“Just Father will do, my children. No, it’s simply that at my age the fire needs less fuel. Fat monks are figures of fun for good reason.”

He pronounced a short brisk grace and they fell to; Huon was feeling hungrier than usual, since he’d been too nervous to do breakfast any justice. Dmwoski nodded at his appetite.

“You, on the other hand, are building bone and muscle yet, my son. Give me your hand for a moment.”

He did, and they squeezed. The soldier-monk’s grip was astonishingly strong for a man his age, and felt as if it had been carved from an ancient dry-cured ham.

“Good,” the cleric said. “Lord Chaka’s report did say that you were shaping well. What is the first thing you wish to know?”

Huon opened his mouth, closed it again, and thought. He was warmed and irritated both when Yseult gave him an approving look, and though Dmwoski’s face was calm he thought there was something similar in the monk’s blue eyes.

“I’d like to know what really happened with our—with Barony Gervais—contingent at the Battle of Pendleton. With my uncle.”

“Sir Guelf Mortimer, your mother’s brother.”

“Yes. I know something went badly wrong, Father, at the battle or just after, and there are all sorts of rumors. But our men are not cowards!”

“No, they are not,” Dmwoski said. He frowned, tapping his fingers together. “In fact, they did rather well.”

When he went on his tone was dry, the voice he would have used to speak to an adult: “What happened was this: the allied powers of the Corvallis Meeting—we were not yet Montival then, Rudi Mackenzie and the Princess and the other questers were still struggling through eastern Idaho—tried to steal a march on the CUT and Boise and seize Pendleton. That was just a little under two years ago now. We meant to strike before its Bossman could make a pact with them and they could send troops to secure the city and its territories. Unfortunately, it turned out that they had stolen a march on us. As nearly as we can tell, from reports and interrogations later, what happened is . . .”

Huon leaned forward as the old soldier-monk spoke. The room around them faded away; he could smell the oiled metal of armor, feel the fierce interior sun—

PENDLETON ROUND-UP TERRITORY
CITY OF PENDLETON
(FORMERLY NORTHEASTERN OREGON)
SEPTEMBER 15, CHANGE YEAR 23/2021 AD

This is not going to be a good day.

Sir Guelf Mortimer of Loiston Manor frowned down at the map spread over the gritty soil and weighed down at the corners with chunks of volcanic rock. It showed the city of Pendleton, capital of the Round-Up territory, or the Associated Communities of the Pendleton Emergency Area if you wanted to be technical, which he didn’t. He could look up and south across the river and see the low rough-built walls with bits of rusty iron showing where the reinforcement cropped out through the concrete and rubble and odd angles where buildings had been incorporated into the defenses. Modern Pendleton was a rectangle, roughly, on the south bank of the Umatilla River; that acted as a natural moat on three sides.