I’ve been in this business too long, Ingolf thought. I’ve seen too many of the people I care about die. It’s starting to get to me more and more.

He shook his head and looked at the Portlander beside her in the dented and scuffed suit of plate. The man had a tower and a lion on his shield, still discernible beneath a couple of arrow-stubs despite a lot of recent dings and nicks and one lopsided corner looking like someone had hit it with an ax, very very hard. A war hammer in his right hand rested with its shaft across the high steel-plated cantle of his knight’s saddle; the end of it was caked gruesomely, with drying bits of hair and bone and skin caught in the serrations on the blunt side and bits of sticky gray goo as well.

Sometime in the last hour, hour and a half from the state of that. And he didn’t stop to smell the roses afterwards, his horse is foaming its lungs out. Big courser and not a barded destrier, must have been a mobile fight.

The face below the raised curved visor was older than Ingolf by about a decade or a bit more though not as banged up, running with sweat and red with exertion—fighting in armor was like that, especially in that sort of armor in this sort of heat, and you didn’t get over it quick—but it looked coolly amused and totally in command of everything around, starting with his breath. Also it had the sort of sculpted but slightly harsh good looks that would make women coo; the short golden beard added to the impression.

“You’ve done a nice little job of work here, Colonel Vogeler, Lord de Grimmond,” he said, his voice deep but smooth. “I don’t believe we’ve met in person before, Colonel. Marchwarden Rigobert de Stafford, Lord Forest Grove, currently in charge of the Crown’s forces in this area. I’d offer to shake hands but I’m a bit messy right now. I’ve met your charming and capable spouse, Princess Mary.”

He handed off the war hammer to another man, probably his squire. “Well-met again, Maugis,” he said to de Grimmond; they exchanged a knuckle-tap, a clunk of armor on armor. “And thank you for your aid, intancan Rick Mat’o Yamni.”

“What happened out there?” Ingolf said bluntly, jerking his head to the west a little.

He couldn’t look there now, because the sun was only a couple of hours from setting, but he needed to know. His mind filed away the fact that this Portlander had gone to the trouble to learn the Lakota for war chief. It was an extremely tactful thing to do, when you had one under your command. When it came to bloody-minded touchy pride the Sioux and the PPA’s nobility were surprisingly similar.