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

by S. M. Stirling

  Doing close on twenty miles an hour, she thought unhappily. Hand-gallop speed. A horse couldn’t keep that up more than a couple of miles, but a hippomotive . . . they could barrel right through the station without slowing down since they’ve got a military priority order to clear the tracks.

  You could deal with objects moving that fast. One of the tricks her grandmother had taught her mother, and her mother her in turn—the lineage ran back to skills learned in rodeos before the Change—was to grab the saddle-horn of a horse as it galloped by and swing up onto the beast’s back in one movement. Things like that were very impressive and even occasionally useful. The downside was that if you failed, even on turf or sand or sawdust you could easily dislocate your shoulder or break half your bones—or your spine, or your skull. Luanne had done that training with nothing worse than a lot of bruises, a broken collarbone and a mild concussion or two, but the equivalent with a moving vehicle, at night, on uneven ground with steel and rock and unyielding cross-ties all underfoot . . .

  I sure hope cousin Órlaith has that thing slow down a bit! she thought.

  She was carrying a lot more gear than she did at gymkhanas, too. Granted most of it was in a knapsack she could hopefully toss on board, she was still wearing a mail-lined leather tunic and a sword. She hurriedly took off the backsword, tied the guards of the sword and dagger to the scabbard-lip with a leather thong, and slipped it through a loop on the backpack and cinched it tight. That left her unarmed except for the holdout daggers in her boot and collar, but needs must.

  Closer now . . . was it slowing down or speeding up? She started taking rapid but deep and controlled breaths to build extra burst endurance. No lights except in the hippomotive itself, the cars were dark . . . well, it was midnight. Presumably most of the people aboard had been woken out of a sound sleep to be hustled onto the train; you didn’t give information out before it was absolutely necessary on a clandestine movement. Now they were trying to make up the lost sack-time. All her instructors had said you slept whenever you could. She crossed herself and touched her crucifix, and murmured inaudibly:

  “O God, You know me to be set in the midst of great peril. Grant me such strength of mind and body, that those evils which I suffer for my sins I may overcome through Thy assistance. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  The open-sided power car came closer, with the moving shadows of the twin four-horse teams within, massive muscled shapes in the moonlight. Then four slab-sided wooden rectangles on wheeled bogies. The rear car would have a bit of open platform at its end behind a railing, and she could just make that out.

  She was a little to the south of the main station building, where the salvaged solid metal rails gave way to the more modern steel-strapped wood; there was a clear straight stretch here. She turned and began running along the track before the hippomotive passed, working up to a full sprint just as the rear carriage swept by. Crushed rock ballast crunched under her boots, and the creosoted cross-ties tried to throw her off. It would be just perfectly glorious to trip, twist her ankle, bang her head on the rails and then get it cut off by the hippomotive as she lay unconscious.

  The length of the train passed her. She estimated distances in the dark, and—

  Thump-clung!

  The backpack swung out of her hand and landed on the boards. She used the motion to help her leap and her hands in their fingerless kid-leather gloves clamped down on a rusty rear rail of salvaged pipe. She took one more bounding step. For an instant her arms felt as if they were being wrenched out of their sockets and then she had her feet snatched up and braced against the floor. One foot slipped a little, the hobnails skittering on smooth fir boards, and then she held it with a desperate pressure. If it had slipped it would have gone right into the bogie up to the knee and been cut about three-quarters of the way through. Of course, the motion of the wheel would have dragged her right down and underneath as well. Which would have killed her, but not as quickly as she’d have wanted by that point.

  Phew! she thought, as she did a slow forward roll over the railing and came to her feet.

  Then she froze. Contrary to what bards sometimes said, swords didn’t ring when they were drawn unless you were stupid enough to use a metal scabbard and then ruin the edge against it. There was a faint, distinctive whisk of oiled steel on wood and leather, though.

  Which is what I just heard. Uh-oh. Is this the foreigners’ car, those Japanese we heard about? Will they speak English or just slash at anyone trying to board—

  She opened her mouth to say she was friendly, but before she could arms grabbed her from behind; a man, mostly bare, shorter than she was and very strong. She started an automatic counter, and the man thumped her under the sort ribs with his left hand and dug the thumb of his right expertly into her neck as he forced her chin back, all the while evading the stamp against his bare instep. She could smell him, not dirty but distinctively different, a more vinegary scent than the usual body-odor.

  “Uff!” she wheezed.

  The immobilizing hold turned to an unpleasantly thorough grope as the man determined what he was holding in the dark, backing into the body of the rail-car while he did, where the dark was Stygian. He laughed and said something in an unfamiliar language and turned the investigative grope into something even less pleasant.

  “Hey!” she tried to shout, though it came out more as a croak, and made a futile grab for her boot-knife.

  There was a confused milling and series of collisions, and then a lantern came on and someone barked authoritative-sounding words in the same foreign language; she didn’t recognize it, but the rhythms and sounds were distinctive. Luanne had no idea what the man was saying, but she could certainly recognize an exasperated officer snarling an order when she heard it.

  Wow, a troll! she thought dazedly, whooping in breath and blinking against the light as the choke-hold was released, and reflexively rubbing at her throat and coughing.

  The man standing before her was in something like a knee-length bathrobe, obviously just thrown on. The troll had his topknot tied, and was the oldest man present—in his forties or possibly fifties—with a squat heavy-muscled build and a truly impressive set of scars, including several that looked like the result of sword-cuts on the face.

  Her mind chimed: Experienced and extremely dangerous when she looked at this one.

  Luanne’s immediate world had been at peace all her life, but she came of a warlike people and had been raised among the veterans of the long savage campaigns against the Prophet and the Church Universal and Triumphant. She knew the look.

  Chimes it very loudly, she thought.

  One man in the car was in what she recognized as something very like samurai armor, with a bare sword in his hand. The troll pointed, and he did a smart about-face and went back out onto the rear platform and closed the door behind him.

  The other thirty or so men who crowded the car were in loincloths of an alien type, obviously a length of cloth twisted so that it was sort of a thong-rope except where it formed a pouch for the genitals. Under other circumstances she thought it might have been rather fetching, especially given the perfect condition of the bodies, but alarming right now. Especially given the odd haircuts; all but half a dozen of the men had a strip shaven up the middle of their heads and long behind. A few had the long part in a topknot, and the rest had probably undone it for sleep, which went with the bedding-rolls on the floor of the carriage and the bags of gear neatly piled up in one corner. Something nagged at her for an instant until she realized she was in a room full of men and taller than all but a few of them. Among a similar number of Bearkillers half would have had more inches than she.

  A car full of nearly naked muscular shrimps with strange hair.

  The troll’s face was utterly impassive as he bowed to her and spoke:

  “Suh solly.”

  Wait a minute, is that so sorry? I certainly hope so . . . Christ, that was really scary. More than getting on the train.

  She
decided it was “so sorry,” as he motioned her out of the way. She side-stepped, and the other men in loincloths scrambled to get out of her way, as if she was either contagious or red-hot. Then they stood in rigid, braced ranks.

  The one who’d been holding her started to say something, and the troll barked at him again. Whatever he’d said, it produced a nice attention, as motionless as was possible in a moving railcar and looking a little strange in a loincloth. The troll stepped nearer and said something to the man who’d grabbed her, snarling it with their faces inches apart. There was an instant of silence, then—

  Whamp!

  The open-handed blow to the face sounded like two oak boards smacked on each other. The man who’d groped her was only about five-six, but he looked as strong as he’d felt, in a wiry fashion. He rocked and staggered and then came back to attention without the slightest attempt to dodge or block, his face blank despite the blood running from his nose and a cut lip.

  The troll turned to her and bowed again. “I General Egawa Noboru. I sray . . . say . . . to he, bling disglace.”

  Bring disgrace, she thought. I said he brought disgrace on us. Well, that’s a positive attitude, good zero-tolerance for inappropriate behavior there.

  She had just about figured that out when the troll turned back to the groper and said something else in the same grating snarl; if broken salvage glass in a grinding machine spoke Japanese, it would sound like that.

  Whamp!

  He hit with the left hand this time, but it didn’t seem any weaker than the other and even expecting it the motion was a blur in the dim light. The younger man staggered a little longer, and his face was already swelling, but it was still stolidly fixed.

  “I s . . . say he blake—”

  At her baffled look, he made a stick-snapping gesture with his hands.

  “Break?” she supplied.

  “Hai, brrreak. Break hos-pi-ta-ritry.”

  Breaks hospitality, she translated.

  Another sentence to the younger man.

  Whamp!

  This time the man being beaten buckled at the knees and slumped to the floor; he wasn’t unconscious, but his eyes had rolled up, and he was leaking blood from both of them, his nose, mouth and one ear.

  “I say he . . . bakayaro eta . . .”

  The troll squinted his narrow eyes, obviously working out equivalents in his head.

  “Bakayaro . . . in Engerish . . . flucking idiot. Eta is . . . filthy shit-man.”

  He gave her a nod, and snapped his fingers; someone handed her backpack and sword to her with a bow, and she took them in a slight daze.

  “Come, prease. Heika . . . Majesty . . . your Majesty . . . I bling you to.”

  Whoa, Luanne thought, looking down at the bleeding body of her assailant and then at the rigid lines of men around her staring fixedly ahead. And I thought we Bearkillers had discipline!

  “You want klick . . . kick?” the troll asked politely, indicating the fallen man.

  Want to kick him? she rendered it. She’d been genuinely frightened, but . . .

  “No, thank you,” she said, returned his bow and thought of the hasty reading she’d done since the rumors started going around. “Ah . . . good job. Ichiban.”

  At that he smiled slightly and turned, motioning her politely ahead of him.

  Well, this is going to be interesting. And I thought Mackenzies were strange.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Dun Fairfax, Dùthchas of the Clan Mackenzie

  (Formerly northwestern Oregon)

  High Kingdom of Montival

  (Formerly western North America)

  June 15th, Change Year 46/2044 AD

  “Well, brother, we’re ready,” Karl said quietly.

  Karl Aylward Mackenzie and his brother Mathun shared a room in their family’s farmhouse in Dun Fairfax, one that had been half a bedroom before the Change. They’d shared it for a long time too, ever since they got too old for cribs in the nook adjoining their parents’ room. That experience let them pack their gear for a secret pre-dawn departure without more than an occasional collision in the dim light of a single tallow candle, and no more quiet cursing than you’d expect.

  Karl had been twenty for a few months and his brother was a year younger. That made them men grown by Mackenzie standards, though just barely. They were eligible to take valor and fight with the First Levy, if still a few years short of the age most were handfasted and so became full adults. They’d scuffled like pups in a litter most of their lives, but it had never gotten out of hand and they were as close as most brothers, which was fortunate since the room had just enough room for the two-tier bunk bed, two clothes-chests and a few things hung on the wall.

  What was that kenning Lady Fiorbhinn used? Karl thought. Literal and meta . . . phor? We’re close enough, and then again in here we’re close enough.

  They looked alike as well, enough to be taken for twins by those who didn’t know them. They were both a little under six feet, with builds that would be more long-limbed and rangy than their stocky father even when they were his age. That was a legacy of their mother’s side of the family, like straight barley-colored hair and eyes more blue than gray. Their square straight-nosed faces with the jutting cleft chin were his, though; like most clansfolk of their generation they wore that yellow hair in a single thick horse-tail down the back when it wasn’t clubbed up and tied with an old bowstring as now, and like most Mackenzie men without the neck-torc of handfasting they shaved their admittedly still wispy beards.

  Right now they could scarcely keep from grinning like loons at each other—at least, Karl thought Mathun looked like a loon when he did it, and he suspected that he wasn’t much better. He felt about ready to burst with pride and eagerness too, and just a trace trickle of fear down in the roots of his soul.

  The Princess sent for us, for us, to guard her back and help avenge her da! ’Twould be an offense against nature if none of the Clan Mackenzie were on this faring, there’s scarcely a one that would have said her nay, but it’s our very selves she picked for the message.

  They tiptoed about in their sock-hose this hour before dawn, stifling the odd curse as they bumped into each other while stuffing their gear into two smallish sacks by the light of the candle in the wall-sconce; the window was firmly shuttered to keep the light from showing outside. Apart from a spare kilt and plaid each and oddments such as sock-hose and the linen drawers which Mackenzies did, contrary to rumor, wear beneath their kilts, it was mostly things you needed to live in the field. Some salt, hard-tack and trail mix, firestarters, a pot for Mathun and a frying pan for Karl, tools like hatchets, light sleeping bags folded small, their first-aid boxes, extra arrowheads and glue and bowstrings and wax, water purification tablets, a kit of wax-and-pigment color-sticks to apply warpaint. Nothing new to either of them; they’d gone on war-games with the Dun’s fighters, and hunted in the mountains and wilderness for weeks at a time ever since they were big enough.

  They were already wearing the brigantine torso-armor that any Mackenzie eligible for the levy kept—a jack of two layers of soft green leather with little steel plates riveted between, and short mail sleeves. The open-faced sallet helms they strapped to the sacks, the steel also painted green. Next to last they buckled on their belts, with the broad-bladed stabbing short swords and long dirks, the little soup-plate-sized buckler on its clip on the sword-scabbard and the special sporran with a brigantine-like backing that protected the Gift of the Lord, hopefully. He winced a little at the thought. No matter how brave you were, some injuries didn’t bear thinking of.

  Last of all were the baldrics with the quivers. For hunting you used a small one with five or six arrows. The war quiver was much larger—it held forty-eight arrows of various types in its tube of hard-boiled and varnished elk-hide—and had loops for carrying your longbow strung or unstrung, and pouches on the outside for various bits and pieces like an arrow-hone.

  They each took two bows, not the hunting poppers b
ut the great battle tools that took a hundred and twenty pounds of pull to bend past the jaw with a clothyard shaft on the string. Those could kill at three hundred paces, and at close range even the best armor wasn’t proof against a square hit from a bodkin-head shaft. They’d made the war-bows themselves, from yew and walnut root-wood they’d cut and seasoned and bits of polished antler from their own kills for the nocks. The bowyer’s bench and tools occupied part of a big room that had been some sort of vehicle storage before the Change, and where the household had its looms as well. Bowyering was a family tradition, passed down from the grandfather they scarcely remembered and that as an old man nodding by the fire.

  The songs remembered him though, the first Aylward to bear the title the Archer, the one who’d taught the whole Clan the bow back in the beginning.

  And they sing about Da’s deeds too, on the Quest and in the Prophet’s War and after. He’s the Archer now, and seven times he took the Silver Arrow at the Lughnasadh Games, and there’s all the things he did by the High King’s side from here to the Sunrise Lands and back. Well, now they’ll sing about our deeds! Karl Aylward Mackenzie, the Archer . . .

  “Ready when I find my rabbit’s-foot . . . ah, here it is, with the blessing,” Mathun said, touched it to his eyes and lips and rubbed it on his head before he tucked it into his sporran.

  “And sure, now you know where it is, and your lice do too. Well, we’re ready as we ever will be,” Karl said, setting his flat Scots bonnet on his head.

  He propped the note for their family on his neatly-made bunkbed. Like all Mackenzies he could read, write and cipher—it wasn’t the most important part of what you learned in Moon School, but it was there. He even read for pleasure. He’d traded six deerskins and some Black Cohosh he’d gathered wild for the dog-eared secondhand copy of a modern King Conan printed in Corvallis that he’d stuffed into his sack; that was a lively historical novel set in ancient times. With it was a pre-Change edition of Donan Coyle’s The Free Companions inherited from his father, about a more modern land rather like the Association territories. He’d been given it at his last birthday along with a gruff admonition that if he ever went on campaign he’d spend a lot of time being bored.