by SM Stirling
“Of course it doesn’t!” Juniper said sharply. “You don’t believe in anything; you pray to nothing for something and you get . . . nothing!”
“Is nothing sacred?” Sandra murmured.
Juniper made an impatient gesture; then she spoke very softly. “This frightens me, Sandra. More than it does you. I really know the implications, and you don’t. We’re not talking about a better breed of catapults or . . . or D&D hit levels. We’ve always walked with our legends. But what happens if our legends start to walk with us? What will the world be then? Will the Powers burst the everyday asunder in their contentions?”
“At least we’re not at a disadvantage in . . . non-material terms anymore,” Tiphaine said. “Which just leaves the fact that we’re badly outnumbered.”
“Yeah,” Red Leaf said, visibly putting other things aside. “OK, I’ve seen enough here to know you guys can put up a stiff fight. But as matters stand, Corwin and Boise between them have you beat in the next couple of years, right?”
“It’s not inevitable,” Tiphaine said. “But when you’re fighting someone who can replace losses and you can’t—” A shrug. “It’s the way to bet. Particularly if they don’t make any big mistakes or take big risks, and so far they haven’t. Grinding forward costs, but they can do it if they’re prepared to pay the butcher’s bill. They’ve already overrun most of our part of the Palouse, and even more south of the Columbia.”
“And having disposed of us, the Cutters will turn on you,” Sandra pointed out.
“Possibly,” Red Leaf said. “Or maybe Corwin and Boise will have it out and whoever’s left standing won’t have any attention left to pay to us. They’re partners now; that won’t last forever.”
“If this were merely a war of men, that might be so,” Juniper said. “But Corwin has no partners. It has only prey. The CUT is an infection that spreads like mold through bread.”
Silence stretched. “OK, you got something there, too,” Red Leaf said. “But we fought them once before and we got beat. Not whipped, but beat.”
“With us on your side, the odds would be much better,” Tiphaine said. “You could bring, what, fifteen thousand men into the field?”
“Ten to fifteen if they’re going to be away from home for a while,” Red Leaf said. “But—”
“But they’re all light cavalry, horse-archers,” Tiphaine said. “No siege train, no infantry and no logistics beyond foraging and what they can carry in their saddlebags or drive along on the hoof. Plus they all need grazing for three horses each.”
“Yeah,” the Indian said. “Most of the Cutters fight that way too, Ranchers and their cowboys, but they’ve got drilled infantry, and they’ve got the Sword of the Prophet—regular troops. Not tin-plated like you guys in the Association here, but more punch than our riders in a stand-up fight. And they’ve got forts. With Boise on their side they’ve got another big tough army, lots of forts, and field artillery, too—how they square that with the crazy religious thing about no gears or machinery, God only knows. We don’t have a ban on machinery, but we just don’t run to that war-engine stuff. It doesn’t go with moving around the way we do. And we’ve had some painful experience with it.”
“We do have field artillery and a siege train,” Tiphaine pointed out. “Taking all of . . . Montival . . . as a whole, we’ve got a great deal of field artillery; we and the Bearkillers and the Corvallans make some of the best. And we have relatively recent experience at using it. Mostly on each other, back a decade and change.”
“Yeah, but you’re on the other side of them from us. It’s our guys who’d have to ride into the teeth of bolts and round shot and balls of napalm at three times bow-range without being able to hit back, or try climbing stone walls on ladders while the people inside pumped flaming canola oil on them. Not good.”
Sandra almost purred as she held a hand out to Lady Jehane. The amanuensis slid a folder from an accordion file and pushed it under her liege-lady’s fingers. It was correspondence, on heavy parchment-like paper, thick with official letterheads and seals.
“As it turns out, something can be done about that. You’re aware of what happened in Iowa while Mathilda and Rudi . . . Artos . . . were passing through?”
Three Bears spoke: “The Cutters who were chasing Rudi, and some of their local butt-monkeys, managed to kill the Bossman of Iowa while they were trying to get at Rudi and his friends. While they were his guests. The Iowans are totally ripshit and aren’t going to calm down anytime soon. But how did you guys find out?”
His father glanced at him; Sandra chuckled a little, a warm comfortable sound.
“No, it’s a good question. We have a route of communications around the Cutters now.”
“Through the Dominions?” Red Leaf asked sharply.
“Exactly.”
The Dominions of Drumheller, Moose Jaw and Minnedosa spanned what had once been the prairie provinces of central Canada from west to east. They had settled governments, and a scattered semblance of civilized life in farm and ranch and small town, as far north as the Peace River country. Drumheller abutted on the lands ruled by the Prophet, and also had a border with Montival, through the Association’s holdings in what had been British Columbia.
“How come?” Red Leaf asked. “They’ve always been pretty isolationist. I thought the Cutters had ’em spooked, Drumheller in particular.”
“They’ve reconsidered,” Sandra said. “Or possibly simply considered where they’ll be when Corwin and Boise have destroyed us.”
“Or where they’ll be if we win and they’re surrounded by hostile neighbors they refused to help,” Juniper pointed out. “I think Iowa helped persuade them.”
Sandra gave her a considering glance and murmured: “Dear Juniper, occasionally you remind me that honesty isn’t necessarily linked to stupidity.”
Louder, to the two Sioux: “And these letters are from the new Regency Council of the Provisional Republic of Iowa. In the names of the Regent, Lady Catherine Heasleroad, speaking for her son Thomas who is the heir to the Bossmanship, and the Chancellor, Abel Heuisink, for the rest of Iowa’s government. Both speaking for the Sheriffs, Farmers and People of Iowa, as they rather quaintly put it; or Barons, Knights and Commons, in our terminology. Offering a very substantial military force, from Iowa and the neighboring states. Fargo, Marshall, Richland, Nebraska, Concordia, Kirksville. They’ll be abundantly well equipped and as numerous as the supply situation permits; that’s the most densely populated part of the whole continent from Guatemala to Alaska now.”
“The logistics are pretty good, too,” Tiphaine put in. “If the railroads were put back into commission—and they also have plenty of labor and good engineers, and even rolling mills for light rail—”
The two Sioux sat bolt upright; Red Leaf choked slightly on a mouthful of coffee and clashed the priceless Sèvres cup down in its saucer.
“Now, wait a minute! We fought the Square Staters too, over the Red River Valley, for years. No way are we letting them get that sort of foothold on Lakota land. Railways and forts . . . where the hell have I heard that song before? Iowa alone outnumbers us something like ten to one. We held them off because they didn’t have any way of supporting armies on foot out in the short-grass country. Nobody was all that organized back then, anyway, but that’s changed too. People know what they can do now, and how to do it.”
Juniper nodded sympathetically. “Well, now, my dear, we have thought of that. Your fear is that having come to help you, the Iowans may decide to outstay their welcome and help themselves, to whatever they please?”
“Damn right!”
“Well, then, think on this; if we go down, then not only will Corwin eventually turn on you, but you’ll be caught between two millstones: the Cutters’ empire, and Iowa and its allies. Alternatively, the Iowans could decide to fight their way through you to get at Corwin. Which would leave you after the war with no friends and no bargaining power at all.”
It wasn’t a pleasant thought and she cou
ld see both of the Lakota mulling it over. The High Plains were a sparse hard land where the Mother’s gifts were given grudgingly; they could yield a decent living if the folk there had many acres per head and used the scanty grass and water skillfully, but they couldn’t support the great farms and towns possible to the east or west. Not in the world after the Change.
Ogma of the Honey Tongue, lend us your eloquence! For we are speaking for our lands and homes and folk.
She felt an impulse to reach out and shake sense into Red Leaf and his son . . . which would do no good whatsoever, of course.
“But,” Sandra said, raising one finger, “there is an alternative. One which will assure that the Iowans go home after the war.”
“Provided we win, of course,” Tiphaine qualified.
Sandra nodded. “Operating on that assumption, yes, Baroness d’Ath, since we’ll be too dead to care if we lose. Your Lakota country is drier than the Midwesterners like, anyway; they have land enough to feed twenty or thirty times their number lying idle inside their own boundaries, and more vacant to the east and south down the Mississippi Valley when they’ve brought all that under the plow. It’s one acre after another around there, fat black soil and well-watered, the best farmland in the world.”
“Yeah,” Red Leaf said. “They don’t need our territory. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t want it if they were standing on it.”
He frowned, looking as stubborn as a bull bison, and as dangerous, almost ready to bellow out a challenge to the world and charge heedlessly. Then he took a deep breath:
“So, what’s your plan?”
Sandra made a graceful gesture. “You know Rudi’s to be High King in Montival?”
“Yeah. Whatever the hell a High King is, as opposed to just plain King or President or Bossman or whatever.”
Juniper took up the story: “An Ard Rí . . . a High King . . . isn’t an Emperor or Bossman or anything like it. We haven’t settled all the details of the thing, but you may notice there are many peoples out here, with many ways of doing and living that have grown up since the Change, their own laws and ways and Gods.”
Red Leaf’s dark eyes narrowed above his high cheekbones.
“So?”
“A High King will . . . so to speak . . . reign over the whole of Montival lightly, more than rule it. All the peoples . . . city-states, clans, the Association, the monks at Mt. Angel, the Faculty Senate in Corvallis, and others besides . . . will keep their own laws and govern themselves. Each will guarantee the borders of the others and aid them if they’re attacked, under the High King’s direction.”
“Nobody gets to settle on our land without our permission,” Red Leaf said bluntly. “That’s non-negotiable. We learned that lesson real good.”
“Precisely. Nobody to touch so much as a blade of grass without your leave,” Sandra said soothingly.
“Free trade, of course,” Juniper put in; she wasn’t going to sweeten the pot with bad treacle. “The Ard Rí won’t have a big standing army, only a guard, but everyone is to send contingents when needed, and there’ll be a tax—not much of a one, but to be paid—and the High King’s court will hear disputes between communities, or their members. You can consult the Three Tribes Confederation of Warm Springs if you like, and see that we around here keep our word. And while nobody is compelled to take anyone in, everyone is to be free to leave where he is, and most places welcome any pair of hands that go with a willingness to work, since land is so much more abundant than people to till it. Which means no slavery or serfdom anywhere, unless it’s truly voluntary—which would take away the whole point of such.”
“And in return you get our backing if anyone tries to attack you,” Tiphaine pointed out. “The Association’s knights, the Mackenzie archers, engineers and pikemen from Corvallis or the Yakima League. We are most assuredly not interested in anything to the east of you but we’re willing to push the border that far, and help hold it. As part of Montival you’d have enough weight behind you that even Iowa would have to think three times before tangling with you.”
“And we could have our reservation as long as the grass grew and the sun shines,” Red Leaf said dryly; his voice was skeptical but not utterly hostile.
Juniper shrugged. “If you call everything you’ve got now a reservation ,” she said. “And that’s what . . . half the Dakotas and chunks of Wyoming and Montana and Colorado and a bit of Nebraska? Which is more land and more people than ever you had in the old days.”
“Including . . . ah . . . volunteers,” Sandra observed. “There are more of you than there are Mackenzies.”
“Which means you’d also be a fairly big element in the High Kingdom as a whole,” Tiphaine said. “Not least in the number of troops you could field. Nobody would be in a position to bully you, even if they were so inclined.”
“What about Boise? And New Deseret?” Red Leaf asked. “They’re between us and you as well as the Cutters.”
Sandra steepled her fingers and raised her eyes slightly. “You may have noticed that the late General-President of the United States of Boise had more than one son. The elder killed his father and usurped his position. The younger . . . you met. Traveling with Mathilda and, um, Artos.”
“Oh, ho,” Red Leaf said, and gave her an admiring look. “Well, yeah, that’s a definite possibility. You think Boise may come apart over that?”
“That and their alliance with Corwin, which we understand is not popular. Martin Thurston is trying his best to pin the blame on his brother, but the true story has been circulating . . . aided by us. And New Deseret is desperate, what’s left of it. We’ve been helping their guerrillas in the occupied territories as we can. They’re very . . . upright people. Usually gratitude is worth its weight in gold, but they actually seem to practice it. Marvelous are the works of God.”
Red Leaf nodded and rubbed his hands together; the heavy stockman’s calluses bred of rope and rein, lance and shete, went scritch against each other.
“OK, whoa, this is going to take a bit more thinking. I can’t commit all of us to this. Some of it sounds good, but I’m not going to say yes or no yet, and it’s above my pay grade anyway.”
“Oh, certainly,” Sandra said. “We’ll have to have extensive talks even for a temporary alliance, and you’ll have to consult your Council about anything more. But . . . we do need the Iowans. And we need them to march in, fight, and then turn around and go back with hearty thanks ringing in their ears. And we need them now.”
“What do they get out of it? Besides hearty thanks and gratitude . . . which, you’re right, are usually worth their weight in gold. Or diamonds.”
“A long-term menace disposed of,” Sandra said. “And in terms of their internal politics, in which my daughter had a hand, they get unity behind House Heasleroad—there’s nothing like a successful foreign war to rally support. Now let’s start with a few details—”
She settled into her chair, as content as one of her Persian cats confronted with a bowl of fresh cream and salmon on the side. Juniper sighed silently and settled herself as to a task that had to be done.
Rudi, my son! Where are you now?
CHAPTER EIGHT
NORRHEIM, LAND OF THE WULFINGS
SIX-HILL FIELD (FORMERLY AROOSTOOK COUNTY, MAINE)
MARCH 25, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
Bjarni Eriksson saw his death rising with the heavy curved sword. Thunder pounded in his ears; it echoed in the ground beneath his back like hooves. He struggled to raise his sword and meet the blow still fighting. A man lived until he died, and not an hour more.
“Fare You well, Thor, until the weird of the world!” he choked out. “Harberga—I come, father—”
The thunder was hooves. A great black horse whose head and neck and shoulders gleamed silvery breasted the slope, and Bekwa scattered aside like sandy soil before the coulter of a plow, like birch leaves in an autumn wind. In the saddle was a man with the head of a raven, and in his hand was a lance. The trollkjerring tu
rned, raising his shield. The lance struck it and shattered, with a sharp stuttering crackling impact that seemed to strike his own head between the eyes. The red-robe staggered back, but the great warhorse staggered as well, almost falling.
Bjarni blinked, even then. It was like seeing a hammer hit an egg and watching the hammer bounce. The man in the high war-saddle kicked his feet out of the stirrups and threw himself to the ground, landing even as he drew his sword.
Shock ran through the world.
The flash that came with the long blade shone through his flesh to his bones, making him transparent as fine glass of the ancient world, without being anything his eyes could see at all. It lit the mind, as if his inner being had stared into the sun. Bjarni saw the way the smooth curve of the man’s visor drew down into a point that almost hid his bared teeth. Eyes of cold blue-gray glinted through the narrow space of the vision slit.
The sorcerer crouched, snarling. “You . . . can . . . slay . . . the vessel . . . but . . . not . . . Us,” he said, in a voice like the world ripping. “For . . . we . . . are . . . legion.”
“I don’t have to,” the man said, his voice like a trumpet. “I have only to put you back where you belong, in my time and in my land; for even you are a part of things. The which I will do, now, so.”
The red-robe screamed and struck.
Shock.
The world shook again, as if it were a painted drawing whose fabric trembled in a high wind. Steel met the Sword and shattered, and the blade looped back. A hand spun away in a rising arc, and blood trailed behind it and spouted from the wrist and in a circle from the follow-through of the Sword. Bjarni stumbled upright again, as if released from bonds; his leg hurt badly, but he could make himself move. Everyone about him was moving too. The red-robe clutched at his severed wrist; the cold malevolence was gone from his face, leaving nothing but a vast bewilderment as he sat down to die.
Artos let the momentum of the strike carry him around. The Seeker of the Church Universal and Triumphant was no threat anymore—just a man, and a dying man with no heart to fight, at that. A spear thrust at him, a length of rusty steel pipe with the end hammered and filed down to a point. The thing was too massive to be agile, but the thick-shouldered savage had already begun a two-handed smash that would have driven the mass of metal through anything a man could wear. It scored across Artos’ shield and left a peeling thread of the facing sheet behind it; the Sword struck upward and the front three feet of the crude weapon went pinwheeling away. There was a tug on his sword-wrist as the Sword of the Lady cut through the tough alloy, like the hesitation he’d feel if he lopped off a dried reed. The thrust that followed snapped out faster than a frog’s tongue, crunching through the thin bones of the man’s face between the eyes and back before he even began to crumple.
