The High King of Montival

by SM Stirling

  “None could, for cooking. But mind you, for dalliance—”

  She snorted and made as if to clout him with her bow, then asked wistfully:

  “What are apricots like?”

  “Like peaches . . . no, you don’t know those either, eh? Well, they’re about so big, and yellow, and the flesh is sweet as honey when they’re ripe, and the taste . . . well, how can I describe that?”

  “I had some apricot brandy once, that vikings—salvagers—brought back from the dead cities,” Bjarni said. He smacked his lips. “Not bad! But the fruit, no, I’ve never tasted it and can’t imagine. That’s like color to a blind man, I suppose.”

  They fell silent and walked quietly amid an intense fresh greenness for a half hour, enjoying stretching a different set of muscles and seeing the countryside without the constant onrush of wind in their faces. Each took in the lie of the land, and they instinctively avoided a marsh-fringed pond where a beaver dam had blocked a stream; they could hear a distant smack as one of the builders whacked his flat scaly tail into the water in alarm. Upstream of that to the west and north the creek flowed quietly between low banks over gravel, with yellow marsh marigold and dandelion-like coltsfoot and white-and-yellow bloodroot thick along it in the cool damp shade; a bit higher were shy little purple violets.

  Long ago someone had set stepping-stones in the knee-deep water there, and they still ruffled the water aside in little standing waves. Willows dangled their long green tendrils in the flow, and a red-spotted brown trout darted away downstream into deeper water with a flick of fins as Artos looked.

  Hmmmm. Would it be worth the time to tickle a few? No, the sorrow of it, however well panfried trout would taste. Not with a battalion to feed.

  Edain hissed and pointed with the tip of his longbow as Garbh sniffed and bristled.

  “Cat!” he said.

  “Cougar?” Asgerd said doubtfully.

  Mathilda crouched where the animal had come to the edge of the water to drink and held her open hands over the marks. She wasn’t a small woman and her shapely hands were as big as many men’s, but the pawprints were obviously wider than the span of her fingers.

  “Tiger,” she said succinctly. “Male. The pugmarks are square and the toes are thick, see? A big one, too; four hundred pounds or better, I’d say.”

  “They’re more common here than in Norrheim,” Bjarni said. “That’s the third set of tiger tracks we’ve spotted and we’ve not been looking hard.”

  “And no wonder,” Artos said. “Remember that sign we passed—African Lion Safari Park?”

  “It said lions.”

  “Yes, but it’d have many another sort as well. I’d say it was likely the keepers there turned their beasts loose before they died themselves. That happened in many another such place, I know; and Father Ignatius has told me of others his order learned of. Some of the animals were eaten, no doubt, and some couldn’t live with the weather here. Some survived to breed, which is why that one was drinking from this stream.”

  “But the tracks are old,” Edain said. “I can’t smell him even if Garbh can. Also I can’t eat him, or won’t unless I get very hungry indeed. I’m not livin’ here, nor yet trying to raise stock in his bailiwick, nor yet in need of a tiger-skin coat. So if he’ll leave me alone, I’ll return the favor, and we can both bless the Lady each in his own way.”

  “Well said,” Bjarni said with a grin.

  He’s missing home and wife and children, but this is a holiday for him as well, I think, Artos mused. For a while he needn’t be King.

  They scanned farther up the creek; there were signs of everything from raccoon to elk. Edain hopped across from rock to rock to the other bank and trotted up it for a minute before he gave a low call. Artos followed; the brush had been carelessly trampled down over a wide area, twenty or thirty yards, and the banks crumbled into the water.

  “Cattle!” Asgerd said; the signs were unmistakable to the country-bred. “Are there herdsmen here? We’ve seen none.”

  “Man-sign?” Artos asked Edain.

  “No. It’s not a tame herd, Chief. The mix is wrong.”

  A domestic beef herd had far more young animals than one left to itself, and there were other differences.

  “Feral cattle,” Artos said to the others. “Messy eaters and messier drinkers. They’re common in parts of Montival, common enough to be a nuisance.”

  The girl looked blank. Bjarni nodded. “We don’t have them in Norrheim; the winters are too cold, I think. But I’ve heard that there are many farther south, from those who go there in viking. Swarms of wild cattle and wild pig, almost as many as the deer.”

  He frowned. “It’s strange; the old-world folk died of hunger after the Change, mostly. Hunger and plague. I’d have thought they’d eat every beast before they started on each other.”

  Artos shrugged. “Every beast they could catch. For all the millions scouring for them, there were always some animals of each kind who survived until most of the humans were gone, if only by being out of the way. Cattle will double in numbers every two years, left to themselves.”

  “Pigs even faster,” Bjarni acknowledged. “And the flesh-eaters were slower to build their numbers back, as well. Still it’s hard to imagine people so ignorant they’d starve with game still in the woods.”

  “People before the Change didn’t know anything, the most of them!” Edain said. “Me da still talks about how they had to be taught like babes when the Clan was starting, and how he and Lady Juniper and the others went scouring for people who knew things, real things, to teach.”

  “My parents too,” Mathilda agreed.

  “And mine,” Bjarni said. “Erik collected them like treasures on his way north.”

  Edain went on: “If half what Da says is true, then it’s a wonder any of those old folk lived long enough to be there when the Change came and killed them.”

  The Norrheimers laughed, but Mathilda spoke:

  “That’s not quite fair. Each of them knew one little thing about their scientific arts, and they traded the results among themselves, and there were so many that that was workable.”

  Artos nodded agreement: “But true it is that the most of them didn’t know the things we think are important . . . how to farm, or fight with a sword, or hunt by bow and spear, or butcher a cow, or how to milk one, or how to make butter or tan leather or shoe a horse or . . . any of that. The which is why so many people alive today are those of the few who did know those things, or the children and friends and followers of such.”

  Bjarni had been kneeling by a cowpat to touch and sniff. “Fresh,” he said. “Not more than three hours. Forty or fifty, I’d say. Quite a big herd, ayuh!”

  “Wild cattle like to stay near water,” Artos said. “And they prefer brush and thicket and the edges of things to either deep woods or open prairie, if they have a choice.”

  “Like deer or wild pig, then,” the Norrheimer said, storing the knowledge away.

  “Very much.”

  He looked around; there were some big trees ahead of them, mostly sugar maples, and smooth-barked beeches with the odd oak and hickory, ash and yellow birch. Beyond that was thicket, and he thought meadowland beyond that; he could see farther through it than would be possible in summer, when everything was in full leaf. Above him a cerulean warbler gave the last sweet notes of its song and fell silent as it took alarm.

  Perfect, Artos thought. They’ll run for shelter if they’re spooked.

  “Pick a tree-stand,” he said aloud. “You’ll want to be twelve feet up at least. They’re dangerous.”

  “Cattle?” Bjarni snorted. “Swine, yes, but cows?”

  “Wild cattle. The which I have hunted before, my friend, as you have not. I’d hate to know Harberga was a widow because you underestimated a bull.”

  “Hmm, right enough. It’s surprising there are so many, too.”

  “You should see how the buffalo herds have grown, out west on the high plains, from the few hundred tho
usand kept on ranches. Millions is just a word, until you see it.”

  A light grew in the Norrheimer’s china-blue eyes that was almost feral in itself. “Ah, buffalo! I’ve never seen one, of course, but I’ve seen pictures. That would be a hunt worth making.”

  “The Lakota take ’em on horseback, and it’s just a wee bit exciting.”

  Mathilda snorted. “As in, they nearly pounded you into a thin red paste,” she said. “It’s a wonder my hair’s not white already! You jumped on the back of one!”

  “That wasn’t the hunt—that was when the Cutters were after me,” Artos said lightly.

  In truth, he preferred not to remember it too vividly. There were things that made a good story over beer but could still have you wake up in the small hours shaking and sweating a year later.

  Instead he went on: “Wind’s towards us, that marsh is off to the left, and the woods get thicker off northwest there. This is a good spot.”

  Edain whistled sharply, then used the tip of his bow to mark a spot where the hooves had trampled leaves and grass into muck.

  “Garbh! Take the scent!”

  The big dog stuck her muzzle down, black nose quivering, body tense with happy excitement.

  “Circle and drive, girl! Circle and drive! Fetch ’em, fetch ’em!”

  She shot off through the brush like a bolt from a catapult, leaving only a few limbs and leaves quivering in her wake. Artos looked up; the big beech had a massive fork in its trunk the right distance above his head, and still quite a few of the brown serrated leaves from last year. He threaded through a thicket of root-saplings it was sending out, bent slightly and made a stirrup of his hands; Mathilda took four bouncing steps and leapt. Her right boot landed in his hands, her leg already bent; he straightened and thrust upward, throwing her hundred and fifty-five pounds of woman and gear upward with calculated force. She soared, gripped the sides of the V, and laughed softly.

  “That was fun.”

  “Throwing you about is enjoyable, acushla,” he said.

  He grinned to see her blush, handed up his bow, and waited an instant until she had herself braced and a hand extended. Then he backed, ran at the tree, leapt, pushed off a knob on the trunk with one foot and landed with their hands clasped between.

  “Well, fancy meeting a pretty girl in a beech tree,” he murmured into her ear, suddenly acutely conscious of the scent of woman, clean but fairly strong. “Is it a dryad you are, sweet one?”

  Mathilda flushed, gave him a quick kiss and sidled away. “We’d better get ready.”

  “I am ready . . . ouch!”

  “Ready for hunting! That can wait for the wedding!”

  “For the wedding? Even Mackenzies think it uncouth to set to during the handfasting—all right, all right!”

  They each passed a loop of rope around the trunk behind them and then around their torsos, and hung their quivers on convenient stubs nearby. Artos patted the tree and gave it a silent word of thanks, then set an arrow to his string, a broadhead with four razor-sharp edges slanting back from the point, using his fingers to sort the others in his quiver so that the bodkins were at the rear. The Mackenzie mountain-yew stave he bore was an armor-smashing, man-killing brute that drew well over a hundred pounds, so he was grossly over-bowed for the hunt, but that would simply slow him down a little—and he was a fast shooter even by the Clan’s standards. Plus wild cattle were big beasts and had a hard grip on life; they could take a good deal of killing.

  From here he could see out into the lower growth ahead; the afternoon sunlight was slanting through the trees, and the spring ephemerals were a pleasant scattering of blue and yellow and white and pink through last year’s grass. Suddenly he heard a racking howl, mixed with snarls and barks. Garbh was at work, imitating a whole pack of wolves to the best of her ability. Then lowing and bellowing, including a bovine cry of pain that showed she’d gotten her teeth home; and an angry bull roared, a lower sound that carried well and seemed to shake in the bone. After a moment the tall grass and brush in the open space started to toss, and he saw the backs of the first of the herd; he could smell them too, a familiar barnyard scent carried on the wind.

  White, he thought, or mostly; some had dark spots. Big. Charolais by breed, I think, but they’ve gotten longer in the leg and leaner and they’re all horned, many unreasonably lengthy and pointed in that respect. It’s ten generations or more for them. Not winter-gaunt, but not fat either. Cows and young beasts mostly.

  No calves to speak of; the cows would drop them later in spring, and no grown bulls he could see, but plenty of younglings one to three years old, which were the ones he wanted. Like most Mackenzies he disliked killing any animal while it was pregnant if he could avoid it, as being possibly blasphemous and almost certainly bad luck, but you could cull males from a herd’s numbers without damaging the stock. The first few were moving along at a lumbering trot-walk, looking over their shoulders now and then or facing back for a moment, but as more came into sight they picked up speed, feeding off each other’s moods as cattle did. A herd could flee with its most timid member, or charge with the most aggressive.

  Last the bull came into sight, all-white, rangy-massive, better than a thousand pounds of irritation with rage and steam pouring off his flanks and head, and a set of horns like forward-pointing scimitars. In front of him Garbh looked like a puppy, but she bounced around making a din with little threatening rushes, her tongue over her long fangs like a taunting scarlet banner. Then he lowered his head and his tail went up and he pawed divots of dark soil out of the ground; Artos grinned as Garbh replied with the play-gesture of her tribe, rump up and forequarters down.

  The charge was like thunder and would have smashed any fence to flinders or any man, dog or wolf to bloody rags, but Garbh made a last-second leap, twisting in midair to avoid the rake of horns that spanned five feet from tip to tip. She landed nimbly and streaked after the rest of the herd. The bull twisted in his turn with an agility astonishing in an animal so large, and chased her . . . which meant he was running in the direction his charges had been going. They thought the bull was running away from the wolves too, and decided that discretion was the better part of valor for heifers and youngsters. In an instant heads were down, tails were up, and fifty-eight sets of hooves were churning. Which in turn meant the bull was disinclined to stop, lest his cows get out of sight. Garbh promptly dropped back around him.

  I’ve met war-chiefs with less sense of tactics than that dog, Artos thought with a wide grin; he felt a familiar bubbling excitement. This is one of the things the Gods made men for, as they did wolf and lion.

  The pounding of hooves grew into a rumble that shivered up the trunk of the beech and into his legs and backside, and bits of vegetation shot ten feet high as the herd smashed its way through all obstacles. It was a very good thing to be well above them. Closer, closer . . .

  He threw the weight of arm and shoulder and gut against the stave, drew past the angle of his jaw and shot. The string twanged, and an instant later he could distinctly hear the wet meaty thwack as the point struck his target, slanting down from the base of the neck to sink feathers-deep in the body cavity. The big two-year male took three steps and crashed bodily into the trunk of the beech, making Artos lurch and also making him grateful for the safety rope. The animal recoiled backward and collapsed with blood pouring out of nose and mouth. Another shot, and a smaller yearling went down bawling with an arrow lodged in its shoulder-joint and the leg paralyzed. Then they were directly beneath him and he drove one more shaft into a spine at point-blank range, aiming between the shoulder blades to get the heart and lungs even if he didn’t cut the nerve-cord.

  Matti and the others were shooting as well, and whooping. After that, the survivors were past and spooked even more by the cries of pain and the smell of blood, showing no sign of stopping for miles as they thundered through the water of the creek in a wave of spray and splashing. He slung his quiver over his back again, dropped down lightly and b
ent his bow three more times, considered close-range mercy shots; you didn’t leave an animal in hurt and fear longer than needful, but there was no need to risk taking the point of a horn in your belly or crotch in a last thrashing. The others were attending to the same task; when the beasts were still and throats had been cut, he and Edain each touched a finger to the blood, tapped it between their brows and passed a palm over the dead eyes and their own before they faced west with their hands raised.

  Edain recited: “Thank you for your gift of life, brothers, sisters, and know it will not be wasted. Speak well of us to the Guardians of the Western Gate, and go in peace to the bright clover-meads of the Summerlands where no ill comes and all hurts are healed, to be reborn through the Cauldron of Her who is Mother-of-All.”

  Artos finished the rite:

  “Lord Cernunnos, Horned Master of the Beasts, witness that we take of Your bounty from need, not wantonness, knowing that to us also the Hour of the Hunter comes at last. For Earth must be fed, and we but borrow our bodies from Her for a little while.”

  Mathilda crossed herself and murmured a prayer to St. Hubert, patron of hunters; the Norrheimers invoked Ullr, the veithi-As, the God of the hunt and the bow.

  Then they set to work, retrieving their arrows and hauling up the twelve carcasses by cords threaded through the hocks between bone and tendon and thrown over convenient branches. It was brute-force work to get the heavy bodies in place, and nearly as much to hoist them up the necessary eight or ten feet, but they were all strong and five pairs of hands on one rope did the job quickly enough. There was no need to break and butcher; there would be help enough from camp for that with tools that included bone saws, but the meat would keep much better if it was thoroughly drained at once. They did do a rough gralloching of one young heifer, for the liver and kidneys and heart—incomparably best when grilled fresh right from the beast, with only a sprinkle of salt.

  “That’s the hunter’s right,” Artos said, laughing, stripped to his kilt and with blood to his elbows, tossing the organs onto a bed of broadleaf plantain.