The High King of Montival: A Novel of the Change (53 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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Then the artillery crews switched to clay pots full of napalm that wobbled as they flew and trailed black smoke from the sheaths of burning rag rope wound around them. Bright streaks of yellow flame blossomed where they struck. One hit a mantlet and sprayed through every gap in the crude carpentry, and men ran out from behind it with their clothes and hair on fire, rolling screaming on the ground in a futile attempt to put out the clinging death. A few of their comrades paused to give them the mercy-stroke.
“Shoot!”
someone shouted on the wall; she thought it was the Rancher, Avery McGillvery.
The extra height meant they had the range on the attackers, and everyone cut loose; the hard
snap
of bowstrings mingling with the deeper note of crossbows. Some part of her that wasn’t focused to a single diamond point of concentration on drawing and shooting until her shoulders burned noted that they were splitting around the approaches to the gate. Even that mass of savage faith wasn’t going to face the flamethrower’s arc again. Probably some of them were thinking of what they’d do to the crew of it when they got their hands on them.
“
Look—”
someone began to shout, as snarling horn-signals went through the Cutter force.
Half the onrushing horde stopped, alternate blocks—or clumps, for they were in no formal order, but close enough. Afternoon sunlight sparkled along their ranks as they raised their bows, blinking off the points of the arrows like starlight glimmering on the sea. An odd whispery creaking sounded, the noise of many, many powerful composite bows being drawn to the ear by as many brawny arms.
“—
out!
” the cry finished, and nearly everyone ducked away from the firing-slits.
The shout was almost drowned by the whistling rush of air. Ritva turned with her left shoulder against the thick planks and forced herself not to close her eyes in a futile attempt to deny what was rushing at her. This was worthy of a Mackenzie arrowstorm; bowmen could pack together much closer on foot than as mounted archers. Seconds after the strings snapped out their unmusical note the first shafts hit the wood of the fighting platform. Then the mass arrived, a drumming roar like massive hail on a roof, going on and on, more flicking through the fighting slits and down into the settlement. Trying to shoot back at once would have been suicide.
“This is what my father called trying to fight projectiles with targets!”
she shouted, and thought Corporal Dudley grinned even then.
Thunk
as they sank into the timbers or the thick planks and she could feel it through her shoulder like a trembling vibration over and over again.
Pock
for the ones that fell a little short and hit the
pisé
wall beneath her feet, some sticking and others bouncing off with little divots of the rocklike material knocked free.
Hssss
as hundreds more went by overhead, arching down into the space inside the wall, and more and more cracking on the tile roof or arching over it.
Cries of pain came as the unlucky or incautious fell; one white-bearded man not too far away staggered backward with an arrow through his face and fell over the rail and down the inside of the wall. Then the storm slackened as the attackers fired individually rather than in massed volleys; those were rancher levies out there for the most part, not professionals.
Haven’t seen the Sword of the Prophet
, she thought; their reddish-brown armor was unmistakable.
Don’t miss them, but that means they’re probably all out west trying to kill my family.
Ritva took a deep breath and stepped to the arrow-slit and shot and shot and shot, then ducked back. Beside her the girl with the red braids was shooting too, handing her crossbow behind her, taking the next from her brother, squinting down the sights and wincing as the butt thumped against her shoulder.
“Here, Anne!” he cried, just barely audible through the surf-roar of noise, shrill and high. “Get ’em, Annie, get ’em!”
Another shout ran around the parapet: “Shoot the storming parties! Leave the archers, shoot the ones coming at us!”
Good advice
, she thought, and shot three times again.
An arrow came through the slit and just missed her as she ducked back, close enough that she could feel the wind of its passage on the sweat-wet skin just below her ear. Men fell out there, many, she needn’t pick individual targets, just shoot into the brown. They had their shields up, but at this range they likely wouldn’t stop an arrow; some of them were holding up improvised siege shields made of planks from the fences and buildings. One of those fell as she shot, a man taking an arrow through the toes and staggering aside hopping; two more hit him and he fell limply. Ladders and fascines dropped, then came on again as hale men snatched them up and rushed forward with the others over the bodies of their dead and wounded. The catapults were shooting steady as metronomes, blasting tracks through the dense mass of men.
Then the storm of arrow fire lifted; the attackers were getting close enough that they endangered their own men. They were at the ditch, throwing the bundles of brushwood and bales of hay into it. Others butted the long poles that had been warehouse or barn rafters and let them topple forward. Hundreds of knotted lariats snaked towards the parapet, each topped with a barbed steel hook. Defenders hacked or pried at them, and used spearpoints or forked poles to push at the ladders. Many fell back, but myriad hands raised them again. Ritva leaned over the edge for a second and shot directly down at no more than five yards distance.
Two women near her walked forward with a big jar held between them, cloth wrapped around the handles. The contents smoked and seethed; a third woman unbolted and lifted a trapdoor. The first pair lifted and poured in careful unison. The boiling tallow poured in a translucent torrent, and war cries turned to shrieks below. Others were doing the same, or lifting the traps and throwing javelins and rocks downward.
Ritva shot once more and then dropped the bow and stooped for her shield. As she rose she saw a face appear over the parapet, grinning in a rictus around the knife held in his teeth; a steel hook was deep-sunk in the timber to hold the rope he climbed. The women with the pot took a step and jerked the ceramic container forward. A double cupful of hot tallow was left in the bottom; the Cutter had just enough time to jerk a hand up before his eyes and begin to fall backward before it hit.
“
Thanks
!” she shouted, though they probably couldn’t hear her.
Then she snatched up the spear and shrieked the Dúnedain war cry:
“
Lacho Calad! Drego Morn!
”
She thrust through the firing slit, stabbing blind towards where the rope must be hanging. The point met something solid but soft; there was a bubbling shriek that faded away as the weight jerked off the point. Then she tried to pry the rope hook out of the timber, jamming the point beneath it and working back with all her weight and both hands. It started to yield, and then something hit her very hard in the shoulder. She staggered and then started to fall as her injured leg buckled. A light flashed in the corner of her eye.
Blackness.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DOMINION OF DRUMHELLER
(FORMERLY PROVINCE OF ALBERTA)
JUNE 2, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
 
 
 
A
rtos looked through a slit to the car ahead of him and grinned. Garbh was sitting on the roof of it, her mouth open and her tongue and ears flapping and fur rippling in the breeze of their passage, a look of exultant pleasure on her face and her tail beating hard on the curved plywood.
Edain followed his gaze and grinned. “Looks happy,” he said.
“Looks like a thirsty man on a hot day who’s just for the first time discovered there’s such a thing as beer in the world, drawn cool from a jug kept hanging in a well,” Artos said.
The horses were considerably less happy about their mode of travel, particularly Epona, which was why she was here with a whole car to herself. She crowded against him again; it was for reassurance, not with any intent to harm . . . but when a seventeen-hand, twelve-hundred-pound animal pressed up against you, with an unyielding surface waiting behind, harm could result.
“Stop that!” he scolded, slapping her on the shoulder. “You great pouting baby of a creature, mind your manners! You’re a middle-aged horse and a mother, for Her sake!”
She sighed—it was a sound in proportion to her deep chest—and turned her neck to nuzzle him, her grassy-musky smell as familiar as the straw-horse-piss-and-dung scent of the bedding beneath them. That was part of the fabric of life from his earliest memories.
Make it stop and let me out!
was as plain as words in her nicker.
He stroked her nose and made soothing noises, reflecting that he’d never been in a traveling stable before either, but that it was probably much harder for her. It might have been better if the compartment was completely dark, cutting off a view of the countryside passing by as fast as Epona could have covered it at a round canter, but you could see the prairie through the boards that made the walls.
Each of the trains in the convoy that bore his force had four cars; the forward hippomotive where eight horses walked on inclined treadmills to drive the wheels through gearing; two more each holding eight resting horses—each was big enough to take about forty men, at a crowded pinch—and a fourth bearing copious spare parts for the temperamental mechanism and fodder for the animals. It was a very fast way to transport horses, since with teams spelling each other you could average a hundred and forty or fifty miles a day even allowing for the frequent infuriating breakdowns. That was five times what horses could do on their hooves for any length of time.
Unfortunately it really wasn’t a practical method to transport anything
but
horses given the coddling the mechanisms needed; the beasts were slower but much more efficient pulling cargo along the rails on their own feet. His troops were pedaling along themselves, and having no problem keeping pace with the horse-powered vehicles. The whole thing depended on having water and fodder available at close intervals too, since the horses were mostly hauling horses.
Artos felt the fabric of the wagon jerk a little. He looked around; it was Mathilda, with a worried frown on her face. She’d dropped off one of the cars ahead, and jumped up to snatch the handholds.
“The Canuk commander wants you to see something, Rudi,” she said through the boards. “I don’t think it’s good news.”
“Is it ever?” he sighed. “I’ve been feeling . . . prickly myself. As if lines of might-be were gathering here.”
He could feel the hippomotive slow; a set of whistle signals spread down the long awkward chain that stretched for miles across the prairie. Epona snorted and stamped in approval, assuming this meant a break to drink and graze and roll. The train of cars lurched and then ground to a halt as the brakemen threw their wheels with a squeal of steel on steel. Artos and Edain opened the door just enough to let themselves out, ignored the great black horse’s indignation and trotted forward through the rustling prairie grass.
The human-pedaled railcars were stopped nose-to-tail ahead of this, the first of the hippomotives; their doors were open and men peering out curiously, but discipline held them within. His staff—which was to say his friends—were waiting for him, along with the commander of the redcoat escort.
“There,” Inspector James Rollins said. He was about Ingolf’s age and height, and similarly brown-bearded and blue-eyed, but slimmer. “It’s gotten higher since I called the halt.”
He took the offered binoculars and looked. The plume of smoke was distant, but it was visibly rising. And it was absolutely
red
, in a way normal smoke rarely was, probably with something added to the fire to make the message clearer.
“That’s the Anchor Bar Seven Ranch, all right,” Rollins said. “And that’s the
under attack by superior force, help urgent
signal. It’s a strong Ranch headquarters—”
By which he means
fort
or
stronghold
or
castle
, I would say
, Artos thought absently. He’d seen enough of them in this trip.
“—one of the strongest southern ranches, with a well-trained militia company. And the McGillverys don’t scream at the sight of a mouse. They wouldn’t use that just because of a minor border raid.”
Artos tapped a thumb on his chin, an old habit with him. His right palm caressed the hilt of the Sword, a new one.
“Could the Cutters have sent an army over the frontier without your knowing it? It’s not far, no more than three days’ ride, and unfortunately they’re probably aware of your impending declaration of war against them, the black sorrow and misfortune.”
Rollins shook his head. “Not an army. A big raiding party, possibly, especially if they didn’t really plan on getting most of it back; a thousand to two thousand men, absolute tops. The smoke will be visible to riders on every neighboring property, and they’ll have the news to the militia HQ and the Force soon.”
“Reinforcements to this ranch?’

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