The High King of Montival: A Novel of the Change (43 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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“Set them to it.”
The volunteers formed into columns of fours and rode a circuit, leaping obstacles of fence-poles and bales of hay; for a wonder, nobody fell off. Then they gave a show of arms, shooting into plank-and-braided-straw targets with their saddle bows at the gallop, slicing tossed apples with their shetes, picking tent pegs out of the ground with the points of spears. They concluded by forming into two groups and charging each other. That ended up in a melee, and several
did
finish on the ground clutching sore heads or minor wounds; three had to be carried off and wouldn’t be going on campaign anytime this year. Then they drew up for inspection again, and he went over them one more time when they’d been dismissed to their tents.
“More discipline than most rancher levies back home,” Mathilda observed quietly.
“Yes, my heart, but that’s like saying
drier than the Pacific
or
uglier than meadows of camas in spring
.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said briskly, when their troop-leaders were in front of him.
They straightened with their helmets tucked under their left arms; from the looks out of the corner of their eyes they’d heard something of him, and the Sword drew glances as well. That and the effort of following his Mackenzie lilt made them pay close attention. Mathilda got a few glances as well, in her titanium hauberk and coif and sallet, with the long shield slung across her back blazoned with the Lidless Eye.
“First, let me say what I like. Your troopers are strong and fit, they seem to ride well and have some idea of how to handle their weapons individually. They also have
some
idea of drill and maneuver; though how well they’ll remember it in a real engagement remains to be seen. And they’re fully equipped. Their gear is excellent, of its kind. So are their horses.”
Smiles were beginning to break out; the troop-leaders weren’t much older than their men, and from what Ingolf had said they’d been chosen for birth and cockerel pride and willingness to take on the burdens of the office more than anything else. He made a chopping gesture.
“Oh, and one more thing: I’ve no doubt whatsoever that they’re mostly brave as lions. With that I have exhausted the tale of their military virtues, so I have. They’re raw. Green as new spring grass dribbling down a sheep’s arse. The brave stupid ones will die, and the unlucky. The brave, lucky and clever ones may survive long enough to learn enough to be useful.”
He turned to Ingolf and Kohler. “Speaking of gear, there’s too much by about half.”
“Oh, criminy,
yah
,” the Readstown drill instructor said. “And believe me, we’ve been combing it out for a week already.”
Artos nodded. “Essentials only, discard the rest, no more than one two-wheel cart for every twenty men. No camp followers, and no servants. They can do their own chores. And lose the plumes and brightwork, and brown all the metal that’s been polished, the sorrowful waste of it. I don’t want anything that draws the eye. These aren’t knights who do nothing but charge. I want them able to scout and skirmish as well, and for that visibility is a drawback. Understood?”
Kohler grinned like something you came across in a wood. At night when you least wanted to, and after hearing several howls.
“Your Majesty, I understand you
perfectly
. I think we’re going to get along just
fine.
I’ll have ’em upside right by sundown.”
“Good. Dismissed, then.”
Raising his voice slightly: “Say your good-byes; we leave at dawn tomorrow and I expect to be at the landing before noon rolls around again.”
The meeting broke up; a band with a tuba and accordion was warming up near the tables, and the friends-and-relatives crowd began to mingle with the young volunteers peacocking in their brand-new gear. A long banner went up between two poles:
Readstown Sends Her Best.
Artos looked them over. The youngsters were eager, their younger siblings and the contemporaries stuck at home with the endless round of chores openly envious. The older men here to see sons and younger brothers off were more somber and many headed for the racks of barrels that held beer and cider and applejack and whiskey; they’d seen the elephant themselves, mostly. In the years after the Change, or in the case of a few in distant lands before it, with weapons entirely different but dangers much the same. The younger women were flirting and laughing with the warriors and ignoring the burning glares of those not going.
Feast the fighting-men, dance and sing and send them off to war with kisses on their lips
, Artos thought.
Their mothers and elder sisters tried for gaiety but their eyes were full of worry. They had seen their men ride out to fight before; they knew this was no game, and that there was no room for glory in the grave.
For the moment they all avoided Artos, still jittery from the rough side of his tongue. The battered brown-bearded face of his brother-in-law grinned.
“That’ll teach ’em. They think they’re hot shit and they’re half right.”
“It’s to be hoped they’ll learn.”
“You really want to take ’em along? We could pick up a battalion in Iowa, probably, and it would save a little time.”
“It’s only a little time. They’ll do; and nothing we could get in Iowa would be much more experienced. The longer you’ve got them under your eye, the better. Plus they know
you
, and your family, and me to some extent. Very few in Iowa saw much of us.”
“Fargo and Marshall have more combat-trained troops, and they’re on our route.”
“But I’m even more of a stranger there than in Iowa; they’re not going to give me men because I look so dashing in my kilt, to be sure. And there’s good material in these young men if they can be hammered a wee bit . . . Colonel. Do you have time for that with all the rest you’ll have to do?”
“No, but I have time enough for Major Kohler here to use me as a scarecrow and boogeyman, hey? Good commanding officer, badassed second-in-command. It should work.”
“My thoughts exactly. The boats will be waiting and we should be in Dubuque before the end of the week and Des Moines not long after. A crowded journey, to be sure.”
Then he turned his eye on Mark Vogeler. The young man’s smile died at the cold blue-green gaze; the expression on Mathilda’s face was just as bleak.
“You wish to enlist in this enterprise?” Artos said.
“Uh . . . yessir, Your Majesty.”
“So.”
Artos looked him up and down, ignoring his flush. The boy’s father suppressed a smile, and his mother looked up and then away again, helping to remove the cloths that covered trays of food and stacks of wooden plates. She was well within earshot . . . but also a wise lady and concerned for her son.
“Now listen to me, boy. Ingolf is my comrade by shared peril and hardship, and my brother by marriage; your family is kin to mine through that. Also your father is my host and benefactor, and so we are tied by bonds of guest-friendship and honor and alliance.”
A pause, and then he barked: “
And that is why I haven’t sent you back to play soldiers with a stick behind the barn.
”
The youngster flushed more deeply, until his fair freckled skin was beet-red, but he kept his stiff brace. Artos hid his approval; controlling your temper was hardest at that age, just as that was the time when it was hardest for a male to think of anything but girls, or calculate a risk without insane disregard for reason and probability. He undid his sword belt and handed it to Mathilda, along with his bonnet, and unpinned his plaid from the brooch of silver knotwork at his shoulder. The warm spring breeze cuffed at his long copper-gold hair, but he had a headband to confine it. Apart from that he wore only his shirt and kilt, knee-hose and shoes.
“Can you obey orders, boyo?”
A stiff nod. “Sir, yessir!”
“Good. Here’s one. Kill me—or do your best.”
Blank bewilderment met him. “You’re in armor and you have a blade by your side and a shield ready for your arm. Do your best to kill me, boy, or I swear I’ll paddle your backside with the flat of your shete here in front of all who know you until you run bawling for your momma.”
Slowly Mark slid the blade out of its sheath, and the round shield with its brown surface broken by an orange wedge onto his left arm and then up under his eyes. He was frowning a little now, really thinking; Artos allowed himself a slight nod. The shete came up into the overhead point-forward-and-down position these easterners favored. It was the type of weapon you’d find horsemen using from the Rockies as far east as civilization went, based on the old tool whose worn-down name it had taken, but lengthened and slightly curved, sharpened all along the outer edge and a few inches back from the point on the other.
Like most this had a circular disk-shaped guard and the hilt was canted against the curve of the blade; the whole thing had a look as if the agricultural tool side of its ancestry had had a brief fling with the sort of Chinese
dao
-saber found in the ruins of martial arts stores. At least in the mind of the smith who made it. The weapon was of fine steel, and sharpened to a good working edge too. Young Mark would be as tall as his uncle or father someday, and was nearly there now; that meant thirty inches of sharp steel in his hand already had an uncomfortably long reach.
He frowned again, moved his feet to set himself, and then cut backhand and forehand hard and fast. Air whistled around the steel.
Obeying orders, at least; he’s not pulling it
, Artos thought, as he swayed his torso aside and let the cuts sail by, moving without apparent haste and his hands clasped behind his back.
That would have killed me, right enough.
The boy stumbled as the blade met air; then he recovered with an unconscious snarl and thrust directly for Artos’ breast in an extended lunge.
Smack!
The calloused palms of the Mackenzie’s large, shapely hands slapped together on the flat of the blade at its broadest section, just behind the point. The Readstown lad stood goggling for an instant, and Artos shoved his hands sharply forward with a flicking motion. The brass pommel of the shete smacked into Mark’s face.
“My dothse!”
he cried in a pained voice, clapping his hand to the organ.
Blood leaked between his fingers. Artos heard his mother give a gasp, and his father and uncle what sounded like smothered chortles. He dropped the youngster’s shete, bounced the hilt off his foot to flick it head-high and snatched it out of the air. Almost in the same instant he dropped and pivoted on his left foot, his right shin raking out horizontally. It took the boy across the back of the knees, hard. He flipped into the air under the impact and landed on his shoulders and neck and head, driven stunning hard by the leverage and the forty-pound weight of mail shirt and shield. The breath went out of him in a bubbling wheeze, and again when Artos’ boot slammed down on the shield and pinned his arm against his chest under it. The stamp wasn’t hard enough to crack bone, but it was painful.
The shete moved in a graceful curve and dimpled the skin under Mark’s chin, where the Midwestern-style mail shirt gave no protection. The young man grew very still, despite the blood running down over his nose and upper lip and sticking to his pathetic attempt at a mustache.
“Now, think on this; a man in a pleated skirt just took away the sword of your armored self, killed you with it twice . . . and stamped the life out of you into the bargain. What’s the lesson of this?”
“Dat I’m not’s gud’s you,” the boy wheezed, holding his nose and glaring.
Artos withdrew his foot and the blade. “No, it’s that you’re not good enough to be a fighting-man, not yet. There are ten thousand men and more, and more than a few women—one of them your uncle’s wife—who could have done the same, or at least killed you in a more straightforward fashion. Up, boy!”
Mark stood and braced his shoulders back. Artos grinned.
“You’re no coward, at least. But guts without brains are soon spilled to be meat for coyotes and crows, lad. Understood?”
A quick nod, and Artos went on:
“So if you’re to be worth your food in my army, it’s as what my Bearkiller relatives call a military apprentice. I’m making you your uncle’s aide. That means you carry his messages, do his errands, pitch his tent, care for his gear—and your own—currycomb his horses, make up the fire and cook the rations and whatever else he can find for you to do, the which may include emptying the honeybucket. You do it with your mouth shut, your eyes and ears open to fill your empty head, and willingly. If he tells you to run like a rabbit or jump like a frog, you do that. Is that clear?”
“Yeth, thir!”
Artos leaned closer; the smile went out of his face, and one knuckle prodded painfully into the teenager’s sore chest.
“And at the
first
sign of insubordination, the first whine, the first complaint, the first stupid buck-in-spring prank to prove what a big brave bold man you are, I will send you back home in your drawers, tied to a donkey with your face towards its rump.”

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