The High King of Montival: A Novel of the Change

by S. M. Stirling

  He turned his head. The corsairs had moved a little farther away, as if to disassociate themselves still more from the surviving Cutters and whatever their fate would be. As he watched they spread their prayer mats and knelt on them, bowing eastward, where their Holy City lay.

  Now, what shall I do with the lot of you? he thought. That’s less of a problem, for I did promise quarter to those of you captured in Kalksthorpe in return for sailing me here. As for the others . . . well, in honor I can do nothing but extend the same terms to them. Yet you are pirates, and honor doesn’t require me to be an overtrusting fool. Mercy to the guilty can be cruelty to the innocent, as the saying goes.

  Abdou al-Naari rose. The crews finished their prayers and stood as well, rolling up their mats. Rudi Mackenzie had been waiting quietly until they were done with the ritual; Abdou had to admit he was polite in such matters. The five daily prayers were God’s will unless something very urgent intervened, and besides that it was good to reestablish routine; it helped the men’s spirits.

  And it helps mine, Abdou thought. Sorcery is more often heard of than seen, even since the Change, but I have seen it now.

  Witch doctors and shamans were as common as peanuts in the Emirate of Dakar, for all that strict law forbade them, but he had never put much credence in them. Yes, there was more than natural law to the universe—even if he had been inclined to believe anything so impious, the Change was a stern warning to the contrary. God could do as He willed, and He had created many beings other than men, some with strange powers. But this . . . was enough to put all of them in fear.

  All men fear. Only cowards allow the fear to govern them. Call on the One and meet your fate, Abdou.

  Then he took a deep breath and went on to the infidel leader:

  “My friend Jawara, of Gisandu captain, say . . . says . . . that there were snakes in his head, while sorcerers hold him by spells. Now they gone. He thank you.”

  Djinn fly away with English! Abdou thought. Why can’t the misbelievers speak some civilized language?

  He was captain of a Saloum rover, which meant he had enough mathematics for navigation, and he could design a ship besides—or a bridge, or an aqueduct. He was fluent in the Hassani dialect of Arabic, which was his father’s tongue, and in the Wolof and Serer languages common throughout the Emirate of Dakar; he knew enough Mandinka to get by; he could read the classical tongue of the Holy Book, and some of the dead French speech—enough to appreciate poetry as well as to read books on practical subjects like engineering.

  But his English had been learned strictly by rule of thumb for trade and war, and in present company he was humiliatingly conscious that when he spoke it he sounded like some peasant from the back of beyond.

  Or like a baboon sitting in a baobab tree and scratching its fleas. Or like a tongue-tied foreigner, which is another way of saying the same thing.

  Pride kept his back stiff as he bowed and touched brow, lips and heart with the fingers of his right hand in a graceful gesture. His wounds no longer pained him when he performed the courtesy; somehow they’d had time for more healing, when he felt nothing but the space between one breath and another. Another strangeness.

  “Thank you for rescuing of him and men. Thank you for exposing false marabout who led us here. Peace be upon you, and God’s blessing for you, your sons, and the sons of your sons.”

  The so-called holy man whose “visions” had brought Abdou’s little two-ship fleet to these bleak northern waters lay on the snow-speckled sand not far away. The corsairs had taken care of him themselves, as soon as they’d woken, and they hadn’t needed any weapons to do so despite the man’s unnatural strength; his head now looked out over his shoulder blades, and his arms and legs were visibly broken in several places as well. The green turban had rolled away, and the edges of it fluttered in the cold breeze.

  “Blasphemer,” Jawara said in Wolof, and spat on the corpse, his full-featured black face contorted with hate. “Apostate. Sorcerer.”

  Abdou translated; he shared the sentiment wholeheartedly, even if he was less given to showing his feelings. The infidel chief nodded, his straight and implausibly sunset-colored hair swaying about his jaw. The Moor had never seen anything quite like it, though many English had hair the hue of sun-faded thatch or reddish wood. His face bore the starved, angular look whites had and which Abdou had never liked; in Rudi’s case you had to admit that he was handsome enough in an alien fashion. One disastrous encounter in the fight where he’d been captured had shown Abdou that the infidel’s longlimbed body could move with a leopard’s speed and strength.

  That had been honest combat, though; he averted his eyes from the pommel of the sword the man carried now. Such things were not lawful for Believers. Best to think of it as little as possible.

  “When we home, there is ...” He made washing gestures with his hands.

  “Making clean,” Rudi said. “Cleansing.”

  Abdou nodded, his face grim. “Cleansing of marabouts of the Mouride Brotherhood, if any more like this. I go Dakar, Emir’s court, speak there. For this too, we thank. The Faith is pure. For any to . . . make it not pure, not clean . . . that is a great evil.”

  “You are welcome,” Rudi said. “And that cleansing will be a thing to benefit the whole world, not just your own land. Now, how is the ship? We’ve that little journey to Kalksthorpe to make.”

  Jawara spoke far less English than Abdou, but he understood a little. They both looked at the Gisandu and sighed; now she and her cargo were lost too. The Bou el-Mogdad was simply gone, and the Kalksthorpe folk had her load of treasures already. And the corsairs’ families and clans would have to pay ransom for their return as well. It had been a disastrous voyage in more ways than one. His kin had put many years of labor and hard-won wealth into those ships.

  “Ribs good, none stove in,” Abdou said after they’d conferred for a little; his vocabulary was better for nautical matters than general conversation. “Need spare boards to patch hull leaks, once we caulk sprung seams. We refloat her with anchor out to sea, capstan, when patches all done. For long voyage, need to pull out of water, refit with . . . special tools, supplies.”

  “You’ve only to get us back to Kalksthorpe,” Rudi pointed out. “Less than a week’s sail to the northward.”

  “Now you know we deceived by false marabout, should give ship back to we,” Abdou said. “As you say, home need cleansing. Faster if we have ship. We take you back, go home, never sail these waters again. By God and His Prophet, I swear.”

  If you do not try, you will never succeed. And I mean that oath. If I never even hear of these waters again it will be too soon!

  Rudi grinned, teeth flashing white. “You were pirates before you met this marabout,” he said. “He used no magic to make you willing to fall on the Kalksthorpe folk, kill them and plunder their goods. Count yourself lucky your lives are spared, but your wealth is forfeit.”

  Abdou shrugged. The accusation was not completely without truth. Mostly his business was salvaging in the dead cities along the old American coast; there were far fewer such remains of the ancient world in his native land, and his people needed the metals and goods. But that often meant fighting, with the bands of mad cannibal savages who haunted the ruins, or with others on the same venture. The Kalksthorpe folk often clashed with his, being great salvagers themselves. For that matter, as pagans they were legitimate prey by law, but he didn’t expect Rudi Mackenzie to grasp that point, being only a kufr, an unbeliever, himself.

  God’s will, he thought. The Merciful, the Lovingkind, does as He wishes, not as we wish. It is not for mortal men to question Him. I live, my son Ahmed lives, my blood brother Jawara lives. We will purge our homeland of a great wickedness. Praise be to the One!

  He sighed again and went on aloud: “Ready to sail, Inshallah, with the morning tide in week, ten days, if all work hard and we no need cut timber. Not much food though, for all people these, even for short voyage. We all go hungry before end.”
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  Rudi Mackenzie showed his teeth in an expression that did not even pretend to be a smile. “Needs must. I grudge every day. My people need me at home, and they need me now.”

  Then a voice cried out: “Sail! Sail ho!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  BEND

  CAPITAL, CENTRAL OREGON RANCHERS ASSOCIATION

  MARCH 20, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

  “This city is going to fall,” Signe Havel said bluntly. The Rancher-delegates who made up the CORA assembly roared—some in agreement, some in protest, some to hear themselves make noise, as far as she could tell. It echoed off the walls of the old pre-Change theater; shouting faces shone desperate in the light of the gas lamps, a thick smell of sweat and burnt methane and hot lime, wool and leather and linen. The representatives of the city itself and the smallholders who farmed the irrigated land upstream and down mostly just stared at her wide-eyed.

  “Why can’t you stop them?” someone shouted.

  Signe leaned forward and braced her hands on the sides of the podium, and the lames of her articulated suit of plate clattered slightly against each other, despite the backing of soft leather. Moving quietly in armor was like trying to tiptoe in a suit sewn with cowbells. She wanted them to notice it; notice the nicks and the indented lines that looked like someone had taken something sharp and pushed it against the steel very hard. Which was exactly what had happened, and she still had the bruises underneath.

  “You may notice we’ve all been trying to do exactly that, your people and mine.”

  She paused to let the way she looked—and for some of the closer delegates, smelled—reinforce the words.

  Rationally it’s silly to wear sixty pounds of metal to talk to people, she thought. But then again, who ever said war is a rational activity? And the whole world went crazy when I was eighteen. It’s been getting worse ever since. My armor is a symbol, and Mike taught me about the value of symbols. He used them and knew he was using them, even when he believed in them himself. Because symbols hit down below the part where knowing makes any difference.

  She was very tired, tired enough that her eyeballs felt as if they’d been rolled in a mixture of fine grit and cat hair before they were stuffed back in their sockets. There was probably enough red around the pupils to drown out the blue.

  I’m forty-three now. I can’t go for days without sleep anymore. Willpower makes up for the tired and the hurt and the hungry, but every time it takes a bit more water from the well and someday soon I’m going to run dry.

  “It hasn’t been working, no matter how hard we try, because they outnumber us three to one,” she said, when the noise had died down a little.

  If anyone but Mike Havel had been flying that light plane over the Bitterroots on Change Night, she and her family would have died like hundreds of thousands of others. Signe thought of them sometimes, whenever the present seemed too grim to bear: astronauts in orbit when all the city lights below went out and the ventilators died, passengers in 747s at thirty thousand feet glancing up in a flickering moment of pain and silence, people in submarines or down at the bottom of gold mines when the pumps stopped.

  Mostly they’d been the lucky ones, at that. For them it had been fairly quick. Five billion and more had died in what followed, died slowly of thirst and hunger, of plague, or killed for what little they had or the meat on their bones.

  And thanks to Mike we survived. Survived the plane crash, survived that year after the Change, survived . . . life. For a while. Life’s so dangerous nobody gets out of it alive, he used to say, and he’s been dead fourteen years now. I’ve got this bad feeling about what’s coming down the tracks.

  She poured strength into her voice, willing desperate men to see sense:

  “The Prophet’s maniacs alone outnumber all the troops the countries of the Meeting . . . the High Kingdom of Montival—”

  Freya, we’re calling the whole country something because someone barely old enough to shave suggested it in a letter. What next? How desperate for hope are we?

  “—can muster. The United States of Boise outnumbers us by about the same margin. If we try to meet them here in open country, they’ll crush us. They didn’t beat us at Pendleton last year because they were better, they beat us because they were good enough and there were Loki’s own lot of them. They want big decisive battles. We can’t afford to fight on their terms; we have to make them come to us. Bleed them until they’re down to a level we can tackle.”

  A man got up; elderly, leathery: Rancher Brown of Seffridge. A good man, steady. He’d been an ally of the Outfit in the wars against the Association in the decade after the Change.

  “What’s wrong with Bend?” he asked; they’d agreed on the question beforehand. “They have to come at us here, and we’ve got the city wall and plenty of food.”

  Signe made herself grin. “You have to ask? The wall’s good enough against a bunch of bandits or Rovers. It’s too long and too low for an army with a good battering and assault train—wheeled belfries, siege towers, trebuchets, which Boise has and will lend to the Corwinites. And the water supply can be cut off. You people should really have thought of that.”

  She saw embarrassed winces. The CORA had trouble agreeing on the time of day, normally. War wasn’t normal times, but it was a bit late now for major engineering.

  “I thought that . . . that thing that happened was supposed to stop places falling to the Cutters,” Brown said.

  People made the signs of their various religions, or muttered prayers . . . or curses, or both. Signe kept calmness, but only just. That flash of pain and the ringing voice in the middle of Juniper Mackenzie’s ceremony:

  Artos holds the Sword of the Lady, she remembered that tolling voice speaking from within her. The Sun Lord comes, the son of Bear and Raven! The High King comes, as foretold! Guardian of My Sacred Wood, and Law! His people’s strength, and the Lady’s Sword!

  She cleared her throat, swallowed and went on: “That means their spooks can’t hoodoo men into opening gates anymore,” she said.

  She added to herself: We think.

  Aloud: “It does absolutely nothing to keep them from coming over the walls on ladders. When—” She nearly said if and then went on: “When Artos gets back, things will be different. Until then we’re on our own.”

  Another roar, and a general shout of What good are you, then?

  She slammed a gauntleted fist down on the podium. “We Bearkillers stand by our promises, and by our friends!” she shouted.

  That had the double advantage of being true, and being known to be true. Over the years the Outfit had shed a lot of blood, their own and other people’s, making sure everyone knew it. Everyone, including the people expended, had thought it was worth it. Quiet fell, slowly and incompletely.

  “Bend will fall, and with it everything this side of the Cascades, before we can hope to get help. Before Rudi . . . Artos gets here. Your homeplaces aren’t fortified, not really, not the way the PPA’s castles are up north. But if we hold Bend long enough, you can get your families and your livestock through the passes, which have forts we are strong enough to hold. Hold for a long time, long enough for the snow to close them, while you hit and run and pull back into the space you’ve got so much of out here. We—and the Clan Mackenzie and the Corvallans and everyone else in the west—guarantee you lodging for your people and grazing for your stock during the rest of the war, and all the help we can give after it, to rebuild. We’ll take your families in. Nobody starves as long as anyone has food.”

  That set off another explosion; she waited it out, while the sensible ones argued the hotheads into line. It took less time than she might have expected; but then, they were ranchers, not farmers. Losing buildings and the crops some grew would be painful, but their real wealth was their flocks and herds.

  With those and their people safe, they’d be willing to scorch their land as well as fight across it. Turn it into a wasteland where the enemy would starve while they battered at the Ca
scade passes, and mounted guerrillas harassed enemy outposts and supply columns.

  I hope. I never liked you, Rudi. I see Mike with Juniper when I see you. When I think about you. But we need you, and badly.

  When the meeting ended and Signe was back in her rooms, she sank into a chair and stared at the ceiling, watching the lamplight flicker on the stained plaster and smelling hastily cleaned-up mustiness, as if this suite had been boarded up right after the Change and opened only when Bend started getting crowded with people pushed ahead of the Prophet’s armies.

  She was too limply exhausted to even think about removing her armor, much less hunting up food and drink. She felt too tired even to sleep; the sort of bun-fight she’d just been through took more out of you than work or even fighting, and her mind stayed hopping-active even when her eyes closed. She started slightly at the feel of someone working on the buckles and catches.

  Her son shook a finger at her when she looked, Mike Havel Jr. in all the tireless glory of seventeen years. He looked like Mike too, more and more every year. Taller already, just a sliver under six feet, though his hair was yellow-blond to his father’s raven-black.

  Which makes him look more like Rudi too, even if there’s no red in it.

  Otherwise the same hard-cut masculine good looks emerging from under the last of childhood’s padding, high cheekbones, straight nose, square cleft chin, long-lashed light eyes that had already cut a swath through the more susceptible females of his generation.

  “Mom, you need to get some sleep. You need to eat first. And no disrespect . . . but you need a bath, real bad, too.”

  All Gods witness, I still miss you, Mike, she thought, then smiled at him.

  “Glad to see someone’s attending to business, Brother Havel,” she said.

  He’d earned that title, and the small white scar of the Bearkiller A-list between his brows, young as he was. Earned it on a battlefield, while still a military apprentice.