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

slight sigh from a clump of ladies nearby; his six-two of broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, long-limbed height took full advantage of clothing designed to show a man off.
    “Every woman here is envying me,” Mathilda said softly as she laid the tips of her fingers on the back of his left hand to let him lead her out on the dancing floor.
    “Except our friend the Grand Constable and a few others,” he whispered back. “Some of them envying
me
, perhaps? And then my lord de Stafford might well be envying you, you know…”
    Then he grinned more widely as she pinched his wrist painfully witha hand strengthened steel-hard by years holding the grip of a fifteen-pound knight’s shield.
    “You’re incorrigible!”
    “No, I’m the improbable bearer of an impossible Sword; nevertheless, I exist! Your mother doesn’t seem worried, by the way,” he murmured to Mathilda.
    She kept her head high and step gliding so that she seemed to drift forward in a rustle of silks, as if her feet were motionless, floating a fraction of an inch above the smooth stone paving blocks. It was as much a product of rigorous training as a swordsman’s stance, in its way.
    “Mother doesn’t worry about battles,” she said. “Not that way, at least. She picks people to fight them by judging their character and record, she told me once, and gives them everything they need, then sits back and lets them do their work.”
    Well, the Powers picked me, but from Sandra’s point of view there’s not much difference, eh?
    The chant du Brabant wasn’t fundamentally all that different from a lot of Mackenzie dances; rings and lines of men and women, moving in set patterns to the music, changing places with the rhythm. It was a good deal more complex, though, and involved the participants singing at some points as well as the musicians playing. Rudi had spent months every year in the Association territories after the War of the Eye—what the northerners called the Protector’s War. That had been part of the peace settlement, and it had involved a good deal of the same schooling Mathilda got just as she’d learned Mackenzie ways in her stays at Dun Juniper, but he hadn’t done much Associate-style dancing since reaching his majority, and none since they left on the Quest two years ago.
    He closed his eyes for an instant as the ensemble played the first four measures, then opened them and let remembered skills flow back into nerve and muscle as the dance began on the repeat; the lead couple didn’t have to sing, at least, though Matti had given him the cues.
    The sprightly tune began again and they started the hand-in-hand advance. That opening phase ended with the company around them, men in the inner ring and women in the outer, circling in opposite directions.The strong male chorus began to the sound of the instruments and the scuff of leather on stone:
    The squire serves the gentleman,
    And the gentleman follows me,
    And in so doing learns the ways of skill and courtesy.
    I ever serve my lady for the love she gives to me—
    The men turned and faced Rudi and Mathilda where the royal couple pivoted beneath the arch of their own joined hands in the center, and as one they stopped and bowed:
    And the knights of Portland stand and serve the King,
    For our King!
    The knights of Portland ever serve the King.
    Rudi blinked; that chorus wasn’t in any of the versions of this piece he’d heard before, though the rhythm and scansion were the same. Each man straightened, took three paces backward and extended a hand as the women passed through, so that now the circles were reversed; the whole ensemble skipped in a complete circuit and then the ladies took up the song:
    The girl becomes a maiden
,
    And the maiden follows me,
    And in so doing learns the ways of skill and courtesy.
    We ever serve the household with our hands and hearts
and deeds—
    They stopped and faced inward, and a uniform deep curtsy ran through them as the men circled behind, the