The High King of Montival

by SM Stirling

  The young man stopped, gulping, swaying on his feet; someone gave him a cup of hot cider, and he drained it eagerly, a little running down his chin as he gulped and half-choked. When he looked up his blue eyes went wide.

  Artos stood, and the mild good cheer had left his face altogether, making it a thing of angles and planes. He had hung his sword belt over the back of his chair. Now he took the scabbard in his right hand and set his left—his sword-hand—on the long hilt. The crystal of the pommel caught the light of fire and lamp, breaking it back in shivers of red and orange.

  “Bjarni Eriksson and I swore blood brotherhood on the golden oath-ring of his folk, in the name of his Gods and mine,” he said. “And the Threefold Herself gave me this Her Sword for just such tasks as this. Your chief shall have the help he sought, and more besides.”

  The great blade flashed high suddenly. “War!” Artos shouted, his voice a huge silver peal in the long room. “War!”

  Men stood, and women; fists and drinking-horns and knives flashed in the air as they took up the chant.

  Heidhveig shivered a little in her chair, suddenly alone and a little lost in this her home.

  War, she thought. War indeed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  KALKSTHORPE, NORRHEIM

  (FORMERLY ROBBINSTON, WASHINGTON COUNTY, MAINE)

  MARCH 13, CHANGE YEAR 24/2023 AD

  “They attacked us!” Kalk said furiously. His voice rose under the high roof of the three-quarters-empty warehouse the town was using to muster its fighters.

  “They’re pirates,” he half-shouted.

  “They are pirates, and they did attack, and most of them are dead. The survivors are forty-four first-class fighting-men, and neither you nor I can spare them. Nor are folk who make viking a term of honor in a position to be . . . what was the word they used . . . picky,” Artos said.

  It was becoming more natural to think of himself by that name.

  Artos is my name, he thought. It always was, in the Craft. Rudi . . . Rudi I can be in private, I suppose.

  Most of the Kalksthorpe fighters were mustering here, ready to leave at dawn; it was hard cold outside the town wall, and the granular snow was still thick enough for skis. Their families were there to see them off, and a low murmur of voices sounded. Most of the good-byes were quiet and solemn, with fewer embraces or tears than there would have been among Mackenzies, even when a mother tucked the last bundle of fruitcake or rolled socks into a young man’s haversack. Everywhere about love met necessity with a fierce dignity.

  Rudi turned to the Moors, who stood in a clump amid a circle of empty space. Abdou al-Naari was there, and his son beside him, a slim young man just old enough to journey with a war band; his arm had healed while his father was in Nantucket. Abdou’s blood brother Jawara stood by his other hand, smiling grimly as he fingered the edge of a broad-bladed spear. He looked to have shed years or gained inches with a weapon in his hand again, a leopard’s hunting eagerness on his broad features.

  “Is it agreed?” Rudi said. “You join us for this one fight. If we win, you get your ship and enough food to sail her to your home, and pledge your word of honor by your own God that you will trouble these lands no more. The cargo is still forfeit.”

  “Agreed,” Abdou said. “May God destroy me if I break the oath. Inshallah, God willing, we will begin our revenge on those who tricked us and blasphemed the Faith.”

  He turned slightly and repeated the words in his own language. An eager baying snarl ran through the corsairs.

  “And an equal share of any loot,” Abdou added, in a more matter-of-fact tone.

  “Agreed, though the savages aren’t likely to have more than hard blows to give us. Stay close to my band, Abdou al-Naari. These folk may accept the bargain but they don’t love you for it.”

  Abdou shrugged and smiled. “I not love ugly pagans either, we same-same so there,” he said.

  Artos turned to Kalk. “The cargo is worth more than the ship; consider that wergild.”

  “I’d rather have blood for blood,” the Norrheimer said.

  The Mackenzie smiled at him, and the grim old man blinked a little at the savagery of the expression.

  “And so you shall,” he said quietly. “Do you think they’ll all come through such a campaign as this unhurt? They could have stayed safely here waiting for an English ship to pick them up. Instead they’re offering their lives. For their own reasons, but that won’t make their blood flow any the less red, eh? When a man takes up the spear of his own will in a country not his own, he consents to his death and makes himself a sacrifice whose blood blesses the land.”

  Heidhveig chuckled mirthlessly. “I told you he used his head for something besides a helmet-rack,” she said. “Now do you see why the High One said he would found a line of Kings that lasted forever in the tales of men, if he lived and won his victory?”

  Kalk nodded wordlessly and turned away to his sons. Artos looked at her:

  “If you can keep up, you’re welcome,” he said bluntly. “But if you can’t, Lady, then you must ask the Gods for protection, for I cannot stay to offer it.”

  The seeress inclined her head. “My sleigh should be enough.”

  “Pray for cold, then. If we get a thaw and then mud ...”

  “I will. We’ve held our blót and spoken with the wights and cast the runes. Now it’s in Victory-Father’s hands.”

  Rudi turned his head. “Matti?”

  “Arms and armor in good condition, enough arrows, and the food supplies look adequate assuming we can restock at Eriksgarth,” she said.

  “Ignatius?”

  “Our medical kit is full—the healers here are excellent. Enough are coming along that I can be spared for combat duty.”

  “Ingolf?”

  “They’ve got no cavalry at all,” the Richlander said in frustration, and Virginia Thurston scowled agreement. “Mounted infantry at best.”

  Rudi sighed. “You fight with the army you’ve got, not the one you might wish. The ideal one that has a core of well-drilled pikemen and longbowmen, with field artillery to suit, three thousand good light cavalry, and a thousand knights on destriers . . . It would be a nightmare getting enough fodder anyway. Wait until we get farther west! Fred?”

  Frederick Thurston turned his hands upward, the pink palms contrasting with the chocolate-brown of his skin.

  “There’s not much unit articulation in this lot,” he said, frowning slightly. “They fight by households. Given a week or two—and if they listen to me—I could at least get them to sort by the way they’re armed.”

  Artos hid a smile. Fred was young—still short of twenty—but he was very intelligent and very well trained in his father’s army. The problem was that the army of the United States of Boise was a superbly disciplined precision instrument, and he judged everything by that standard. As village militias went, the Kalksthorpe fyrd weren’t bad at all. He’d have to learn to be a bit more flexible.

  “We’ll do that along the way; but Fred, remember it’s the art of the possible. Ritva, Mary . . . I need to know more than there are thousands of them and gather at Staghorn Dale, and I need to know it quickly. Can you do it?”

  The two Dúnedain gave identical nods. “We can travel three times faster than this bunch,” Mary said.

  “There and back again,” Ritva added, despite her sister’s glare.

  Rudi signed agreement; a war band traveled at the speed of the slowest. And the Rangers trained hard in just that sort of scouting and endurance trek. He himself could keep up with his half sisters cross-country, but he didn’t know many others who could.

  “Go, find out who’s where with what, and get back to me. Hopefully by the time I reach Eriksgarth.” Then he added: “Hortho le huil vaer, muinthel nín.”

  That meant fair winds speed you on, sister. He’d never had the time to spare to learn the Rangers’ special tongue, but he had a fair assortment of stock phrases. Ritva and Mary both put their right hands to their hearts.<
br />
  “Harthon cened le ennas, muindor nín,” Ritva said solemnly: “I’ll see you there, my brother.”

  Mary spoke to Ingolf: “Unad nuithatha i nîr e-guren nalú aderthad vín.” When his lips began to move in silent translation, she leaned close and whispered:

  “Nothing will stop the weeping of my heart until we are once more together.”

  Ritva added a wink—he thought at Hrolf Homersson—and they picked up the skis that leaned against a pillar, put them over their shoulders and left at a tireless springy trot.

  Artos took a deep breath and jumped to the top of a great hogs-head full of something heavy.

  “Folk of Kalksthorpe,” he called.

  His voice wasn’t pitched very loud, but absolute silence fell; he could hear the cold wind hooting around the logs of the walls.

  “You’ve agreed to follow me to this war-muster,” he said; his glance went to Thorleif Heidhveigsson.

  The man nodded soberly. “I did,” he said.

  Kalksthorpe didn’t exactly have a chief, besides Kalk himself; they settled matters by a folkmoot where every adult had a voice, much like a Mackenzie dun. The settlement was small enough for that to work, just, if most were sensible. But the seeress’ son was a leading trader and craftsman, a respected man whose word carried weight. Hers carried even more, and the word of the Gods through her.

  “I’m not going to quarrel with the High One’s opinions about war,” the householder said, confirming Artos’ thought. “Who here is fool enough to do that? He’s the Father of Victories.”

  Nobody volunteered to put on the offered shoe; Artos held his grin within himself. He didn’t doubt for a moment the truth of Heidhveig’s vision, but it was politically convenient as well, and no mistake.

  “Do you all swear to it?” he said.

  A moment’s silence, then a crashing shout of agreement from the two-hundred-odd fighters; most of them hammered weapons on shields, a hollow booming thunder that turned into a roar as it echoed back from the rafters.

  “We swear!”

  “Then hear my word! You will obey my orders; a war band without a leader is like a ship at sea without a captain, food for the carrion eaters. And you will take those orders through those I appoint as if from my own mouth. Doubtless there are many men of mark among you, but we’ve no time for me to make their acquaintance. Frederick Thurston here is my chief of staff—”

  The dark young man nodded. He had the specialist training for it . . . and Fred had come to follow the same Gods as the Norrheimers, over the past year or so; the Lord of the Ravens had personally claimed him as a follower through Heidhveig. That would give him added authority.

  “—and Ingolf the Wanderer is my second-in-command.”

  Ingolf crossed his muscled arms on his chest over his mail hauberk. Even to someone who didn’t know him, he looked to be exactly what he was; a fighting-man vastly experienced, shrewd, and dangerous as an angry bear when the steel came out. And unlike Fred Thurston he was accustomed to making do with scratch bands of amateur warriors.

  “Princess Mathilda is in charge of our logistics . . . our supplies; she will set rations and give all orders concerning forage and shares. Virginia Thurston is horse-mistress.”

  The rancher’s daughter nodded. She also snorted a little; to her way of thinking nobody here knew anything about the beasts.

  “Father Ignatius is master of the making of camps, the setting of watches, and all matters concerning health and order. Edain Aylward is master-bowman and chief of archers. Don’t waste my time quarreling with any one of them. Understood?”

  Sober nods. These Norrheimers were more stiff-necked than his clansmen at home, and almost as fond of argument and dispute, but also a bit more practical. Vastly more so than, say, nobles of the Association.

  “Then let’s be off. March!”

  He paused a half hour later, to look back over the cleared snow-covered fields to Kalksthorpe, squinting against the sun before they entered the shade of the low pines.

  “What’s wrong, Rudi?” Mathilda said, snowplowing her skis to a stop beside him and thrusting down her poles.

  He frowned and rubbed his left hand across his face. The right stroked the pommel of the Sword; he did that often now, a habit that felt ancient already.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” he said. “It’s . . . as if I’m concentrating all the time.”

  “You’re a King and running a war, Rudi!”

  He shook his head. “It’s not just that. It’s like I’m concentrating all the time, sure. As if it stops only when I make it, instead of the other way around. Just now I found myself looking through the list of candidates for Chancellor of the Realm in Montival! Which is not only odd, but premature in the extreme!”

  She smiled at him. “Oh, that’s easy. Father Ignatius.”

  She’s right, he thought; something clicked in his mind in acknowledgment as she went on:

  “Though you may have to hit him alongside the ear and throw the chain of office over his head while he’s dazed.”

  Artos chuckled. He does take that humility business rather seriously, he thought.

  Aloud: “And I feel like a pipe a lot of the time. Like a pipe with something rushing through it, and being worn away by it.”

  Her thick brows frowned in concern. “What does that really mean?” she said.

  “I don’t know!”

  He made a gesture of apology as she flinched a little; he seldom raised his voice. Then he looked down at his clenched fist and forced the long sinewy fingers to unfold.

  “You know that engine they have down in Corvallis, at the university? The one that can be set to do all sorts of calculations?”

  She nodded, and he knew they were thinking of the same thing. The great room, and the cogs and gearwheels and cams, moving smoothly as the hydraulic turbine whined, and the white-coated attendants like priests of a mystery, or a glimpse of the ancient world.

  “The Analytical Engine.”

  His mouth quirked a little bitterly. “Thinking about what the Sword does . . . I feel like a dog in that room with the Engine, looking at it and trying to understand it, with my nose going around in circles and my ears drooping!”

  Forlornly, she tried a joke: “I didn’t understand it anyway, Rudi!”

  He sighed and rubbed his forehead again. “And sometimes I can feel things happening through the Sword. As if it was carving a path from . . . somewhere . . . to somewhere . . . to do . . . something. But I haven’t the least idea what.”

  COUNTY OF THE EASTERMARK

  BARONY OF DAYTON

  PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION

  HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL

  (FORMERLY SOUTHEASTERN WASHINGTON STATE)

  MARCH 16, CHANGE YEAR 24/2023 AD

  Eilir ghosted through the chill darkness to where her mother waited beneath a big lodgepole pine. She slid the knife back into the sheath along her boot after she’d wiped it, and sank down beside the older woman. This was as far as they could get towards the encamped enemy convoy, even with Dúnedain doing the Sentry Removal. The United States of Boise’s army was extremely disciplined and tended to operate by the book; the problem was that they used a good book, one that had definite things to say about putting out a wide net and checking on it often. The raiding party had a hundred Mackenzie archers along too, and they wouldn’t have gotten this far without open fighting, although they hid and skulked quite adequately once the way had been opened for them. There were five times that number of enemy troops camped down on the roadway.

  Ready? she said in Sign.

  Juniper Mackenzie’s face was in shadow, hidden by the fold of her plaid that she’d pulled over it like a hood. She was on one knee, with her rowan staff leaned across her kilted thigh. The head was the Triple Moon in silver, waxing and full and waning, two outward-pointing crescents flanking a circle.

  Readier than I wish, Juniper signed.

  The moon was down, and starlight hid her face. Eilir Ma
ckenzie hadn’t seen her mother in some time and had been a little shocked at how much she’d aged; the once molten-copper hair was faded and heavily streaked with gray now. Whatever it was that had happened in that ceremony back at Imbolc—that voice tolling in her head and the flash of light like nothing since the Change—it hadn’t made her any happier.

  Be careful! Eilir signed, laying a hand on her shoulder. If they see you too soon—

  Juniper’s hand covered Eilir’s for an instant. I’m the one who taught you how to move through the woods, my girl!

  Eilir’s eyes prickled. For a moment she was struck by an almost unbearable memory, of herself as a little girl with her mother in the woods on the mountainside above Dun Juniper . . . or what had just been their house in the hills then. Her mother’s hands parting the grass ahead of them, and the fox cubs tumbling over each other in the little clearing ahead, drunk with play and prancing in the moonlight. The way she’d taught her daughter to move quietly, even when Eilir couldn’t hear noise herself.

  Now Juniper took a deep breath and stood. Then she walked towards the enemy camp in the valley below with her rowan staff moving in precise scribing motions in her right hand, glittering and swooping. The silver head glinted in the faint starlight, but no more brightly than the hoarfrost that covered rock and brush and pine tree. The snow-clad tips of the Blue Mountains were the merest hint behind; not far away a waterfall brawled down a rocky slope, heavy with spring melt. Most of the men ahead were in their little tents, or shapeless mounds of sleeping bag under the wagons. Breath puffed white where the draught horses dozed, their bridles tied to picket ropes, each strung between two trees.

  Eilir Mackenzie’s breath caught as she saw a sentry rise and heft his long ironshod javelin, the big oval shield marked with Boise’s eagle and crossed thunderbolts up under his eyes. Things were moving in the air about her mother, things the eyes couldn’t see but the mind sensed as a tangle of something like lines of bright and dark.

  Uh-oh. Mom’s in Spooky Mode. Heavier than I’ve ever seen.