The Sea Peoples(58)
“I bow to your wisdom, Heika,” Egawa said, and did so.
Well, it’s not an accident I like Reiko, órlaith thought. And past Tennˉo may have been puppets of their warlords, but that is most certainly not going to happen while Reiko sits the Chrysanthemum Throne.
“This is a desperation move,” órlaith said thoughtfully—in Reiko’s language, and then in her own. “They are throwing the dice to keep us from entering their home waters, yet they could fight more effectively close to their bases and farther from ours. Something in Korea . . . or near it on the Asian mainland . . . is pushing them to recklessness, I would say.”
Reiko made a small exasperated sound. “We in Dai-Nippon have been on the defensive too long, parrying their attacks, or at most retaliating for their raids. Perhaps we overestimate our importance to them, assuming we fill their thoughts as they do ours. We must know more!”
Just then Heuradys came up. She had her shield over her back, and held out órlaith’s.
“Now,” she said, in a voice that brooked no argument, and added: “Your Highness,” because it was a formal occasion in a way.
The four-foot teardrop shape of plywood and bison-hide and sheet metal bore the arms of Montival with a baton of cadency—only the High King or High Queen could wear them undifferenced. She supposed that she could have had Raven as a quartering, for the Morrigú was the patron of her House, or the Golden Eagle that was her personal totem, but this would do. She took it and slung it over her back too with the guige-strap loose; that way you could slide it onto your left arm with a single shrug and movement.
The twenty pounds of weight was utterly familiar, though the shield was new. Even ordinary mortal swords might last lifetimes, but a shield was fortunate to go through a single afternoon of strong arms and hard blows without being beaten to tatters.
Not that she was probably going to need it. This was formal war, unlike their self-help, deeply-unofficial breakaway Quest to help Reiko find the Grasscutter. Her Household was around her—or rather, down in the break between the quarterdeck and main deck, waiting to rush up to surround her.
Faramir and Morfind had been standing with their hands on their hearts—over their mail-lined jerkins—and heads bowed to the westward as they contemplated Númenor that was, and Elvenhome that is, and that which is beyond Elvenhome and ever will be, and a possible trip to the Halls of Mandos.
Their Lakota life-partner Suzie Mika was painting her face with finicky care.
“It’ll do,” said, looking in a hand mirror; she’d put a bar of black across her eyes, and dotted white lines down her cheeks, and bound her braided black hair back with a neckerchief tied at the rear so that she could put on her light helmet without delay.
“Not gaudy and overdone, like you guys,” she added with a grin at the little band of Mackenzie archers that Karl and his brother led.
“Sure, and some just don’t understaaand the spiritual significance,” Karl Aylward Mackenzie said loftily, exaggerating his lilting accent.
The Mackenzies were painting for war too, but in the fierce primary colors their Clan used, often in stylized forms that showed the face of the individual’s sept totem, or sometimes sheer fancy.
Diarmuid Tennart McClintock touched the blue designs tattooed into his face as youths and maidens in his Clan did at their Spear-Taking, when they became adults and Initiates, liable to be called to the levy for war and lawful opponents in duel or feud by the McClintock version of Brehon law. He smiled; in fact, you could say he smirked, and his equally if more crudely tattooed clansfolk jeered in their thick growling accents.
Someone muttered Clan Wannabee, and a McClintock replied with Clan Little Wussie Pleated Skirt, and each group laughed at the ancient half-serious jokes, both nearly as old as the Change. Then Gwri Beauregard Mackenzie began singing “The Tale of Liath Duv”—Liath the Dark, in the old tongue—which was about an aunt of hers who’d led a band harrying the Prophet’s men in the High Cascades a generation ago, and they all joined in the chorus which told how the Fair Folk had favored her.
Beyond them the men-at-arms from the Protector’s guard in their black plate armor were being confessed and absolved by their chaplain, kneeling in turn beside him while their comrades made a box around them, leaning on their shields with their backs to their priest to give each some privacy.
They were all settling their spirits in their own way, and making ready to die if needs must. Around them was wrapped the might of Montival’s united realms, and it was all pledged to her.
So their shields and their bodies will be between me and danger, she thought. Or the types that shields and bodies can stop; a catapult bolt or a roundshot or a napalm shell aren’t respecters of persons.
Knowing that there were people—including people she knew and loved, and also absolute strangers, which was daunting in a different way—who’d throw themselves between her and mortal threat without an instant’s hesitation had always been part of her life. Before the last six months it had been theoretical, but now she’d seen the blood and the unpleasantly final death.
Remember always your birth means you can break things so easily, Da used to say. Mother too, in different words.
On the one hand, her being here endangered people because the enemy would drive for her—and she suspected they had those who could sense the Sword of the Lady well beyond eye-range.