The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series)

by S. M. Stirling

  Knowing a language was much better than not, but it didn’t mean perfect communication. Not even with Da’s magic sword. Her mother had said that once while she was teething her parents had come in to a room and found her gnawing on the pommel. There were times she still felt like doing that.

  You have to work at getting across what you mean. And Reiko works, by Ogma of the Honey Tongue! She can follow most speech now.

  “The McClintocks were early allies of my father’s birth-Clan, the Mackenzies,” she added, to clarify. “From their beginnings, soon after the Change. When my father returned from the Quest with the Sword of the Lady—”

  She touched it with her palm on the crystal, the same gesture her father had used.

  “—they were among the first to hail him High King; and they fought for him in the great battles of the Prophet’s War, and he confirmed them in their lands and a good deal more when Montival was founded and the Great Charter proclaimed. They . . . hmmm . . . resemble Mackenzies somewhat in their customs.”

  Edain had trotted back, saluting and leaning on his bow to listen for a moment as she spoke. She’d been repeating each sentence in English and Japanese and he grinned at the last part.

  “Resemble us? That they do. Somewhat as a donkey resembles a horse, so,” he said.

  “That was not tactful, old wolf,” Órlaith said affectionately. To Reiko: “Some . . . ah . . . consider the McClintocks a little . . . I think you would say soya. Rustic.”

  Edain snorted. “And some consider them a bunch of drunken savages from the arse-end of nowhere,” he said cheerfully; almost the first time since her father fell she’d seen him so.

  Egawa spoke; Reiko started to translate and then made a graceful gesture of apology.

  The Imperial Guard commander looked at his sovereign, tucked his head when she waved him on, and asked:

  “How do they fight, your Highness?”

  “Understand, General Egawa, I haven’t seen them in combat myself.”

  In fact, that fight when we rescued you and Da fell was my first real battle. But not the last, by the Dagda’s club and the wings of the Morrigú! Not while those who killed Da walk the ridge of the Earth.

  “My father’s appraisal was that they were fine skirmishers and raiders in broken country, especially in wooded land like this.”

  She inclined her head to indicate the mountains and foothills they’d been traveling through.

  “Good at scouting, good at ambushes—both ways. And very fierce in a massed charge, especially if their enemy isn’t expecting them. They’re weak against cavalry on open ground, or against disciplined foot-soldiers, if they don’t win by a quick rush. And they have no artillery—no field catapults—or engineers. They can’t take fortified places, except small ones by scaling ladder. Da would say . . . that they have all the courage in the world, but not so much staying power.”

  Egawa nodded. “I knew your Royal father only by watching him command one small battle,” he said thoughtfully; it was a manner she recognized, a craftsman speaking of his trade. “But that was enough to show him to be a man whose judgments in war were to be taken very seriously.”

  The words were praise, but they were sincerely meant. Órlaith swallowed and took a deep breath; it was getting a little easier to think of him without actual physical pain, especially when she had something to focus on.

  “How many of them are there?” he asked. Casually, but there was a slight edge of tension in his voice.

  “Nobody knows exactly,” she said. “They don’t take censuses, they had some . . . unfortunate experiences with that soon after the Change. The Lord Chancellor’s office thinks somewhere between one and two hundred thousand. They sent more than ten thousand warriors to the great battle in the Horse Heaven Hills the year I was born, and there are certainly more of them now, they’ve been spreading. They don’t like being crowded, which means to them being able to see a neighbor’s smoke.”

  The Japanese were as difficult to read as any people she’d met, not least because they were also apparently free of the impulse to fill a silence with talk just for the sake of it. Reiko blinked quickly, and Egawa squinted thoughtfully. Koyama gave no reaction at all, simply noting what she said. She still thought they found that a large number.

  “There’s a many of them at the tacksman’s steading now, Princess,” Edain said. “Gathered for Beltane, and stayed for a handfasting; the party was just splitting up and the wreath still on the bride’s head.”

  She nodded; the May feast was a lucky time for joinings, as for beginnings in general, and weddings were common in this month among followers of the Old Faith.

  “Whose handfasting?” she asked.

  “The tacksman himself, to be precise. The bride’s name is Caitlin Banaszak McClintock, who I think—”

  He raised his eyes tactfully, and did not grin.

  “—I think you know.”

  Órlaith exhaled slightly; that would simplify things. She had no intention of taking a consort until she came of age for the Throne.

  Heuradys murmured: “Oh, good,” and the three of them shared a glance. “Cry hail to Aphrodite, and to Eros, You Goddess gentle and strong, You powerful God,” the knight added piously, but with a grin. “And may Hera of the Hearth bless them. She’s probably pregnant, too.”

  I’ve never thought Diarmuid was ambitious that way, Órlaith thought. But being the High Queen Regnant’s consort might be tempting to any able man, if he thought he could gain it.

  They came out into the pocket of flattish land on the south bank of the broad swift Rógaire, noisy with the spring melt and still rising as the mountains warmed and shed their white winter coats.

  The river ran westward several hundred miles from the High Cascades to the Pacific at Tràigh òr, mostly through mountains and often in deep narrow canyons. Land that wasn’t too rocky or steep to farm came in patches along river and tributaries, some quite extensive and others small like this; canoes and rafts afloat and pack-beasts through the forests and folk on their own feet were the links that held the McClintock dùthchas together, as far as anything did. The mountain winters with their storms and huge snows hadn’t been kind to the ancient world’s roads and bridges, and the dwellers here lived widely scattered, each family or little kin-group to itself.

  Hooves and feet thudded and drummed on the rutted trail that led them on, flanked by planted walnut trees. Diarmuid’s steading showed him to be a great man, by local standards, though in some places—Corvallis or Boise, for example—it would have been about what a well-to-do yeoman farmer might have.

  Unless you count the warriors he could call out at need.

  Sixty or so acres along the river were planted to wheat and barley and oats, hay and fodder and potatoes, orchards of cherry and apple and pears and other fruits, truck gardens and a small patch of gnarled goblet-trained grape vines. A shift of the wind brought a waft of smoky, pungent odor from long huts by the river that told of brine-cured salmon being smoked; the big fish swarmed thickly here in spring and even more so in the fall. A flume led from a creek to an overshot waterwheel, standing next to a small stone-built mill that would grind grain, saw timber, break flax and lift some of the labor of fulling woolen cloth for all the neighborhood. The forests themselves would yield as much or more than the fields, game for meat and hides, bones and fat and horn; wood and fuel; dyestuffs, honey and wax; nuts and other wild provender and pasturage for cattle and swine and sheep.

  Eight crofts shared the land, little log-and-fieldstone cabins standing back from the bank and possible flooding amid their own gardens that included flowers as well as vegetables, and the intense blue of patches of blossoming fall-sown flax wove bands of color near the houses. There would be more homes tucked away in suitable pockets for many score miles around, and upstream and down. Families who followed the Tennart sub-chieftains to war when the Red Arrow went around, and met here for worship at the great feasts of the Wheel of the Year or in assembly to vote on
disputes or for something like cobbler’s work when traveling artisans came through on their rounds.

  Diarmuid’s house was larger, though quite modest compared to a north-realm manor or a rich merchant’s mansion in Corvallis. A two-story block of deep-notched logs rested on a foundation of mortared fieldstone; lower wings in a U shape stood around a cobbled court. High-pitched roofs reared above, shake and birch-bark covered in dense flower-starred green turf, and the rafter-ends snarled in the shape of dragons. The log walls were carved in sinuous running patterns based on a three-armed spiral where they weren’t covered with trellised roses just coming into full crimson bloom.

  The house was on a rise of ground. Not far away, but beyond the scatter of tree-shaded barns and sheds, corrals and stables and workshops, was a low hill with a rough circle of tall trees. It was surrounded by a screen of the sacred Rowan, planted many years ago when the Old Faith swept this area. That was the nemed, the Sacred Wood. You couldn’t see the altar from here, but two carven trunks of old-growth incense cedar had been set in stones where the path wound up to it, each a thick baulk thirty feet high.

  One was wrought at its top with the image of stag-headed Cernunnos, two torcs of twisted gold in His hands. The other was Flidais, with Her sacred white deer crouched at Her feet, the Goddess standing naked and bold, cattle-horns raised in Her grip. The colors of the figures glittered fresh under a coat of varnish.

  The carving was cruder than it would have been in the Mackenzie dùthchas; for that matter, most of the northern Clan’s duns would have used Lug of the Many Skills leaning on His spear and Brigit the Bright holding the wheatsheaf of abundance and the flame of inspiration for the images, as they did outside the gates of Dun Juniper. But Mackenzies were village-dwelling farmers and craftsfolk who also hunted and fished; the McClintocks were hunters and fishermen who also farmed and practiced crafts. Here in the vast steep tangle of forest and mountain, glacial lake and swift tumbling river, their first worship went to the wild Powers of the lands beyond the tamed tilled fields, the Ones who dwelt in the rustling green silences that shaped their souls. There was a raw strength in the images that made her hand move in the Invoking gesture.

  Flowers and boughs were piled at the feet of the god-posts, and a chain of flowers linked them, marks of the festival just past.

  Diarmuid’s folk were gathered on a cobble-paved space before the outer doors of his house to greet the Royal party, about forty of them including some who must be guests. The shock-headed children might wear anything from nothing whatsoever save an anklet of luck-beads to a shift-like shirt. Adults were in the baggy wool Feileadh Mòr, the wrapped and pinned Great Kilt in the blue-brown-red tartan of their Clan. This folk preferred that one-piece garment to what Órlaith privately considered the more elegant phillabeg version that Mackenzies used, with its separate plaid. Though it was a matter of opinion; McClintocks had been known to refer to the Little Kilt as a little pleated skirt, something which had started brawls. Some here wore the Great Kilt alone, with its upper part thrown over a shoulder, and very little else down to their bare callused feet; except in the coldest parts of winter it would serve as cloak and blanket as well.

  Diarmuid himself wore ankle-boots, knee-hose, a broad tooled-leather belt with a golden dragon buckle to hold his basket-hilted sword and dirk and sporran with its edging of badger fur, and a sleeveless shirt-tunic of fine saffron linen embroidered with green thread at the neck and hems. A slim torc of twisted gold circled his neck now—the mark of the handfasted in both Clans—and two chased gold bands were on his bare muscular upper arms. He was a young man of medium height, slim but broad-shouldered, with dark-blue eyes and seal-brown hair in a long queue, his chin shaven unlike most McClintock males but a mustache on his upper lip.

  His new bride stood beside him in a fine embroidered linen leine, a long shift, under a newly woven arisaid in the Tennart colors. An arisaid was the most formal of woman’s garb and not much worn by those below middle age on anything but the greatest occasions . . . such as a wedding, or a Royal visit. It was much like the everyday kilt that all usually wore, but with the lower portion far longer, down to the ankles, and only a dirk on the belt. She had high cheeks and narrow gray eyes above a snub nose. Hair the color of birchwood flowed down in many long plaits confined by a flower garland of creamy white meadowsweet, often called Bridesblossom when put to this use.

  One of the Japanese muttered: “Tattoos!”

  Well, yes, Órlaith thought, suddenly conscious of them through a stranger’s eyes. And the way he says it . . . it feels like tattoos are something . . . dangerous and risqué.

  It was what you’d first notice if you weren’t used to McClintocks, which not many apart from their immediate neighbors were. Diarmuid himself had elongated blue curves on his arms and legs, body and face; his lady Caitlin had the wings of a monarch butterfly around her eyes, the colors tawny-orange and black. Many of the others were both more gaudy and more crude.

  There were a few non-McClintocks present. Their leader seemed to be a stocky man of medium height with ruddy-brown skin and his graying black hair in braids, dressed in plain homespun trousers and deerskin hunting-shirt and moccasins, and a few others with a family resemblance.

  Yurok, she thought, nodding in his direction and getting a sober inclination of the head back. Have I met him?

  She’d have guessed his tribe even without the Sword and the newfound communion with the Land of Montival—that was curiously muffled and incomplete as yet, probably because she hadn’t gone through the Kingmaking.

  The Yurok folk still dwelt along the Klamath River south of here and more towards the coast, very far out of the way. Which accounted for their survival in their ancient homeland both in the days of the Americans and after the Change; her parents had made one visit there, when she was eleven, and it had been a hard trip. The Yurok had become autonomous again when the ancient world fell, absorbing most of the other dwellers in the region, and they’d made alliance with the first McClintock chieftain for mutual help against bandits and Eaters. Though they were part of the High Kingdom, such few dealings as they had with outsiders were mostly through his Clan.

  And didn’t Diarmuid once tell me a family story of the Tennarts . . . yes, there’s some of that heritage on his father’s side. When the ancients first came to these lands two centuries ago one of his ancestors married a Yurok woman and brought her north to the valley of the Rógaire. He wasn’t the only one hereabouts. Not surprising. Even conquerors as hard and stark as the old Americans rarely sweep a land absolutely clear; some of the blood of the vanquished endures, however scattered or unknown, as water moves unseen through sand. Da’s father Mike Havel was a quarter Anishinabe, after all. Nonni Sandra had a Nez Perce great-grandmother married to a Quebecois trapper, and Grandmother Juniper had some Cherokee, very far back.

  Órlaith reined in and raised her hand in greeting. The McClintocks cheered, a high ululating sound, pipers added the raw wail of the drones, and a drum boomed.

  The adults—which with McClintocks meant anyone big enough—all brandished their weapons thrice in the air as they shouted, a gesture of greeting and fierce loyalty. That included a good many yew bows, spears, tomahawks, gruesome-looking Lochaber axes with their hooks and two-foot blades on six-foot poles, and swords that might be either basket-hilted claymores or the original claidheamh mòr, greatswords four feet long worn over the back in a rawhide sling. Nobody was wearing armor, beyond round nail-studded shields with a central spike, they’d come here for a festival-feast and a wedding after all—the nailheads were polished bright. But McClintocks didn’t so much as go out to the privy without something in the way of a weapon. That was a habit that had been fading elsewhere lately, but it remained quite lively here.

  The Japanese attracted looks and murmurs and some plain dropped jaws—most of these forest-dwellers would never have been outside their dùthchas in their lives, save for some of the older ones who’d marched off to the Prophet’s War a
nd come home to tell the tale. A few started to bristle dangerously at the strangers, and Órlaith cut in before scrambled backwoods rumor about who’d been responsible for what got out of hand. These were a fierce folk, readier with their steel than her father’s people.

  “These Nihonjin are our guests, and they share our feud,” she called, her hand on the hilt of the Sword to remind them that she could not mistake the truth of the matter. “As our guests and allies, they are under the Crown’s protection.”

  The scowls turned to smiles, or sheepish foot-shuffling when Diarmuid turned and glared at them for breaking the peace of his greeting. She dismounted and handed off the reins of her horse before she went to one knee briefly and took a clod of earth in her hand to touch to her lips.

  When she rose she spoke formally:

  “I, Órlaith, daughter of Artos and Mathilda, of the House of Artos and the line of the High Kings of Montival, ask welcome on the lands of Clan McClintock and the sept of the Tennarts. I come as a guest claiming guest-right for me and mine, by the leave of the Clan and its Gods and its folk, and of the aes dana of rock and tree and river, bird and beast.”

  Diarmuid and Caitlin stepped forward and each exchanged the ritual kiss on both cheeks with her. Diarmuid’s clean male scent of hard flesh and woodsmoke and wool was familiar and comforting even just as a friend, and Caitlin’s garland of bridesblossom had an overpowering sweet lushness that had soaked into her hair.

  “The House of the Ard Rí and our Bana Ard Rí to be are always welcome on this land and among our folk,” he said gravely. “For our land is the land of Montival and we are of the High King’s people.”

  His voice had the McClintock accent, a deep burr that rolled the “r” sounds and swallowed others: our became ooorr and to became tae. That was a legacy of the first McClintock too, as the soft Mackenzie lilt was of Grandmother Juniper. The early followers of both had adopted the habits of speech as a sign of belonging and it had spread as more joined them. To their children and grandchildren and now great-grandchildren it was simply the way they spoke, changing slowly as a living speech rooted in a settled place and people did. Few realized it had ever been otherwise, or that many had thought the original fashion excruciatingly artificial.