“Bjarni Eriksson, called Bjarni Iron Counsel, King in Norrheim,” he said in introduction. “Lady Tiphaine, Baroness d’Ath and Grand Constable of the Portland Protective Association. Which is to say, war-leader of their host.”

Tiphaine d’Ath was in full plate, from steel sabatons on her feet bearing the golden spurs of knighthood to the bevoir that protected neck and chin; a mounted squire carried her helmet and gauntlets, and another her lance and her shield with its arms of sable, a delta or over a V argent. Her eyes were the color of glacier ice, level and almost expressionless.

“Your Majesty,” she said to Bjarni, with a thump of right fist on the lames of her articulated breastplate, and a bow; as a noble to a sovereign, but not her own ruler.

Bjarni extended his hand. They exchanged the Norrheimer wrist-towrist grip; his eyes widened a little as he did.

Then she turned back to Rudi. He went on with the orders: “I’m sending you and fifteen thousand troops to Walla Walla, to take overall command in the County Palatine of the Eastermark. A thousand of the light horse will be refugees from the Bend country south of the Columbia, CORA ranchers and their retainers, horse-archers. Also the Lakota contingent, and Colonel Ingolf Vogeler’s Richlanders, another eight hundred together.”

She nodded. “The CORA-boys will be useful and they’re certainly well motivated. The Sioux and the Richlanders are to demonstrate the support we . . . Montival . . . have from the east, I suppose?”

“Yes. The Richlanders are good horse-soldiers, and highly disciplined.”

“The Sioux aren’t well disciplined, I take it, Your Majesty?”

“Not disciplined either well or badly; they’re splendid warriors, but not soldiers in our sense of the word at all, at all. And treating them with a heavy hand is as futile as pushing on a rope. Only ropes don’t bite when pushed, and they do . . . so perhaps pushing on a rattlesnake would be a better metaphor? Also they have a rooted conviction that all the horses in the world belong to them alone. I suggest you deal with them through Ingolf, as much as possible.”

“They’ll take his orders?”

“No. They may well listen to him, though. And he knows the Lakota well.”

“He should,” Eric said with grim amusement. “From what he’s said, he learned his trade fighting them back east.”