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

by S. M. Stirling

  The scent sap was heavy in the warm dusty-dry afternoon air, and tough-looking plants with a few white-and-yellow flowers still marked the yellow grass. This far south, even in the mountains summer rain was rare.

  That strangeness made it harder for Karl to judge risks. The distinctive pit-tit-tit of a white-headed woodpecker sounded, and the angry churring of a redbelly, but neither was a type that paid much attention to humankind. There weren’t any bigger animals within sight, but most of them did pay attention to his breed, as they would any other predator, and would move off at sight or scent of the warband. Game was still thick enough that with Cernunnos’ favor they’d never gone short of fresh meat, and with a score and six of them along they could finish off a big beast before it spoiled. Even in warm weather.

  I think the Princess thought of it when she said how many to take, we’re just as big a band as could live off the land without scattering and slowing down, provided we know what we’re about, Karl thought admiringly. Which means we don’t have to carry a weight of supplies that would slow us down. She’s a clever lass, and no mistake, our golden princess!

  Then he concentrated on the matter at hand. They were also just few enough that a really desperate or deeply stupid band of outlaws might tackle them, at least for a quick nip-and-tuck raid or ambush where the ground favored them, or if they split up for any purpose. No matter how badly the bandits were beaten in the fight that followed, the delay might be fatal.

  If only because caring for the wounded would slow us so.

  Besides deer and elk, mountain sheep and boar and feral cattle, they’d glimpsed bears of both types, and seen scat of cougar, tiger—or possibly lion, in these warm lands with much open space—lynx, and gray wolf. Bears weren’t any more dangerous than the big cats, but they often had an attitude of surly indifference to humans rather than the sensible caution other predators displayed.

  And we’ve seen sign of men, sometimes, though this is days beyond the edge of the McClintock settlements or even their regular hunting-grounds. Tracks, blazing, old campfires, cut-marks. Not many, but some.

  “Better to take care when there’s no need, than need to take care and have none,” he said quietly.

  “Should we string bows?” Gwri asked. “Casual-like?”

  That was risky if they were being watched; you just didn’t leave a yew stave strung unless you thought you were going to use it, because eventually that weakened it. When more than a score of Mackenzies strung their longbows and just walked along ready, no stealthy watcher with ill intent was going to think it was anything but readiness for an attack. If he was being dogged, he wanted the trackers to think their targets were entirely ignorant.

  He snapped his fingers and called: “Mathun!”

  “Aye, bow-captain?” his brother said.

  Possibly with a little irony in the title of respect, but you couldn’t complain about the words or even the tone.

  “We’re all going to play a game of rovers,” he said.

  Mathun nodded, then checked and looked at him . . . and winked. No, he wasn’t stupid all the time. He might be clever too one day, if he lived.

  “You and Gwri make up the teams,” Karl said. “I’ll call the marks.”

  Nobody observing them was going to be surprised if a group of his clansfolk did that. After shooting at the mark—a man- or beast-shaped target—rovers was the commonest way to practice archery. You walked forward, shooting fast at targets the overseer of the contest called at the last moment—an ant-heap, a bush, the stump of a tree, a stump behind a tree so you had to loft the shaft over its top and drop it onto the mark; it had the advantage of requiring instant judgments of range and elevation and windage, which shooting at a known target did not. Strangers had been known to claim that a Mackenzie lass might well take a bow to bed along with her lover, to practice shooting into the ceiling in the midst of baby-making, and it was a pardonable exaggeration. Any group of clansfolk on a journey would be as likely as not to while away the time by a rovers’ match.

  Bards like Lady Fiorbhinn called it a cliché or a trope to say that Mackenzies were a people of the bow. Like most such, there was a solid kernel of fact.

  “And it’s something we can do while we’re moving forward,” he said. “No shots under a hundred fifty paces, mind.”

  He dropped behind as Gwri and Mathun spread the news; there were a few happy whoops. Boudicca gave him a slow nod as she stepped through between bowstave and string, then strung the weapon with a twist of hip and shoulder and thrust of thigh.

  When he came to the middle of the column he found Diarmuid Tennart McClintock standing on a little rise by the side of the trail, looking southward as the song came to an end:

  “—Upon the haughs of Cromdale!”

  The ground over the ridge sloped away more gently, down towards a little creek that was a series of slow-moving pools in this season. He had a short sleeveless mail shirt on, and a crossbow cradled in his arms; several of his party carried them, though he was the only one with steel armor. Normally Karl had a fine Mackenzie scorn for the mechanical shooting contraptions, but he did admit that you could carry one spanned and loaded for a long time without being conspicuous about it. And they were handy in any sort of close quarters, which a longbow taller than a tall man was not.

  “You were in a great hurry,” the McClintock said. “Now you’re taking time to play at shooting games?”

  “Gwri has a bit of a tickle,” Karl said quietly.

  “The dark lass with her hair in tight braids?”

  “Aye. Not easy in her mind. Neither’s Boudicca. It’s a way to string bows without giving aught away, so. If I’m to be attacked, I’d rather it were at a time of my choosing.”

  “They have the foresecht?”

  “Gwri, yes, a wee bit. Boudicca, no, but she can feel the wind with her skin, so to say. Might just be nerves. But then again, maybe not, eh?”

  The smaller man hissed slightly between his teeth, keeping his eyes moving. “Forbye they might be right. This is bandit country, for a’ that it’s paarrt o’ oor dùthchas by strict law. I dinna like the look o’ that last claig-tail heidbanger we passed. Fear-cùirn he might be, outlaw or in league with sich.”

  Karl snorted agreement. They’d passed that last steading some time ago. It was a lone cabin built by a settler whose surly grunts indicated he’d come that way to live precisely because nobody else did but his harassed-looking wife and swarm of naked towheaded children. There had been nothing around it but a bad smell from the hides tacked to the wall, an empty corral and a small scruffy garden. He’d worn the McClintock kilt, but his voice had held an odd twanging accent rather than their burr.

  “I admit there are full plenty of deer hereabouts, but little else to steal,” Karl said musingly; bandits went where the prey was, like any predator.

  Diarmuid shrugged. They’d gotten on reasonably well, but he knew that the McClintock considered himself older—well, he was, by about six years—and more experienced.

  The last is a matter subject to dispute.

  Neither of them had marched to a real war, for the realm had been long at peace. Since before Karl was born, and while Diarmuid was still running about the place bare-breeched. Granted McClintocks had a wilder life, but Karl was the son of two of the Questers, and his father had been captain of the High King’s Archers since their founding. He’d absorbed a good deal of the trade through ears, eyes and skin as his parents raised him, and then traveling often with his father.

  “So what would bandits here steal?” Karl went on.

  He took a swig from his canteen, which was salvaged galvanized metal encased in molded boiled leather to preserve it from bangs and knocks. The water had the slight metallic taste of the powder that purified it; even a spring bubbling out of rock was a risk in strange country. In your own you knew which water was safe, and were hardened to the local little beasties anyway, but you lost that protection the minute you moved into a new watershed.
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br />   If you weren’t careful, travel could turn into one long session of looking for a place to squat with a twist of grass in one hand. The bards tended to leave that out of the tales of adventure, except the comic ones.

  He handed the canteen to the McClintock, who swigged in turn and replied:

  “More to reave hereaboots than ye maun think. We’ve been pushing south as oor numbers grow. McClintocks go this way in small parties o’ late to salvage on their own from the dead cities in the great valley to the south, or to sell livestock and sich to the settlers there. And broken men flee hereaboots—those outlawed for killin’s or just hated out if they’ve bad-angered all their neighbors.”

  Karl nodded to show that he knew of the custom. Mackenzies had a way set down in law for getting rid of people just impossible to live with, involving a meeting of the dun’s óenach and a show of hands, though it was a very grave matter and rarely evoked. McClintocks were less formal about that, as with most things.

  “Not just McClintocks, but other folk as weel. They can hide out and strike north and flee back with their plunder, an’ it’s gae hard to track ’em if they’ve learned the lay o’ the hills.”

  Karl nodded slowly. This was a huge land, and it had been thinly peopled even before the Change. Most survivors of the first years had long since drifted off to better-favored areas, ones where enough folk could dwell close enough together for something besides hand-to-mouth savagery. Hiding would be a lot easier than finding, hereabouts.

  “Would any be bold enough to attack a band like ours?” he said.

  Diarmuid shrugged again, capped the canteen and handed it back to him. “Hard tae say. Oor goods, beasts an’ weapons and gear would be wealth to such.”

  The Mackenzie nodded again; if you were on your own and couldn’t trade honestly, something as simple as a good splitting axe to cut the time you needed to spend on firewood rather than gathering in food, or a mule to carry burdens a man couldn’t, would mean the difference between surviving a winter or starving and freezing. Armor like the brigantine he was wearing would be beyond price . . . Though to be sure you wanted armor for the same reason it was hard to steal, the advantage it gave in a fight.

  “Also . . .” Diarmuid’s voice dropped. “Few women go for outlaws. That sort of man can be driven blood-mad by the lack.”

  Karl spat. “Aye.”

  He thought for a moment, remembering a conversation when he’d sat on the lip of the stone flags before the family hearth, mulling cider. He’d been ten at the time, and very proud of being trusted with the task. There was a knack to it, heating pokers red-white in the embers, then tapping them off and plunging them into the wooden mascars without getting ash in the liquid or damaging the mugs, in a hissing and smell like a mixture of juniper berries and meadowsweet and honey and roasted apples. It had been a winter afternoon, weeks after Yule, and sleet had been falling outside—the next morning everything had been shining silver for an hour after dawn, until the world turned back to the ordinary mud and gloom of the Black Months as it melted.

  The High King and his own father had been sitting at the kitchen table after the midday meal, shelling walnuts by tapping them open with the pommels of their dirks and tossing the meats into their mouths while they waited for the drinks, playing a desultory game of fidchell and discussing a man they’d known during the Prophet’s War . . . what had they said?

  Aye. They said he’d have been a fine captain, save that he used anger at an enemy to avoid thinking instead of fuel to make thought flow hot. Yes, and the High King said:

  “What most angers you about your enemy is the key to defeating them, and it’s that which it’s most needful to consider carefully.”

  Well, Karl-me-lad, let’s see if you can use the lesson.

  After a minute he spoke: “Now, if you were a bad man, one with fell and ill intent, hence denied the Lady’s gifts . . . what would bring you running, heedless, tongue out and eyes bulging and ignoring all else?”

  “Ah,” Diarmuid said, glancing at one of the women.

  Who had just loosed at a knot in the trunk of a dead pine a hundred and ninety paces distant. The hard thock of a shaft hitting wood cured hard by sun and wind overstepped the smacking thrum of the bowstring, and she took off towards it with a whoop, hurdling a chest-high bush without breaking stride.

  “But how would we do that?” the McClintock said.

  “Let’s be trying this, if the lasses agree—it’ll cost us nothing if we’re not being followed save a very little time. For if outlaws are following us, they’re being careful, which means they’ll not close in until they’re sure it’s safe. The which they will not do until we make camp, the more so as we’re playing at rovers now and hence have shafts on the string. We need them to attack, and soon, and on ground of our choosing, I’m thinking, if we’re not to fight them later on their terms.”

  He listed the details of his plan. When he’d finished, Diarmuid looked at him with something between respect and alarm. He offered a flask, and Karl took a swig; it was pear brandy, distilled from perry, strong and sweet. He managed to do it with a calm face, though his heart was throbbing fast and he could feel sweat breaking out on his brow. Not at the danger ahead; he’d never been timid about that. What struck him with unexpected fear was the fact that if he failed others would pay for it. His mind winced at the thought of having to explain to his friends’ parents . . . though he could take some comfort in the thought that he’d be unlikely to survive disaster himself.

  “Ye’ll go far,” the McClintock said, taking a sip himself and screwing the cap back on before he stored the flat silver vessel in his sporran. “If ye’re nae hung.”

  • • •

  The first bandit stepped out of a thicket of bearberry, only a few of the small leathery-green leaves catching on his ragged clothes; part of that raggedness was bits and pieces deliberately sewn on as camouflage. A dozen more followed him, the setting sun throwing long shadows before them. The women below were splashing about in the water of the pool, eight of them, it had been so long. Their clothes and weapons were on the dry ground, or hung from branch-stubs on the trees.

  It took them a moment to notice him; he was thankful that the Mackenzie dogs had all gone off to hunt with the men. His eyes took in the little clearing; the four mules hobbled, their pack-saddles lifted off but still bundled—just right for throwing back on and leading away. Then they could set up an ambush to deal with the frenzied pursuit . . .

  He walked confidently forward. There was just time to wonder what the naked women were picking up from the bottom of the stream.

  • • •

  Karl looked down from the tree, only a few branches below him—this was the first big enough to hold a man securely. The war-cloak was excellent concealment up here once you’d filled the fabric loops with twigs and foliage; besides that, they were easy to make from mesh netting and easy to roll up into something compact and light. All the Mackenzies had a couple with them. He had a braided leather cord looped around the tree and his waist so that he could lean forward; the sugar pine wasn’t as thick through as he was, not up here where the branches began. There were those who liked to hunt from blinds this way, though he’d always preferred a ground stalk. . . .

  But deer don’t carry weapons, so. Also they deserve more honorable treatment than these.

  The other good thing about crossbows and their strings of stainless-steel wire, besides the fact that you could carry them cocked and loaded, was that they were more or less impervious to wet. Oh, the stocks might swell eventually, but that wouldn’t be a problem for hours. Four of the young women who’d been dabbling and splashing came up with them in their hands . . . loaded and cocked. The range was about a dozen paces to the foremost grinning outlaws, who barely had time to let the smiles slide off their faces.

  Tung-thwack!

  The first bandit bent over with an ooof! like a man who’d been punched in the gut; unlike that man, he wouldn’t be getting up aga
in. It hadn’t been a fist, it had been four hundred and fifty grains of ashwood, vanes and triple-edged steel hunting head, traveling fast enough to be a blur. He couldn’t be sure from this vantage, but he thought it had lodged in bone somewhere—if it hadn’t, it would have made a double blood-splash going in and coming out and might have killed one of his friends behind him. Three other women shot within half a second of her; only one missed, which with the juices of rage and fear hopping through the system was better than good.

  They’d only had four crossbows. Gwri came up out of the water with a yard-length of leather cord in her right hand, widening into a pocket in the middle. The sling blurred around her head just once and she released the end of the strap; the smooth stream-washed pebble was a near-invisible blur as it left the sling until it cracked into a face in a spurt of red and cut-off bellow of shock. The women with crossbows dropped them and came up with the larger rocks they’d selected beforehand and piled beneath the water at their feet, just right for throwing—and every one of them had been knocking over small game with rocks since they were old enough to hit a rabbit raiding the family’s carrots and lettuce.

  Those of the bandits who had bucklers raised them and came forward crouched, calling out remarks of their choice. The rest milled about for a moment, shouts of raw rage replacing whoops of lust, except for a couple of wounded men screaming their hurt to the world. Attracted by the noise, the ones they’d left as rearguard came running up too, laughing at their comrades as they did—which said something of their sense of humor, since apart from the ones down with crossbow bolts through them the rocks had left several helpless with broken jaws and others spitting out teeth and howling and holding cracked ribs. There were a bit over two dozen of the reavers, as many as the warband to begin with.