The High King of Montival: A Novel of the Change (42 page)

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Authors: S. M. Stirling

Tags: #Fiction - Science Fiction, #Alternative histories (Fiction), #American Science Fiction And Fantasy, #Alternative History, #General, #Regression (Civilization), #Science Fiction, #Science Fiction - General, #Dystopias, #Fiction

BOOK: The High King of Montival: A Novel of the Change
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“Yah,” his brother went on, reading his hesitation; he wasn’t stupid about people when he bothered to pay attention. “If I locked him up, he’d leave when he got out and never come back. A man has to know what he can do wit’ his sons, and what he can’t. Dad would push us too hard, sometimes.”
I nearly
didn’t
come back. Wouldn’t have, except for the thing on Nantucket and the way that worked out; I’d have gone on being mad at you until I died, because it’d become a habit. And I’d never have seen Wanda again, or met my younger nieces or nephews, or remembered Mark as anything but a little kid.
He couldn’t even tell the boy this war was an exercise in mutual stupidity like the fracas with the Sioux. He
could
say it was a stupid thing for a very young man to do when he had a perfectly good reason for staying home, but that was like saying that the world would be a better place if everyone followed the Golden Rule.
Which is true, but deeply fucking useless, because it’s never going to happen.
“Ed . . . I’m not sure this is a great idea. Want me to try and talk Mark out of it?”
Ed sighed. “You can try, but he reminds me of you at that age. Or me. He’s getting to da stage where your old man is so stupid the whole world can’t bear it. Or anyone older if they cross him. Yelling didn’t work, even Wanda crying didn’t work for long, and he’s too old to put over my knee.”
“I hear you. Butting at everything like a young ram in the spring, eh?”
“Right. Und he’ll be better off wit’ you. Hell, he’s not that much younger than
you
were when you pulled the same stunt.”
“Two years. That’s nothing for you or me now, but seventeen to nineteen’s a big jump. He’s got his growth but his bones haven’t knit and he’s not as strong as he’ll be in two years, or as fast. He’s just not damn-well
ready
yet but he
thinks
he is. It’s dangerous enough when you are ready.”
“No, he’s not ready!” Wanda cut in. “Uff da! He’s still a child.”
Of course, he’ll
always
be your firstborn baby boy, Wanda.
Ingolf knew mothers thought that way.
But you’re right. Just now he’s a kid who thinks he’s a man.
“Yah yah, Wanda, OK!” Ed said desperately. “But he
will
run off if I don’t let him go! Can
you
talk him out of it, woman? What’m I supposed to do, break his legs?”
Mutely she shook her head, and looked out the window at twelve-year-old Dave and Melly and young Ingolf and Jenny.
Ed sighed. “And I figure you can keep an eye on him, Ingolf. I’d appreciate it.”
Ingolf felt his shoulders go tight, and his lips; he forced relaxation on himself, using a technique he’d picked up in Chenrezi Monastery, in the Valley of the Sun. It had been designed for more serious things, but it worked for this too.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ed.”
The older man bristled. “I’ve been in fights, some of them before you had hair on your . . . chin! I know—”
“You’ve been in fights, Ed. Yah, in Dad’s day, the upstream raid at Cashton, and against the road-people. You did well in them too. You’ve seen men die, had them try their best to kill you, killed a few yourself.”
For a moment Edward Vogeler glanced down at the table and turned the bowl of his pipe between his big knobby hands, looking at somewhere far away from this pleasant homey room.
“Oh, yah,” he said quietly. “Damn und hell, yah.”
Ingolf nodded, not really in agreement. “What you haven’t been in is a
war
. Not the same thing. This is going to be a
big
war; it’s already gone on for years out west. There’s going to be real
battles
, and against real soldiers, in real gear with real weapons, not starving cityfolk with baseball bats and kitchen knives, or even some raggedyass woods rats with hunting bows and bowies. They’ll be fighting to kill, not to steal a flitch of bacon and a pie, or run off a horse, or just to get in out of the cold.”
“OK,” Ed said. “You
do
know about dat stuff. So you can—”
“I’ll be doing my
job
. I can’t be Mark’s bodyguard. I couldn’t keep him safe even if I
was
his bodyguard. I can’t even keep
her
safe—”
He pointed at Mary. She nodded soberly and touched her eye patch, and said flatly:
“I can’t keep
him
safe either.”
Ingolf nodded: “A stray arrow, a catapult ball or a bolt coming in from a thousand yards away, or some weasel bastard of a paid soldier who’s
forgotten
more about using a shete than any seventeen-year-old kid can know and sees Mark between him and safety, or—”
He saw Wanda wincing more deeply with every sentence, and dropped the litany. It was probably worse because she knew he wasn’t pulling up possibilities out of his imagination. Every one he’d mentioned was something he’d
seen
, and she could hear it in his voice.
“Damn and hell, men die in every big army camp I’ve ever seen just because they get caught in front of a bolting mule team hauling a wagon full of hardtack or some shit like that! I don’t want Mark hurt, and I don’t want you hating me, Ed; we did that long enough. I especially don’t want Wanda hating me. Or me hating myself, come to it.”
He could see his brother fighting down anger; Wanda brushed fiercely at her eyes with the back of her hand. Ed puffed at his pipe, waited a moment, puffed again, then spoke with careful softness:
“That’s all God’s truth,” he said, and crossed himself for emphasis. “But, Ingolf, I
can’t stop him.
I tell myself it’s a good thing he gets some military experience for when he’s Sheriff, und all that shit, but it’s what’s going to happen. Please . . . I know you can’t keep him
safe
, but I know he’ll be safer with you than he would bolting and getting into some half-hard bunch where nobody knows his ass from Adam or gives a damn about him. Please, little brother?”
Ingolf closed his eyes and put his hand across them for an instant. “OK. I’ll do my best. But I don’t promise you anything, understand?”
Rudi, get here fast, would you?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FREE REPUBLIC OF RICHLAND
SHERIFFRY OF READSTOWN (FORMERLY SOUTHWESTERN WISCONSIN)
MAY 10, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
 
 
 
“H
e’s dead?”
Artos nodded.
“Yes, he is, Otter. In a battle with the Cutters.”
Jake sunna Jake’s woman had taken that beast’s name for her own here, while she’d stayed the winter. She was groomed now, her brown hair sleek, and wearing a Richlander-style woolen dress and good shoes with a silver Triple Moon pendant around her neck. It was as if she’d never squatted barefoot in rags and half-cured rabbit skins; he could tell she’d been looking forward to impressing her man. Now her eyes rolled up and she started to buckle; Samantha, the Vogelers’ housekeeper, caught her by one arm. A low wail escaped her lips, not too loud but continuous.
Artos waited for a single hopeless moment; he didn’t know her well enough to embrace her, and—
Then he drew the Sword sheath and all and held it between them with his hand just below the guard. That put the antler-embraced crystal of the Sword’s pommel between their eyes, so that they saw each other through it. The Southsider woman staggered, her dark face losing the rubbery slackness that had washed over it. After a moment tears trickled from the corners of her eyes, but the stare remained steady. It was his own face he could feel going white, as if spikes of ice had been driven into his chest and would never let go.
Dying must be like this. Or losing something that is beyond bearing.
“He was a brave man and died well, face to the foe,” Artos said, after a moment that seemed to stretch forever, and put a hand on her shoulder. “You and your children will always have my protection, as my own kin, for he was my brother. You shall be lady of Dun Jake. Now go and keen him, as I did.”
Tuk and Samul, the dead man’s half brothers and near-identical save that one was dark brown and the other pale-fair, moved to support her. Artos staggered as they left, his hand fumbling a little as he slid the scabbard back into the sword-throg that hung from his belt on three buckled straps. On the second try he managed it, and saw how shocked Mathilda’s face was.
To be sure, I’m not clumsy for the most part
, he thought. Aloud:
“It’s all right,
mo chroi
, my heart. I’m . . . I’m not hurt in body.”
He leaned against a tree, and took long deep breaths. In, hold, out . . . as he’d been taught, the body helped govern the mind and spirit, for they were one. In, hold, out . . .
“What did you
do
, Rudi, you idiot!” she said, hugging him fiercely.
That
helped as well. Another deep breath, and:
“I ate her grief.” A quirk of the mouth. “Or some of it, at least. The first blow of loss. Swear you’ll outlive me, my heart . . . or no, perhaps I’d be cruel to ask that of you, for I’ve never felt any single thing half so bitter. Not broken bones or cut flesh or fear of death.”
The pain receded a little as he spoke, but he sensed it would never be entirely gone. He’d grieved for Jake himself after the fight on the ice, as for a loyal friend and comrade.
“But this is entirely different,” he said, hearing his own voice shake.
As he straightened he fought for an awareness of the day, the noon sun overhead and its warmth on his bonnet and the plaid across his shoulders, Mathilda’s solid comfort and the clean scent of her hair, somewhere a horse neighing, somewhere a girl singing “Barbara Allen” and a spinning wheel moaning with a rising-falling note. The life of Readstown and the First Volunteer Cavalry was going on. As Jake’s woman and the sons she had made with him did; life was the answer to life, and death and loss were part of that never-ending story.
Know joy, there in the Summerlands, Jake sunna Jake. I wish you’d lived, and that we’ d been friends all a long lifetime, and sat together to feel the sun on our aching bones and watch our great-grandchildren draw their first bows. But that wasn’t your fate. Or mine either, and I know that for a fact. I wish I
didn’t
know what I’m condemning Matti to, and that is also a fact.
“You ate her grief?” Mathilda said, a little white about the lips. “That’s . . . that’s
terrible
, Rudi!”
“It is,” he agreed hoarsely. “But a grief shared is lessened, just as a joy shared is doubled. And Jake came with us because I asked him. I was his chief; isn’t it for me to comfort his darlings, just as it is to see to their welfare? If the Sword lets me do that more directly than words alone can accomplish, why, that’s a mixed blessing but still a blessing.”
Mathilda held her silence, but he could feel her radiating skepticism. He shrugged; the work of the day wasn’t going to wait on his feelings, or hers for that matter.
“Let’s to it.”
Ingolf and Will Kohler were waiting for him in the flat meadow where the First was camped; Ed Vogeler too, and his son, and Wanda and some of her household workers not far off setting up trestle tables. A fair scattering of families—siblings, parents, lovers, or simple spectators—were waiting there beyond the weathered board fence. They weren’t that far from the complex of interlinked and outlying buildings that made up Readstown, after all. Nor were these Richlanders much given to formality, even in war.
“Let’s see them put through their paces, then,” he said when he was near the little party of commanders.
Kohler nodded at him in friendly wise; they’d met and sparred—literally—on the quest’s passage through this land last fall. He was a blocky muscular man a few years older than Ingolf, about four inches shorter than Artos’ six-two, but nearly as broad in the shoulders and with a swordsman’s thick wrists. His dark yellow hair was cropped rather shorter than the Readstown custom, and he’d have been handsome save for the fact that the tip of his nose was missing. Unlike most local men he was clean-shaven as well, which showed a chin like a lump of granite.
“Colonel Vogeler?” he asked formally, looking to Ingolf to confirm the order.
“Carry on, Major,” Ingolf said.
“Ensign, sound
fall in
,” Kohler said.
Mark Vogeler put his trumpet to his lips and blew the call. There was a concerted rush from the tents towards the horse-lines and a grabbing of saddles and tack. Of course they’d been expecting this, but nevertheless they were all standing in ranks by the heads of their mounts and ready to ride in a fairly commendable five minutes or so. All equipped as Ingolf’s young nephew was, and as was common for cavalry in this part of the world; they didn’t have heavy horse, though every fourth man had a light lance as well as bow and blade. The gear was approximately uniform, differing mainly in that some had scale-mail shirts rather than chain-mail ones, but the clothes were not; most were roughly practical, the sort of thing a man wore for a hunting trip, but he saw one pair of tight red trousers with gold piping on the seams, and several horsehair crests on helms, and plenty of tooled leather on saddles and tack and gear.

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