A brilliant smile answered her. “We did, at Castle Corbec, for the handfasting with Princess Mathilda.”

Neithan! she cursed silently. Bad luck to be laid up healing.

She didn’t resent it . . . much. There simply had been no time to waste waiting for her, and she hadn’t been in any condition to be moved. War was like that; she might have been crippled or killed, with only a little less blind luck.

“And we saw the Sword of the Lady. Marvelous, a wonder, like Glamdring or Orcrist or even Andúril Flame of the West!”

I hope you didn’t tell him that, she thought. Mary and I tried to convince him to name it Andúril and he didn’t react well at all.

“Through it the light of the Elder Days is brought to Middle Earth once more. And we are on a mission of our own at the High King’s command,” she went on. “One which will bring the Rangers glory and undying fame!”

Uh-oh.

“The code name is Operation Lúthien.”

We are so fucked! she thought.

“We’ll need fresh horses, Ritva,” Alleyne said; he dropped into English for that, looking at the redcoat. “I understand they’re available here?”

“Yes, sir,” Ian Kovalevsky said. “This ranch raises them and sells saddlebroke four-year-olds, and the Force and the Militia regiments have brought in more.”

Ritva introduced him, adding: “A very brave man, and he fought extremely well against the Easterlings . . . the Cutters. The Force are the local equivalents of the Rangers.”

A party was riding out from the tented camp beside the homeplace. They cantered up the rise and drew rein, a dozen men in light-cavalry gear over plain gray-green uniforms of linsey-woolsey. Their leader was a toughlooking bandy-legged little man of about forty with a face like an intelligent rat and sergeant’s chevrons riveted to the short sleeve of his mail shirt. He took off his helmet as he dismounted, scratching vigorously at his cropped graying brown hair, and then his eyes went wide in astonishment.

“Little John? John ’ordle? Fuck me sideways! You’re alive?” he blurted in a thick clotted accent.

“Was last toime Oi looked!” Then the big Ranger did a double take himself. “Geoff? Geoff Bainbridge? What the ’ell are you doin’ ’ere, Geoff? You were on Salisbury Plain, last toime Oi saw you, drivin’ a Challenger. Oi got over ’ere from Blighty about fifteen year ago. Thought you were a gonner these twenty-five years.”

“Ah were on a trainin’ course at CFB Suffield, me and two thousand others, just before the Change. Lucky as fuck that were an’ all!”

“You don’t know the ’alf of it, mate!” Hordle said feelingly.

“Aye, Ah do. An RN ship docked at Churchill three year back and dropped off a packet o’ English newspapers. Sounds laak it were raaght bad back ’ome for a while. Expected Leeds were totally fooked any road—seems Ah were raaght. Raaght bad all round, sounds laak.”

“Bad? Fuckin’ ’ell, worse than bad, mate. Worse than bad . . . but over quick, for most of ’em at least. How’d things go over ’ere?”