The High King of Montival

by SM Stirling

  Bjarni grunted thoughtfully. “Perhaps I can find some—what’s the word—engineers in Montival. My folk are breeding many strong sons and daughters, and we don’t like being crowded. If we did more with rail, we could settle the empty lands around us without losing touch with each other, be close enough to help each other. Going overland is hard—there isn’t much good farmland to be had for many miles outside our present boundaries; it’s like an island amid the forest. Long distances on foot to more good land, but short this way.”

  Artos grinned and slapped him on the shoulder. “Spoken like a King! Perhaps your saga will say that thought was the beginning of great things, eh?”

  Bjarni snorted. “My saga? Is this my tale then, or yours?”

  “Now that, my friend, will I think depend entirely on who is doing the singing of it. In Montival, it’ll be my epic, and you a friend and ally met on the way and your battles and strivings and loves and hates mere incidents if they’re mentioned at all. Material to burnish me, as it were. In Norrheim, the reverse.”

  “Ah,” the Norrheimer said, rubbing at his short red beard; Artos could see him turning the thought over. “And which will be the true tale?”

  “The both of them will be entirely true! Or untrue, for if the King is the land and the folk, yet his story is really theirs, and bigger than any single man.”

  “Bigger than a King?” Bjarni asked, grinning at his earnestness, and looking up to exaggerate the difference in their heights.

  “Even one with a fancy gewgaw on his head and a fancy chair beneath his arse. The which he must wipe with a wisp of straw just like his subjects if he’s not to stink like a midden.”

  Bjarni laughed. “Too deep for me! See you tomorrow.”

  “And I’m a minor character in either story,” Fred said ruefully.

  “Not necessarily, boyo. When you’re home in Boise with your family—”

  “It’s been a long time since I saw Mom and my sisters,” the young man said wistfully.

  Artos nodded. “Well, you will be there, and a man of mark.”

  Ruler, in fact, if I have anything to do with it. And, I strongly suspect, if Virginia has anything to do with it either, and she will, she will.

  Aloud: “I’ll be . . . the High King will be . . . far away, for the most part. That’s one of the virtues of an Ard Rí. Do you see? He leaves most of the songs to be sung about people’s own hearths and their own close doings, not seeking to be always before their eyes.”

  “You’ve got a point. Sort of like federalism,” Fred said.

  Or feudalism, Artos thought but did not say. Still, the two have more than a little in common. And another virtue of an Ard Rí is that he’s there at need, should some local lord become too much of a bully.

  They walked on to his own campfires—three, including one for the original companions of his quest and two for the Southsider and Norrheimer retainers he’d sworn—greeting his followers by name. The heads of two deer were set on the ground nearby with the hooves and tails; he made a reverence as he passed.

  Thank you for your gift of life, sisters, as he brought his palms together twice before his face and bowed slightly over paired hands. Go in peace to the Summerlands, and be reborn in joy.

  No more was necessary, since he wasn’t the one who’d hunted the animals and didn’t need to ask leave of Cernunnos, the Horned Lord of the Beasts; that had been the twins, as they returned from their latest scout ahead.

  Fred joined Virginia and they shared a long kiss. Artos sank on his blanket beside the fire and sighed. Mathilda had no objection to kissing . . .

  But it’s just a trifle frustrating with nothing to follow but anticipation; that it is. Particularly if I’m to be walking upright the now without frightening the countryside. I think the Lady made women so that it’s easier for them to wait, especially those who don’t know what they’re missing.

  Hastily he pushed the thought away and cocked an eye skyward; there was plenty of gray cloud, but with patches of afternoon sky blue between and not looking like rain just now. An aluminum pot of something thick and brown was bubbling over the low embers of the fire, smelling much better than it would probably taste. Even though hunger made a good relish.

  He nodded thanks as Ignatius ladled him out a bowlful and added a couple of bannocks and a lump of hard white cheese. The coarse twists of barley bread were made from flour mixed with baking powder and a little salt, and were palatable enough when fresh—particularly if you had butter, of which they still did a little. The stew-soup-whatever was buckwheat groats with dried onion, dehydrated vegetables and bits and pieces of venison mixed in—lean, stringy venison at this time of year, but meat was meat, and you got the most out of it by cooking it this way.

  Artos shoveled down the thick kasha-style porridge-soup and enjoyed the feeling of relaxation and the warmth in his middle. Thirty miles wasn’t all that far to cover, not when you were cycling on smooth steel. This stretch was the last that had been reconditioned by the Norrheimers while the expedition put together their pedal-carts and rail-wagons. Each day so far had been brief, lest they outrun the capacity of the horses to catch up before nightfall. Even on ordinary roads bicyclists could run horses to death; on rails there was no comparison at all. In the west there were ways around that, but they required skills and machines the Norrheimers couldn’t possibly acquire in time.

  He settled in and looked around. Mathilda was over at one of the other fires, teaching a couple of the Southsiders their letters. He waved and she returned it, then went back to using a stick of charcoal and pieces of old board from a wrecked building not too far away; more of that had gone under their tents and blankets to keep out the damp. Fred took out a hand abacus and soon was in some deep calculation; he played a game of chess with Virginia at the same time. Edain was methodically checking the fletching on his arrows, fingers delicate on the thread as he bound on another goose feather to replace one that had been disturbed by use; as he worked he sang a song old in his father’s family:

  “Here’s to the bowmen—the yeomen

  To the lads of dale and fell;

  So we’ll drink all together

  Drink to the gray-goose feather

  To you, and to you, to all hearts that are true

  And to our land where the gray goose flew!”

  His voice sounded well, though old Sam Aylward’s was fit to frighten a rook; singing skillfully was as much a part of being a member of the Clan as shooting with the bow, since Juniper Mackenzie had been a bard by trade before the Change. Asgerd was not far away, knotting her brows over a book that had a man in a mail shirt and conical helmet on the cover, drawing a longbow to the ear—The Free Companions, by Donan Coyle, one of Artos-Rudi’s childhood favorites and one of three he and the younger Mackenzie had brought with them all across the continent. She absently scratched Garbh’s ears as she turned the pages; the wolf-mastiff was lying with her head in the girl’s lap, eyes closed and chin thrust forward in bliss. At the last lines of the song she looked up:

  “What do you mean by hearts that are true, master-bowman? We here call ourselves the true folk.”

  “True to what?” he asked in turn, holding the arrow point-first to the fire and looking down its length as he gently turned the shaft to check the twist of the feathers that would twirl it in flight.

  “True to the Gods—Asatru. True to their kin and their friends, true to their oaths.”

  “Ah, well, then. The song means much the same thing, perhaps with a little less talking about it. Mind you, it’s an English song—me da was born there and his family forever before him, farmers and fighters in a land called Hampshire. But it’s widely sung among Mackenzies; we say that a man can lie with his lips, but not with a bow, and if you watch him shoot you’ll know his soul more than you would from an hour’s talk.”

  She snorted slightly, looked at the book again, and said quietly: “More than you would from an hour’s talk. I like that. I like the tale in this book too
; the folk are brave and true, and they know how to take joy in life even in hard times. Even if they follow the White Christ and not Thor Redbeard.”

  “Some of my best friends are Christians,” Edain said, and tipped one of them a wink to the side.

  “Finish this,” Ignatius said gravely, and handed the young man and woman the last of the kasha. “Waste is an affront to God. And here is the last of the apple turnovers, only slightly stale.”

  He turned to Artos. “Perhaps we’d better see to the scout report, Your Majesty.”

  Artos scoured his bowl, rinsed it out and rose; they strolled over towards the spot where the twins were huddled over their latest map, with Ingolf looking on, but they went round-about. And stopped by a pile of gear wrapped in burlap; bundles of arrows and little kegs of apple brandy and rounds of hard cheese and boxes of rye flatbread harder still. The warrior-monk chuckled under his breath.

  “I’m not even the oldest of our company . . . or Fellowship, as your half sisters would put it. But sometimes those two there make me feel an ancient of days.”

  “I know what you mean,” Artos said, brushing his bright red-blond hair back out of his eyes. “Dancing around each other like grouse in the spring.”

  He cocked an eye at the cleric. “You approve?”

  “They are two fine young people, and I think there is more in their attraction than the body’s needs . . . not that there is anything wrong with those, when properly governed. There are many ways of serving God; and most often, we do it by turning to the service of others. Duty to a wife, a husband, a beloved child; the fulfillment of such are reflections of the one great duty our souls owe to Him. If they wed and work together to raise a strong family, then God is glorified indeed.”

  “Even a pagan family?” Artos teased. “Two varieties of pagan, at that! Sure, and if you think so well of them, shouldn’t you be converting them?”

  “I pray for it,” Ignatius said, perfectly serious, but also with an ironic note in his narrow black eye. “As I pray for you, Your Majesty. We are all called to tell the glad tidings, but again, not all in the same way. Some are so blessed that they speak with the tongues of men and angels and set a fire in the souls of those that hear them. That is not my gift. I . . . try my poor best . . . to make my life an imitation of Him, and hope that does His work.”

  “You’re not without eloquence yourself, Father. You’ve strengthened Matti in her faith, that I know, by example and by word both.”

  The priest smiled, and for a single instant his face seemed as if lit from within. “Thank you, my son. By serving her who will be our Queen in Montival I serve the Queen of Heaven whose knight I am. How could I do otherwise, when she laid that charge on me herself?”

  “That One could have bound you to duties far worse than being Matti’s guard and guide,” Artos observed.

  And I pray to the Lord and Lady and to my Luck that your duty as you see it never clashes with mine. For you make an excellent friend and a rare comrade, knight-brother of the Shield of St. Benedict; but you would be a very dangerous foe indeed. And I would very much regret the day I had to kill you.

  Ignatius laughed softly. “No, that One could not have bound me to a duty that was other than good. But I know what you mean. She has the seeds of greatness in her, our Mathilda; her mother’s cleverness, her father’s strength of will and ability to dream grandly, but also a sound heart which—frankly—neither of her parents did or do, and a nature that seeks truth and justice strongly, not counting the cost to herself and not forgetting that to others. Nurturing those seeds and seeing them come to their fullness is a task worthy of everything a man can give; or a priest. So does God turn even great evil to lasting good.”

  He inclined his tonsured head towards a little fire off to one side, where the man who’d been a Major of the Sword of the Prophet sat brooding and staring into the flames, and Dalan the ex-High Seeker whittled industriously at a stick and whistled.

  “Even in those men there is good; buried, crippled, twisted by the perversions of the Adversary, but there. The Church teaches us that no living man is ever beyond redemption.”

  “And you’ve made me think better of your Church, for producing such a man as yourself. My lord Chancellor.”

  Ignatius shrugged off the compliment, then did an almost comical half-step as the rest of it sank in, like a stutter made with the feet.

  “That . . . I’m far too young! Other men, wiser and more experienced—”

  Artos laughed and shook a finger at him. “Take up your cross, knight-brother of the Order! Yes, I’ll have wise older advisors; my mother, and my foster father Sir Nigel, and Matti’s mother, and your Abbot-Bishop, and many another. But if I’m to be a young High King in a kingdom younger still, I’ll want a young man to help me lay the foundations and shape the timbers. A Changeling, like myself.”

  “Technically I’m not—”

  “Do you remember the old world? Do you, Father?”

  A sigh. “Not really. Perhaps a few glimpses, and I am not sure if they’re memories or things I was told often when I was very young.” He paused. “Do you really think me capable of filling such a post, Your Majesty?”

  “Yes,” Artos said crisply. “What you don’t yet know, you can learn. We’ve been in each other’s sporrans for two years now, man! I think I know your quality, if I’m any judge of men. And if I’m not, I’m not fit for a throne myself.”

  The cleric sighed. “When we called you King, you told us, you warned us, that you would spare neither yourself nor us. I see you meant it. Not that I had any doubts. I would rather be a simple monk following the Rule of Saint Benedict . . .”

  “I know you would,” Artos said. “And I’d rather stay home and let the world rave as it will. Neither of us will or can do that.”

  The dark eyes turned shrewd. “And the fact that I am Catholic . . . and a religious . . . and that it is, by now, generally known that I was granted the high honor of a vision of the Blessed Virgin . . .”

  “None of those hurt at all, at all,” Artos conceded. “Better than half the folk in Montival are Christians, the most of them Catholic ones these days, while only a quarter follow the Old Religion and they’re nowhere a majority outside the Clan Mackenzie’s lands. Mathilda helps there, of course. But with a witch-boy for a High King, it takes a Queen and a Chancellor to balance it, wouldn’t you say? And while you’re a Catholic, you’re not from the PPA.”

  “Quite the contrary,” the man from Mt. Angel said.

  They both smiled; the fortress-monastery’s rulers had been stout opponents of Norman Arminger’s ambitions and even more of his schismatic Antipope Leo all through the wars with the Association.

  Ignatius put his hands in the wide sleeves of his habit and stared down at the earth for most of a minute; then he straightened, left hand on the hilt of his sword, and met Artos’ eyes squarely.

  “Your Majesty,” he said evenly. “If you insist on laying such a task on me, I will fulfill it to the best of my ability and I will pray that our Lord Jesus Christ and Holy Mary who is my patroness and all the bright company of Saints give me the strength and wit to do so. But . . . Artos King . . . I am already a man under obedience. To my superiors in the Order, to the princes of the Church and His Holiness, and to the Most High. If ever those vows conflict with my duty to follow your wishes, though I love you as a brother and though I honor you as my captain and my High King, I will obey my vows, and God, not you. Let the consequences be what they may.”

  Took the thought right out of my head, so you did, my friend, Artos thought. Aloud he said:

  “The which is just exactly what I expected you to say, Father, and wouldn’t it be proof positive of your unfitness if you said anything else? I’m mindful of the example of Henry and Thomas à Beckett, and have no desire to repeat it!”

  “So be it.” A grin. “And while I am willing to wear the martyr’s crown, I have no desire to do so!”

  They shook hands once, firmly, then w
alked on to the twins. Mary and Ritva looked up at him, made a final notation on the map, and presented it. He looked with interest as they spread the results of their labors before him on crackling paper protected with a thin coat of wax; their labors were done in grease pencil on that. The candle-like smell added to the camp odors.

  “Fifteen miles to the first blockage,” Mary said, tracing the line that ran west from Brownville Junction towards the old Canadian border. “Not too bad, just a tangle of fallen timber; we should be able to clear it in, oh, two hours. Eight miles after that there’s a bad one, a long train left on the rails after the Change; it looks as if it was carrying logs and at some point they burned, which buckled things. Parts of the roadbed there were undercut by water after that, and the weight of the whole thing turned over a long section of the track and sort of sank into a mixture of mud and rock. We’ll have to set up the winches and drag a lot of wreckage out of the way before we can get the roadbed patched enough. Substitute poles for the wrecked bits of rail, or take up some from behind us.”

  “We’ll do the bit with the fallen logs easy enough, and then all the men can get up to the place with the abandoned train before mid-afternoon that day,” Artos said. “Get a start setting up the winches and pitching camp, clear it the next day, rest the night, start fresh the morning after.”

  “Beyond that, thirty miles clear to a forest fire and a mudslide; that’ll mean clearing burnt logs and digging out mud and rock. I’d say less than a day but more than a couple of hours.”

  “If it’s not too bad the men can have a fair start on it by the time the horses arrive. Might even get it finished soon enough to start the morning after.”

  “Beyond that, twenty miles to a washed-out bridge. That will mean a portage, and it’ll take a full day. At least. We’ll have to knock everything down, pack it upstream to a crossing, then back down and onto the rails.”