Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change Read Online Free PDF

It had rained hard yesterday, but there wasn’t the constant grey drizzle he was used to in the Black Months of his home in the northern Willamette, west of the Cascades on the wet side of the mountains. The clumps of elm and oak and beech around the villages and manors were streaks of brighter yellow against the dun-gold and brown and faded green, with only their size to show that the landscape was not much older than he. The straight lines of candle-shaped Lombardy poplars that outlined the great common fields with their villagers’ strips werebright as well. Vineyards scattered here and there had just finished yielding their last grapes to the harvesters, and the leaves drew notes of scarlet and orange.
    Huon gave a quiet chuckle as he glanced at the plow-teams. Next year…
    “What’s funny?” the squire next to him said quietly, as the horses stamped along the picket-line behind them.
    “Just thinking that the crops ought to be good around here next year, with all the crap the army left getting plowed in. You can follow the path of glory by the trail of shit it leaves.”
    The other boy chuckled. He was younger than Huon, about fourteen, but already slightly taller and with big hands and feet that promised six feet or better eventually; a little gangly, and you could tell that his white-blond hair had just recently been sheared from the pageboy’s bob to a squire’s bowl-cut. The surcoat over his light mail shirt had the arms of Barony Ath, a delta Or over a V argent, quartered with a blazon:
Gules a domed Tower Argent surmounted by a Pennon Or in base a Lion passant guardant of the last
. The arms of Forest Grove, the barony just north of Ath.
    “You’re one of the Grand Constable’s household?” Huon said, a polite statement of the obvious as a way to start.
    “I’m Lioncel de Stafford, heir to Forest Grove. Squire to the Grand Constable, Baroness d’Ath.”
    “Huon Liu, heir of Gervais,” Huon said quietly, blinking a little against the morning sun. “Squire to Her Majesty.”
    They fell silent again; it wouldn’t do to chatter too openly while they waited for orders. The Queen and the Grand Constable were consulting with men who commanded units assigned to protect the lines of communications, since the eastern enemy had lots of light cavalry for raiding around the flanks. It was essential work, but Huon didn’t envy them one bit. The great battle was coming, and they would be missing it.
    I’m going to be right in the
middle
of it. Right behind the High Queen,
he thought, with a mixture of excitement and longing and a trace of fear.
We’ll be moving up tomorrow morning. A day or two, no more, and then the biggest battle since the Change!
    A squire cantered up, one of the Grand Constable’s. He dismounted, threw the reins to a groom, and nodded to the two boys since they were formally more or less equals, though the squire in question was at least eighteen and in half-armor like the commanders. Then he passed the sentries with a clank of salutes, bent the knee to Mathilda and handed a dispatch to Tiphaine d’Ath.
    That gave them a little cover, and they exchanged a bow. Huon looked warily at the other boy and got the same in reply.
    They knew
of
each other, roughly, though with the way his own life had been disturbed the last couple of years with House Liu’s political troubles he wasn’t sure if they’d ever actually met beyond seeing each other about their duties. But there just
weren’t
all that many heirs to baronies south of the Columbia. Lioncel was the eldest son of Rigobert de Stafford, Baron Forest Grove, the Marchwarden of the South, and his wife, Lady Delia. His mother was Châtelaine of Barony Ath for the Grand Constable, too.
    According to almost-certainly-true rumor Lady Delia was also Tiphaine d’Ath’s girlfriend and had been for fifteen years, which the Baron of Forest Grove didn’t mind at all since he liked men himself. The three of them seemed to be the best of