Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change

by S. M. Stirling

  He brought the Sword off his shoulder and slanted it forward. A clump of the surviving Corvallan signalers were gathered around them; they started to sound retreat at speed. Down the slope men tired beyond bearing still heard the familiar notes. The more so as it finally gave them permission to do what everything but sheer willpower and the stubborn pride of their disciplined valor had been screaming for hours: run. Apart from the knot around the field-pieces every Corvallan still fit to move threw down their weapons and took to their heels, most dashing to either side where formed units still held out, a few directly to the rear.

  Some of those kept coming, heedless and witless at last as they let panic take them. When they saw the mass of lancers, more swerved or threw themselves down and buried their heads between their knees with their arms wrapped around their heads, trusting to their armor and luck and babbled prayers. The oliphants screamed their high silver shriek once more.

  Tired horses stumbled into a trot and then a canter and then a shambling gallop. Epona’s nostrils were red pits and slobber coated her neck as her lungs foamed out, but she drew ahead of the others stride by stride. The Boiseans were lumbering forward rather than pursuing, near the ultimate tipping-point of exhaustion themselves; probably only the fact that their minds were clubbed half-unconscious by fatigue kept them going. He could see one man making mechanical thrusts one after another at opponents no longer there. Pride and reflex drove them on, until they realized what was coming down the low slope at them.

  Even then clumps of them came together and overlapped their shields instead of running, but their spears were gone, and there was nothing to make a hedge of points. Even destriers wouldn’t impale themselves, but they were trained from colthood to run at straw figures of men with shields. The rough wedge struck, lance-points and rearing smashing hooves, a multi-ton mass ripping into the scattered footmen.

  Rudi slashed. The Sword of the Lady cut through the staff of the Sixth Battalion’s flag standard. A man picked up the six-foot stub of it and threw it at him as if it were a javelin; he caught it on his shield and slammed the mass away. Epona’s forehooves flashed out, and something broke where they struck. A snap went through Rudi, clicking his teeth together. Then she leapt off her haunches once more, with something of her old strength and grace.

  Rudi shouted, raising the Sword again, and men began casting down their weapons or turning to run, or simply falling to their knees with the blank beaten expressions of those pushed beyond all human endurance. One stood, wolf-snarling at him. He snatched up a fallen pila and threw. Rudi knew that pure arch even as it left the Boisean’s hand; it had the cold inevitability of certainty. All he could do was drop his shield and pull his feet out of the stirrups as the sharp steel thudded into the base of Epona’s neck.

  The labored grace of her charge turned into a wheeling fall. Momentum threw him clear of the saddle, and he was turning through the air; then the ground hit him in the back and side, hard enough to stun through the armor. Men were running at him, the hard core who wanted revenge more than a chance to get away, or who’d adopted the Prophet’s faith. The Sword was still in his hand, and it seemed to pull him up even while his lungs were straining to take the first breath as he came to one knee. A man raised a spear above him before he regained his feet, but something flicked between them; then he was falling backward with a cloth yard shaft in his throat, coughing out a gout of blood past an expression of agonized astonishment.

  Men died in a sleet of arrowshafts that punched right through hoop armor and shields. An instant later only one was on his feet, a dark man in armor that had the distinctive sheen of high-strength alloys. His eyes were pools of blackness as he poised his blade.

  Rudi rose, and the Sword of the Lady drove forward. There was a crisp popping sensation up the hilt, Martin Thurston jerked to a stop with Rudi’s sword-hand only an inch from his breastbone and two feet of not-steel jutting out shining furnace-bright from his back.

  The dying man’s eyes flared open. Everything fled from them except pain and the knowledge of death. Rudi came fully upright and grabbed him under the arm, ready to ease him down and pull the Sword free and let the lifeblood out to end his suffering. That put their faces close together for an instant, and even then Rudi was conscious of his astonishment as the other man spoke in a breathy whisper that sent red bubbles swelling and popping on his lips.

  “Thank…you…”

  The eyes lost their focus on Rudi, and the voice went thinner:

  “Juliet…Larry…I’m sorry. Dad.”

  Mathilda was kneeling beside him when he came to himself. Rudi was vaguely conscious of voices—Fred Thurston’s, taking a surrender; Tiphaine d’Ath tongue-lashing some nobleman into granting quarter. It was all distant as he touched Epona’s neck. She snorted very quietly and rolled her eye towards him, but her head only left the ground for an instant as she recognized him. There was a blind questioning in the glance, as if she asked him what kept her from rising to her feet and carrying him once more and what he meant to do about it.

  “Goodbye, girl,” he said. “I’m—”

  She gave a final sigh and he felt the huge muscles of her neck go slack. Then he let the tears flow from beneath clenched eyelids. Matti’s hand closed on his shoulder, more sensed than felt through the steel.

  “Rudi, I’m so sorry,” she said gently. “She was with you so long.”

  “She…”

  A wail escaped him, the high Mackenzie keening for the dead. He throttled it off before it could take him into the full rhythmic surge of grief.

  Instead he rose dry-eyed, though his Clan didn’t account tears shameful in a man.

  “I am the King,” he said to Matti’s glance of concern. “And there is King’s work yet to do this day.”

  He raised his voice: “Signal to the balloons, transmit to all units: general pursuit!”

  The flames of the funeral pyre burned hot, so hot that there was little scent save a darkness that curled in the throat with each indrawn breath; it was most of a rough barge of Douglas fir wood made for the campaign, broken up like many others this night to serve a final need and stacked in a lattice of timbers stuffed with brush for kindling. The resin-soaked wood exploded upward and the wind carried the tower of red-gold southeastward, towards the river far below, sparks like stars in the gathering dark. More pyres starred the edge of the waters, for a mile and more downstream; the contingents would bring the ashes of their fallen home to rest among their own.

  “You did it all perfectly,” Mathilda said softly beside him. “There’s time for the man within the High King now.”

  Rudi nodded; the tears were running down his face, unchecked this time and soaking into his short red-gold beard, but his voice was calm as he looked out over the night.

  “They’ll say this was the kingdom’s foundation and a springtime of hope, someday, this great victory. They’ll sing of it.”

  He nodded towards the funeral fires. “But this is Samhain, and there’s grief enough to fill the world and Otherworld.”

  Her arm went around his waist, and her warm solidity leaned against him; they were both out of their armor at last.

  “Men die, and horses die,” she said gently. “Grief dies in the end too, or grows gentle. We go on. Until we don’t.”

  He nodded. “Death is part of life. But it still hurts. Epona bore me to battle and across half a world, and there were things she knew of me that no one else did, not even you, my love.”

  The roaring crackle gave them privacy, though a surprising number of others had come to mourn as well, Mackenzies keening a little way off, but a scattering from all the host.

  After a moment he stepped forward and threw back his head and gave the wail for the beloved dead, keeping the note high until his chest ached and his head throbbed. Then he raised his hands skyward in the Old Religion’s gesture of prayer and called:

  “Go in peace to the meadows of the Land of Summer, sister of my heart, comrade, friend. Run free
and wait for us there. The threads of our lives are woven together, yours and mine and the ones we love. We shall return to meet again in other times. Yet never more shall it be Rudi and Epona, a boy and his horse, riding free in the summer wind again.”

  He stood while the fire burned. At last Mathilda pulled gently at his arm.

  “Come, my darling. Come and let me hold you, and sleep.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TIMBERLINE LODGE

  CROWN FOREST DEMESNE

  (FORMERLY NORTH-CENTRAL OREGON)

  HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL

  (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)

  NOVEMBER 6TH, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

  Timberline Lodge was on the southern slopes of Mt. Hood, a sprawling handsome thing of native stone and huge hewn logs, steep shingle roofs and cupolas. It was high enough that the breath of humans and horses smoked in the cold air as they came up the road from the east, and the moss-grown roofs were dusted with snow. More lay on the boughs of the Douglas fir that coated the steep mountain slopes behind, upward and upward to the towering white cone of glacier and snowfield, glowing red now as the sun set behind it. The air smelled slightly of conifer woodsmoke from the tall chimneys, and more of a wild damp green scent, the tang of early highland winter, trees and earth, rock and water and ice.

  The lodge and a million acres of wilderness was an ancient possession of the Lords Protector of the PPA, which was to say that Norman Arminger had grabbed it off not long after the Change.

  Which meant in practice that from that moment it belonged to the other kindreds, to Brother Wolf and Sister Tiger, not to mention Cousins Doe and Elk, he thought, smiling a little to himself. With humankind stepping lightly upon it, more so than for many a thousand years, while Earth heals Herself. So the Powers have their little jokes with us!

  Rudi Mackenzie had been a frequent guest here since the end of the War of the Eye fifteen years ago, as the peace treaty’s terms meant he spent part of every year in the Association’s lands, just as Mathilda spent part with the Clan. This was where Rudi had learned to ski, and he had many a happy memory of hunting these cathedral forests, or hawking and fishing, or just enjoying the beauty of the flower-starred mountain meadows and hidden lakes and waterfalls.

  He’d been curious enough to look into the history of the place a little, despite the fact that the last century of the old world had never been his favorite when he had the time and inclination to glance into stories of the past. The Lodge had been built nearly a long lifetime before the Change by a high ruler of the old Americans called Franklin, to give his laborers and craftsmen work and bread in a time of drought and dearth. They had produced not only the sturdy bones of the place but a wealth of carving and tapestry, fine wrought iron and whimsical copperwork.

  Which was good lordship, sparing their pride and nourishing their honor by giving them something real to do rather than just a loaf tossed as to a beggar, he thought, and went on aloud as the royal party drew rein:

  “They did their work honestly here, the ancients.”

  “And it doesn’t look weird and ugly and useless,” Mathilda said. “The way a lot of their stuff from just before the Change does. It looks like a real building and fit for what it’s supposed to do.”

  “And not like the uninhabitable bastard offspring of some mad smith’s affair with a glassblower, good only for salvage and forging and hammering into something comely or at least useful.”

  She nodded. “Almost modern, in fact.”

  They dismounted a little cautiously. Both of them were still stiff and bruised and feeling the minor cuts and scrapes that even the luckiest carried out of a long hard battle and pursuit. It was the way you felt when you could function at ten-tenths of capacity if you had to…but you didn’t want to unless you did have to, from inescapable necessity. He looked at her and made mock-puppy eyes, and her strong-boned face replied with a grin—cautiously, again, because one side of it was bruised where a shield had hit it with the visor up. They’d planned on a bit of a honeymoon here…

  Sure, and we’d be rubbing wounds on wounds.

  Even if you were young and hugely fit as they both were, recovery took a little time; and they’d be back in action soon enough.

  A steward and helpers hastened up to hold the horses of the mounted and open the doors of the carriages; besides Rudi and Mathilda, there were delegates from all the more important communities in the High Kingdom. The attendants who greeted them were either very young, very old or very female, with none of the ranks of green-clad foresters he remembered from earlier occasions. Mathilda held out her hand and the ancient steward leaning on his white staff of authority bent to kiss it.

  “Goodman Kohnstamm,” she said, smiling affectionately. “Your grandsons send their greetings, and they’re all well, no serious wounds.”

  “Thank you for the news, Your Highness…I mean, Your Majesty…It’s very good to see you again, and you as well, Your Majesty. My lords, my ladies, please enter and be welcome. We’ve done our best, but…”

  “But it’s wartime, and it’s acutely aware of the fact I am, Goodman,” Rudi said. “You’re a perfectionist, I fear. I’m a bit clipped and battered by the war at the moment myself, and so I don’t object if the same is true of the Lodge.”

  That got him the ghost of a smile, though he suspected the old man wouldn’t really be happy until he got his people back. Maintaining a place like this took a considerable labor force, and apart from timber, stone, wild produce and game, all the supplies had to be brought in during the short summer season. Doubtless they’d been cutting back to a minimum and all working very hard indeed with most of their strong young men and skilled artisans away at the war, though it would help that few nobles were visiting either.

  There was a heliograph tower built into one corner of the Lodge, a tall framework of fir-trunks erected after the Change with a round cabin atop its pyramidal shape. It was manned by a military signaling party sent on ahead by Chancellor Ignatius, connecting them with the PPA’s network in Odell, and from there throughout most of western Montival.

  Looking at it, Rudi murmured: “I find myself feeling itchy when I’m out of reach of those things the now. Yet it’s also like having a piece of uncomfortably energetic machinery rammed up your arse, so it is. I grow nostalgic now and then for the Quest, when we were alone together and with our friends. Or for a quiet winter in Dun Juniper, when you had only your thoughts and neighbors for company and solitude was always a short walk away.”

  And is it the heliograph net I’m complaining about, or the Sword? he asked himself. Then: Best not to think of that.

  Mathilda snorted as she took his arm; she was in an Associate noblewoman’s riding dress today, a green fur-trimmed affair with a divided skirt.

  “And off in the Midwest and the Wild Lands wilderness we worried about what was going on at home all the time. Not knowing drove me crazy when I thought about it. What’s more, the enemy can…send messages, somehow. That’s how they followed right at our tails all across the continent.”

  They both grimaced a little at that. The means the CUT used were gruesome. The word Christians used for them most often was diabolist; not being given to dualism, the Old Religion didn’t usually think in those terms, but he could see their point with regard to the Prophet’s followers.

  And I don’t understand the Power behind them, he thought. I do understand it’s no friend to humankind.

  “I’m not saying I’m against the network,” Rudi said. “Indeed, and your mother was farsighted and wise to insist on linking so much of her domains together so, and when we have the time I’ll be pushing all the realms to do likewise for Montival as a whole. Just…there are drawbacks.”

  They passed through the great doors in the stone entranceway; within was a wall panel in cast bronze, showing two men kneeling to a stag with a cross between its antlers. Mathilda signed herself and genuflected to Saints Hubert and Eustace, the patrons of hunters. Rudi clapped his palms
together softly, then held them before his face as he bowed.

  And if my reverence is to Cernunnos, Horned Lord of the Forest and Master of Beasts, who’s the worse for it?

  The huge main hearth inside was already blazing, and the great hall of the lodge was already pleasantly scented with dinner as the guests were shown to their rooms to settle in before they assembled again.

  The rustic theme was continued in the common chambers, with massive stone walls giving way to man-thick timbers above, and a great hammer-vaulted roof above. Much of the wood was carved with patterns and whimsical beasts, some of it pre-Change work and more added since; House Arminger had rescued a set of good makers and turned them loose here with nothing to do but play with their craft on a vast canvas for years.

  Strange man, Matti’s father, Rudi thought as he handed his long fur-lined coat and gauntlets to an attendant with a nod and smile. And a bad one, on the whole; but there’s no denying he dreamed grandly and that much of his work will live.

  Sandra Arminger shed her enveloping ermine cloak into the hands of one of her ladies-in-waiting. She hadn’t been listening too overtly, but her brown eyes twinkled a little under the silver and diamond-bound wimple, one of fine bleached wool for outdoor wear. She’d always been uncomfortably good at following his thoughts.

  Also you, good mother-in-law, have a knack for turning dreams into shaped timber and dressed stone, money and grain-silos and men-at-arms, heliograph stations and bonds of allegiance and fear and obligation.

  There wouldn’t have been any prospect of winning this war if she hadn’t left the PPA rich, well-governed and its armories and magazines stuffed to overflowing with every reserve such a conflict needed, from boot-grease and dried beans to crossbow bolts. But…

  I love you dearly, foster mother—you saved my life from your bachlach of a spouse, and you helped raise me all those years—still I don’t know if you’re all that much better a human being than he. All these preparations weren’t aimed at the CUT; we didn’t know they’d be a menace to us until a few years ago. Maybe you were just being thorough and, what was the old word, paranoid…or not. Yet you reared Matti to be better than either of her parents, but not less in her abilities. And you taught us both much of kingcraft; as witness the way you embraced the idea of Montival—seeing that your grandchildren would rule it and being just as satisfied with that as with hammering everyone into obeying you, or more so.