Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change by S. M. Stirling Page B

weight of bone and muscle to fly a wind-riding machine as you did to carry a twelve-foot lance on a barded destrier in plate armor or pull the string of an eighty-pound yew stave past the ear over and over.Lightness was a positive advantage in a soaring sailplane, where every ounce might make the difference between
safely home
and
crash-landed behind enemy lines.
    A glance back southward showed little white curls on the blue mile-broad surface of the Columbia and a mass of barges and oared tugs around the landing points. Farther out, war-galleys with their masts down and lashed for action waited, most at anchor like sleeping river-pike. A dozen kept station, bows pointed into the current as the great varnished lengths of their sweeps flashed, rowing
a scaloccio
with six men to an oar. Water curled around them, a slow multiple synchronized
splash…splash…splash…
of foam on either side to complement the wave that curled forever around the dull enameled steel of their rams, beneath the brightly painted and carved figureheads. They were beating just fast enough to keep position against the current of the massive river, slowed as it was by the ancient dams that still made it as much a series of lakes as anything.
    It all made him a little nostalgic for the campfires of the Quest, when it was simply him and nine friends against a hostile world.
    “A pity we could not pick a place for battle where our river flank rested on a castle,” Ignatius said a little wistfully. “They have more cavalry, but that would keep our right flank safe at least.”
    Rudi snorted. “Ah, that would be the comfort and consolation of the world, it would indeed. If only the enemy were such utter and complete fools as to fight at a place so certain to give us the victory.”
    “A point, Your Majesty. Still, the number of castles on the Columbia limits them in the ground that
isn’t
so covered, to our great advantage. If they will fight at all, and not wait and try to force us to come to them.”
    “They must fight,” Rudi said, grimly satisfied for a moment; he’d worked hard to put them on the horns of that dilemma. “It’s too late in the year for them to do anything but accept battle or withdraw until spring…and half their forces come from deep in the Rockies or farther yet, past passes the snow has closed already, or will within days.”
    He closed his eyes and laid his hand on the pommel of the Sword of the Lady. Energies swelled and swept across the surface of the world; theSun kissed Earth, and moisture rose from the Mother Ocean, sweeping in curling patterns that crashed against mountains in a slow violence that would grind stone to meal over aeons as more welled up from the world’s warm beating heart…
    “Yes, the snow will be deep this year. Far to the east, far into the Bitterroots, and blizzards on the High Line as well. Which means…”
    It was a little like the sensation you had playing a five-pound trout on a light line. Months of time and many lives had gone into the intricate balance. He blinked, for a moment lost in calculations of time and force and space, like a game of chess but one where all the pieces had minds and wills of their own, and more than half were hidden. He went on:
    “I
think
they’ll accept battle a little east of here.”
    “With the lower Yakima to their backs? And the water rising with autumn?”
    “Ah, but they don’t expect to lose, you see, and it’s not so very close to their backs, though close enough if things go as I hope…No castle, to be sure, but the bank of the Columbia there’s much steeper; that will have to be advantage enough. So long as we don’t dally and let them get around our left before we’re deployed, of course. I need to know where the bulk of their horse-archers went, and soon. Too mobile by half, they are, and with plenty of room to work. I fear the commanders on the other side have heard of Manzikert as well as I.”
    A rumbling went through the ground. He