the glaive, excessively biggish boyfriend, and translate. I doubt she knows Sign or Sindarin.

"That's squires and knights," the big man said in his bass voice. "I don't suppose you speak Elvish, ma'am?" he added, his little brown-amber eyes twinkling.

"Ah, where were you pla

All the riders had helms and some sort of body armor besides their swords and bows; four carried long horsemen's lances as well.

"We're staying with Master William Hatfield," Astrid replied, pulling a folded letter from her saddlebag and handing it down. "Or at least leaving our horses and gear with him; he stands surety for us. And our prisoner."

"Ummm," the lieutenant said, a variation on her previous nonverbal placeholder as she read. The You can't keep prisoners in Corvallis! she obviously wanted to say died silent.

"Errrr: I know Bill Hatfield. OK, I suppose: Who is this man?"

Alleyne cut in. "He's Sir Jason Mortimer, from the Protectorate. He won't be hurt on Corvallan soil," he said. "Or at all, really. We captured him in company with bandits; leading bandits on a raid, in fact."

"You're going to accuse him before a court, or the Faculty Senate?" Chen said sharply.

"We're going to show him to the Senate, yes," Alleyne replied.

Everyone looked a little gloomy at that. Sir Jason had resolutely refused to cooperate, and the Dunedain didn't go in for the toenails-and-burning-splints forms of persuasion. Which wouldn't work here anyway. If he kept his mouth shut, there went most of the public-relations effect of capturing him in the first place.

Maybe we should just have chopped his head off anyway, Eilir thought. Though of course:

"We're also going to arrange his, you might say, repatriation with the Association's consul here," Alleyne went on.

Meaning we're going to squeeze him until his eyes pop out, Eilir thought happily.

Ru

Besides, the way the Association works, Liu's widow will have to cough up to help him.

In the end it would all come out of the people who worked Mortimer's lands, but he probably took as much as he could from them anyway. The payments on the ransom would have to be subtracted from his own income, unless he wanted his peasants to die, revolt or run away in despair. Bad as they were, the Protectorate's nobles had learned that you couldn't skin the sheep if you wanted to shear it next year, and there was more work than hands to do it everywhere these days.

The rest of the formalities took only a few minutes, not much longer than required to peace-bond their swords. Few of the Rangers had visited Corvallis before; they stared about them in wonder as they crossed the northernmost bridge. Fog covered the water, but the current made odd swirling patterns in it, and Celebroch moved uneasily under her, feeling the toning of the swift water against the pilings through her hooves. Barges and boats and booms of logs for timber moved beneath, dim and half-seen; a few sported tubby masts and gaff sails, and more were tied up along the waterfront. Eilir ran a soothing hand down her mount's neck, and again when they passed through the i

The Stone Houses, Astrid signed. Fallen from their former greatness, aren't they?

Eilir looked at her, slightly alarmed; it was possible-not likely, but possible-that her anamchara would decide that this decayed city needed a princess or two to lead it back to greatness, and you didn't need three guesses to know who'd be in that role. And she just might pull it off: she'd brought off crazy schemes before. Perhaps she could have brought off the ones Eilir had talked her out of, as well.

Or maybe they'd just have gotten us all killed, Eilir thought, searching for inspiration. Help!

"Little do they know our labors in the distant wilds, that keep them safe,'' Alleyne said before she could sign, and Astrid nodded.

Phew! Eilir thought. She was always one for going off on tangents, but it was all a lot less scary and more fun when we were younger and less powerful.

Their destination was just right of the gate to which the bridge led, tucked into the northeastern corner of the city wall and separated from it only by the paved strip around the base, the pomeramium kept clear for military use. Parts of the complex looked like they had been something on the order of a car dealership before the Change, and more timber-frame buildings had been run up on a parking lot to add space; a house had been tacked on as well, probably moved from somewhere outside the walls and rebuilt here.

A group of men waited under a sign that read "Hatfield amp; Hatfield." Will Hatfield was a wiry man in his forties; he smiled broadly and waved as the Dunedain column drew up before his complex of warehouses, stables and workshops.

"All's ready," he said; his eyes narrowed as they saw the captive knight. "Including a nice tight room for your little pigeon there. Harry, Dave, see he's stowed away."

Eilir unlocked the handcuffs. Two tough-looking young men in rough clothes helped Sir Jason Mortimer off his horse, and then frog-marched him away. They didn't carry weapons, strictly speaking-their belt knives had blades under ten inches long. That was enough, and they also had ax handles thonged to their right wrists. The city bylaws said nothing about carrying a stick.

Hatfield was a wholesale merchant who dealt largely in hides and leather, a growing business as the pre-Change plastic equivalents finally wore out, with a sideline in tallow and wool and hemp and other goods. The actual ta

I wouldn't like to live in a city, she signed to Hordle. But it's nice to visit once in a while.

The woods can get quiet, he replied, then winked. Although there are ways to make them lively, eh?

Hatfield handed Astrid a key to the padlocks that secured the space he'd turned over to the Dunedain. He waved aside her thanks. "You saved my life that day over in the mountains," he said. "Not to mention a wagon train full of goods I couldn't afford to lose."

Astrid smiled with regal courtesy, and greeted his family likewise; his wife was a competent-looking person with cropped black hair and ink-stained fingers, with a six-year-old girl clutching at her leg and peering out shyly from behind it. His son was just into his teens, and he looked at the Dunedain with awe.