The High King of Montival

by SM Stirling

  “I’m sure she’s not jealous of you,” he said.

  “I know that,” Matti said dryly. “She hasn’t tried to kill me. Yet.”

  Artos winced slightly as he ran a hand over Epona’s withers. She was well into middle age for a horse . . . or would have been, if she was like most horses. Even her vitality had been worn down by the terrible midwinter trek eastward, the grinding effort and bad food. Now she was glossy-sleek, her neck a smooth arch of power and the long mane shining, her coat as smooth as the winter growth would let it be; he thought he saw a wicked glint in the eye she rolled towards him.

  “They’ve been stuffing you,” he said mock accusingly, breathing in her grassy scent. “Maple sugar with the oats, and warm mashes each night, blankets, fresh straw every morning. Some adoring girl currycombing every chance she gets, and teasing out your mane and polishing your hooves as if you were a holy image in a shrine.”

  “Which means she’ll savage someone soon,” Matti said. “Poor baby,” she added.

  He nodded. Women were relatively—not absolutely—safe around Epona. The horse trader who’d mistreated her as a filly had been a man, and so had his assistants, and had bred a long-lasting feud with humankind in her breast, starting with the male half. All except for him. She followed at heel as he stepped out of his skis, put them over one shoulder and moved on. Every now and then she’d nuzzle him in the back.

  Eriksgarth’s heart was an L-shaped combination of a big pre-Change white frame farmhouse sheathed in clapboard and the two-story mead-hall, squared logs on a hip-high foundation wall of mortared fieldstone. The regular whitewashed plank of the one and the flamboyant carved dragonheads and steep roof of the other ought to have clashed, but over a generation they seemed to have grown into each other. The snow-patched shingles on each roof even shared the same spotting of green moss.

  Smaller homes for the chief’s carls and their families made another arm to turn the L into a U; a little farther back were big hip-roofed barns, the low sunken rectangular structures they called potato-houses here, and granaries and stables and workshops, all the necessities of a busy community’s farming and crafts. Right now it was more busy than ever, but not with its normal round of churn and loom, saw and smith’s hammer. Wagons and sleds were parked densely in the gaps between the buildings, lashed together with ropes and chains to make fighting-platforms. The windows of the houses had been closed with loopholed steel shutters, and a buzz of voices showed that the population had swollen manyfold.

  “Some of those are folk who fled the Bekwa,” young Erland said, ignoring the pain of his foot and using his spear as a walking stick. “Their families, at least. And more the families of the bondar”—which meant yeoman, near enough—“hereabouts sent in as part of the Defense Plan. Erik made the Plan, Erik the Strong, the chief ’s father. Families to rally at the strongest places while the fyrd is out.”

  Rudi nodded. Bjarni’s father had been head of an Asatru kindred much farther south; he’d also been a soldier in the old American army for most of his life before the Change. This part of the world hadn’t been cursed with the great cities whose witless hordes killed all around them when the Change came, and it had enough goodish farmland to feed the dwellers despite the stark climate, like an island in a sea of forest. But it had been in chaos when Erik arrived with his followers and those picked up along the way. Chaos could kill as certainly as numbers, if more slowly. You couldn’t plow and plant if the forest-edge was likely to vomit armed men at you on any given day. The more so when old ways of doing had to be relearned in desperate haste by stumbling through books or from a few who’d known them as hobbies.

  Erik and his men hadn’t conquered the land once called Aroostook, not exactly. From what he’d heard it was more that they’d organized it, with a fair bit of fighting now and then, against bandits and reivers and refugee gangs from the north and south and locals too stubborn to admit what needed to be done.

  And I grew up on stories of that sort, he thought. Erik sounds a good deal like my blood-father Mike Havel.

  Folk came boiling out to meet them. They seemed a little surprised when the newcomers didn’t do likewise. Instead Fred Thurston made a signal, and troop-leaders barked Halt. That came a little raggedly, but in silent unison.

  “Attention to orders!” the son of Boise’s first General-President snapped.

  “We’ll break long enough to load food and get the news,” Artos called. “And then we’re off. No more than two hours—don’t get settled. Dismissed!”

  Then more quietly: “Good work, Fred.”

  Fred grinned, snapped a salute and then dashed off. The crowd of Norrheimers parted and Harberga Janetsdottir came through. She’d been well along in pregnancy when he met her, and wasn’t now.

  “The babe is well?” he asked, with a little anxiety. “And yourself?”

  “A boy this time, strong and healthy,” she said, smiling forgiveness of his breach of formal manners. “I find the second time goes easier.”

  Gudrun Eriksdottir followed—her husband’s younger sister and about seventeen herself. Gudrun walked in breeks and jacket and boots this time, helm on her auburn-tressed head and spear in hand. Harberga was in Norrheimer women’s garb, a long hanging skirt of fine green wool embroidered at the hem with golden triskels, and a linen apron held at the shoulders with silver brooches, with a shaggy bearskin cloak over all. She was tall and a year or two older than he, her fair hair braided under a married woman’s kerchief according to local custom, and a look of tight-held worry on her face.

  Her blue eyes went to the sword at his waist—to the Sword—and then flicked up to his face, going a little wider. He nodded very slightly, and saw her sternness melt a bit. Then he bowed a little with the back of his right hand pressed to his forehead. That was the greeting a Mackenzie man gave to any hearth-mistress, whether in a lordly hall or a crofter’s cot. Harberga handed him a drinking-horn that one of her women had brought.

  “Drink I offer, tall helm-tree,” she said, abbreviating the local formula of welcome a little.

  “Hail to the giver, to the Powers and the folk,” he said, doing likewise.

  It was hot cider, and grateful in his throat, tasting of summer afternoons. They made good cider in this land, and fine whiskey, and excellent mead. The beer . . . well, they flavored it with spruce buds and had no hops.

  He touched a finger to the drink, flicked a drop aside in offering to the spirits of place, then raised it and drank again with his own folk’s toast:

  “To the Lord, to the Lady, to the Luck of the Clan! Now, Lady Harberga, it’s tidings I need; after that, trail food for those with me, if you can spare it.”

  “We can. We’re well supplied and we were expecting . . . well, not you, but the folk from Kalksthorpe at least; they’re the last of the fyrd to come in. We were hoping for our allies from Madawaska, but there’s been no word; we don’t know if the messengers got through or if they’re under attack too and can’t spare help . . . Gudrun, see to the supplies!”

  The godhi’s younger sister pulled Mathilda away, and they started to compare tallies and lists. Barrels and crates and sacks began coming out to fill near-empty sleighs—crackerlike rye hardtack, oatmeal cakes, cheese and dried smoked sausages, with some maple sugar. Concentrated foods, ready for use in the field; several hundred human beings ate a quarter of a ton a day when they were working hard. Meanwhile servers brought the newcomers cooked food from the kitchens, and the improvised camp-style cauldrons that drifted a mist of woodsmoke through the crowded settlement. Artos accepted a chipped plastic bowl of hot bean soup with chunks of meat in it, and a slab of rye-and-barley bread with cheese melted into its surface. The smell of the good plain food made spit run into his mouth; traveling hard on skis in cold weather burned the body’s fuel faster than anything else in his experience.

  Harberga spread a map the size of a large towel on a trestle resting on barrel-heads, and Artos’ chief followers crowded around, looking wi
th busy spoons but careful not to mar the precious thing; Heidhveig came over as well, using her staff and assisted by her apprentice Thorlind, herself middle-aged. The Lady of Eriksgarth looked a little askance at Abdou al-Naari, who politely ignored her, eyes kept down on the map itself. It was a new one, copied from a topographical survey of the ancient world onto a carefully tanned white sheepskin with a hot needle, the names and places modernized and twining bands of serpentine gripping beasts added for a border about the edges.

  “The muster of the fyrd was here, at Staghorn Dale. A short day’s march northwest,” Harberga said, tapping the surface.

  “How many?” Rudi asked.

  “Eight thousand and a little more when Bjarni moved against the foe. More were coming in each day, but he didn’t want to delay; if there hasn’t been a battle yet, then . . . perhaps nine thousand?”

  Artos cleaned the inside of his bowl with the heel of the bread, crunched the hard crust down and handed the empty container aside, tapping a thumb on his chin. Nine thousand was more than a tenth and less than a fifth of Norrheim’s whole population. Subtracting the many children too young to fight and the sprinkling of elders too old for it along with the sick, halt and lame the total came to about half the folk of warrior age. It meant Bjarni had called up every man between fifteen and fifty who was fit for war, and a fair proportion of the stronger women. He was throwing the dice with everything he had for table-stakes. Artos nodded slowly in respect. Many would have tried to hedge their bets, and traded a possibility of swift victory for the certainty of slow piecemeal defeat.

  “The enemy?”

  “Less certain, but more than the fyrd by a quarter to a third. All the wild-man tribes of the north along the Great River from Royal Mountain to the Stone-Halls. We have a treaty with the Madawaska Republic—”

  She pointed to a narrow strip shaded along the upper St. John to the north and east of the Norrheimer settlements, with a symbol that looked like a porcupine in a circle of stars beside it.

  “—and we were expecting a thousand men, but we’ve heard nothing.”

  Artos’ breath hissed between his teeth. “And your last word from Bjarni?”

  “Two days ago. They were here,” she said, moving her finger westward. “Skirmishing with the troll-men’s outrunners, and the foe seems to be gathering all their gangs into one horde.”

  “They’re going to accept battle, then,” Artos said thoughtfully.

  Sure, and it can be surprisingly hard to make men stand and fight if they don’t want to come to the dancing-ground, he mused. Especially if neither side is cramped for room.

  She nodded. “Bjarni said he’d try to have them come to him on his chosen ground, he knew the place he’d prefer to fight. Six-Hill Field, it’s called, used for summer pasture by the northernmost of our folk. The old roads run through there; it’s the only way to get large numbers into our farmlands quickly.”

  Then Artos blinked. The map seemed to be . . . overlain somehow. As if he was hovering above the land like a raven, and the war bands were like little writhing lines of men coming together; and yet he could hear them, the murmur of voices, the shuffle of boots and skis and snowshoes. But at the same time they were like living numbers, swinging balances of supply and distance and time in his head, a consciousness of every factor in a dynamic balance. It was the way a God might see them . . .

  And not the way I would choose to do so, at all. Useful, though!

  The others were looking at him oddly, as if he’d gone away for a moment. He shook his head.

  “Yes, that’s where the fight will be. Almost certainly. No word of Mary or Ritva?” he asked. “I sent them on a scout, and they were to rejoin here if they could.”

  “Your half sisters?” Harberga said, frowning. “No, nothing.”

  Ingolf moistened his lips, then visibly took command of himself. Rudi-Artos felt his mind stutter. One part was worried; the other was . . .

  Not indifferent, he thought, turning the eye of attention inward. Not that. But as if I had ten thousand thousand sisters, and all were somehow equally dear to me. And that too is how a God might look on things, and no comfort to a man. But it’s perhaps a lesson to a King.

  Then he regained his self’s balance, feeling as if he should be panting. But that was no calm center. It was more as if he rode a rushing wave, as a longboat does from a ship off the surf-beaten Pacific shore to land softly on the gravel beach that might have ground its bones to splinters if it wavered.

  “We’ll take this path, cutting the cord of the circle,” he said. “That will give the best chance of catching up in time. The river ice is still hard?”

  “For now,” Harberga said. “But the weather could turn warm anytime. The weather-wights are flighty in this season.”

  Artos looked up, at a sky white with high thin cloud, felt the air through his skin and breathed the stinging cold. He folded the gift-map.

  “Not for a week,” he said absently, watching the others get the war band ready to move; it went quickly. “Probably ten days. Time enough to find Bjarni, and fight a battle.”

  Matti returned, giving him a quick report—full provision—and then checking her horse’s tack. The gray titanium-alloy mail of her hauberk and vambraces seemed to suck the pale light out of the day. Gudrun was with her, but carrying a young babe swaddled in one arm and leading Swanhild, Bjarni and Harberga’s three-year-old daughter. The little girl was much graver than Artos remembered her, great turquoise eyes sad and worried. Children that age could smell trouble like a puppy, though the words might be beyond them. Her gaze lit when she saw him, though.

  “Little Swan-battle!” he said, and got a smile in response to his; then she went to cling to her mother’s skirt. “And this likely lad is—”

  “Erik. Erik Bjarnisson,” Harberga said, taking the infant. Then, suddenly: “I wish I could be out there, fighting for them, beside my man. For our homes! Instead I have to . . . to sit here and fill stew pots and make bandages and wait.”

  Artos shrugged to settle the long kite-shaped shield across his back, hung the sallet helm on the saddle bow and handed Epona’s reins to Matti.

  “Lady Harberga,” he said gently. “May I hold him for a moment?”

  She looked puzzled, then handed over the bundled child. He cradled the small body expertly, looking down into the softly unformed face, just past the red and crumpled appearance of a newborn.

  “Such a little thing,” he said softly. “Such a little thing, with such a greatness of might-be within!”

  A tiny, perfect hand clutched at one long, calloused finger as he touched the baby’s chin, and it grinned toothlessly at him.

  Now, there is perfect joy, he thought happily. With the glow of the Summerlands and the Cauldron still upon him.

  Then he went down on one knee and held the child out in both hands.

  “Lady,” he said as Harberga took him back, meeting her blue eyes steadily. “Haven’t you fought for your son already? Haven’t you gone under the shadow of the Dark Mother’s wings for him and his sister, walking the blade-thin bridge in blood and pain? If your man fights with weapons, and the rest of us beside him, it is for this . . . this wonder. Only for this.”

  Slowly she nodded. He drew the Sword and held it up reversed, pommel uppermost; the pale winter sunlight caught in the crystal and broke back in flickers of colored fire. The baby’s chubby fist clutched it with a crow of delight, and the mother’s hand closed around both. A singing note rose within him; he didn’t think the Lady’s gift glowed, not to the eyes of the body at least, but there were gasps around him.

  “Give us your blessing, Lady.”

  She did, standing tall.

  NORRHEIM, LAND OF THE WULFINGS

  SIX-HILL FIELD (FORMERLY AROOSTOOK COUNTY, MAINE)

  MARCH 25, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

  Crack!

  Bjarni Eriksson wheezed and took the ax-blow on his shield. Impact shocked through the battered, tattered round of plywood and s
heet steel, through his aching hand on the central grip and into his shoulder.

  “Yuk-hai-sa-sa!” he screamed, and cut with a swooping arc.

  The sword bit, though the edge was duller now; through the Bekwa’s leggings and thigh and into the bone. The foeman wailed and toppled backward down the hill, thrashing and spurting red against the gray trampled snow. Despite its chill the air stank of it: blood like rust and seawater, and the hard fetor of cut-open bodies and sweat. For a moment he blinked at the sight, then realized that the dying man could fall, without being held up by the press of living warriors behind him; the enemy were giving ground, fast until they were out of bow-range, then more slowly, then stopping in a way that spoke of sullen readiness to come again. The long slope was littered in clots and clumps and single shapes, mostly still, some yet moving and moaning. More Bekwa than Norrheimers, but too many of his people as well.

  The mind-blanking surf-roar of battle died, thousandfold screams and shouts and the endless waterfall rattle and crash and drumming of steel on steel or wood or leather. Only the lighter threnody of pain from the mangled and dying remained, a shocking quasi silence under the cold wind. He put the point of his sword against a dead man’s moose-hide jacket and leaned forward with both hands on the hilt, heaving air in through an open mouth for a moment before he could stand on legs suddenly a little wobbly.

  His face was nearly as red as the brick color of his short-cropped beard, and sweat dripped off his nose and soaked the padding under his knee-length mail byrnie. His body was strong—not overly tall, yet broad in the shoulders, thick in chest and arms—but he ached in every inch, though the morning sun was still low in the eastern sky and the battle was as young. The sweat stung in minor cuts he hadn’t noticed until that instant, and places where the mail coat had been hit hard enough to rasp skin raw even through the stiff quilted padding of the gambeson.

  Healers and helpers dragged the wounded back towards the tents and surgeons’ tables at the center of the shield-wall circle. He saw one wisewoman in green with the laguz-rune on her chest, her own hand bandaged, helping along a warrior whose leg was drenched with blood and who cursed every time that foot touched the ground. Around him hale men were stepping back to the rear rank, letting the fresh second file move forward.