The High King of Montival

by SM Stirling

  Even with the solid metal-shod baulk in the way, the screams were loud, for a single instant. Two middle-aged women in shapeless pants and shirts with red-cross armbands added dragged Kovalevsky facedown onto a stretcher, grabbed it and bore it away at a staggering run. Two more started to reach for her.

  “No!” Ritva said, then managed a firmer “No!”

  She pulled her holdout knife out of her right boot, took a deep breath, gripped the arrow by the fletching and cut.

  “Naeg!” she swore with a yelp.

  The pain was like white fire, icy and burning at the same time, shooting up her leg towards her groin and almost making her bladder release. Whoever had fashioned the arrow had used nicely seasoned red ash, and it was dry and tough. Doggedly she cut the fletching side, gripped the part behind the head, took a deep breath and screamed as she pulled it out:

  “Naeg! Rhaich! Naeg-naeg-naeg! Ai, ai!”

  Her breath came faster as she pulled off the boot and tight-bandaged it, and gummy saliva filled her mouth until she spat to clear it. Corporal Dudley put a hand under her arm as she fumbled the knife back into the sheath.

  “Let’s get you to the infirmary, ma’am,” he said, half-shouting through the racket. A hesitation. “That was a brave thing to do for Kovalevsky. You shouldn’t have done it, but it was brave.”

  “To Morgoth with the infirmary. Get me up on the wall!”

  She stood and put weight on the leg. It wasn’t as bad as she expected, only enough to make her break out in a muck-sweat, cold and gelid. At his look she snapped hoarsely:

  “I can’t run away and I can’t dance a lavolta, but I can still stand and fight—and if we don’t hold the wall, we’re all going to die anyway. I’d rather die fighting.”

  “Point.”

  “Get me up there.”

  “Let’s go.”

  He put her left arm over his shoulders and they moved a little like a three-legged race at a Bearkiller Gunpowder Day celebration. Everyone in the little settlement was pouring from the houses and the clear space inside the walls up onto the fighting platform, or at least everyone of either sex over the age of thirteen who didn’t have some absolute duty elsewhere; all of them were carrying weapons, and many were struggling into bits and pieces of gear, helmets or mail shirts. The stairs were an integral part of the thick rammed-earth walls, the risers surfaced with planks but without rails or guards, and fairly narrow. Ritva and Corporal Dudley toiled up one with the four surviving unwounded or walking-wounded redcoats running interference for them.

  The hoarding atop the wall had a thick sloping roof facing outward, a chest-high solid timber wall with slits for firing arrows, and it overhung the wall by about a yard so that trapdoors could be opened and things dropped or thrown directly down. It was the same principle that castles and city walls in Montival used, except that even with the ditch this wall wasn’t nearly as high. There were piles of rocks, racks of spears, and quivers of arrows and crossbow bolts ready for use. People were going around with burning splits to light gas-fed jets for heating pots of boiling water and oil; evidently the Anchor Bar Seven homeplace had a methane-digester system.

  Ritva propped herself against the parapet and looked out, carefully avoiding the hideous knot of dead and not-quite-dead men and animals in front of the gates, although she couldn’t help smelling the greasy black smoke that poured off it. The Cutters were still arriving, and her eyes went wide at the numbers. A catapult cut loose from a tower, and a twelve-pound ball of cast iron snapped out. The targets were far enough away to dodge it, but some of them shook their fists or weapons—probably cursing the impious device, since their faith abominated the complex gearing involved.

  “Couple of thousand,” Corporal Dudley said. “Ma’am, they take you really seriously, don’t they?”

  He sounded more admiring than not. “It’s my big brother they’re really after,” she said. “And yes, they do take him very seriously indeed.”

  “I guess we didn’t travel faster than the news after all.”

  The alarm bell stopped; she was suddenly conscious of it because of its absence. Ritva looked over her shoulder and saw that it hung in the tower of a squat-looking church . . . not that there was much alternative to “squat” when you used pisé as building material. Instead a column of bright red smoke rose from the same square height, shooting into the air and bending gently eastward with the prevailing wind. The sky was still clear and blue—she blinked a little to realize it was only about three in the afternoon—and it would be visible for a long way.

  “Like the beacons from Nardol to Dîn in the Histories,” she murmured to herself.

  “It’s a long way to the next ranch,” the redcoat said. “They were big around here even before the Change because it’s dry, and the ones that survived took over the land of those that didn’t. Old Man Keith McGillvery was Rancher here then . . . manager, at least, and nobody was going to go to Toronto to look up the stockholders when he claimed the property.”

  Ritva nodded absently; she was watching the Cutters swarming around the warehouse and the corrals down by the little lake the dam made.

  I’ve actually been to Toronto and I don’t think anyone’s going to be showing up with a title deed, she thought mordantly. Except ghosts. Though right now it wouldn’t be worth much anyway.

  Avery McGillvery himself came by, in war-gear with some of his armored retainers in tow; he and his wife greeted people by name, she smiling and nodding and he slapping backs cheerfully and telling them how they’d slaughter the invaders under the wall. He gave Ritva a quick nod as well as he went by, and she put her hand to her heart and bowed slightly. Corporal Dudley saluted.

  He’s doing this as a lord should, she thought. Keeping his people in good heart by example. His father must have known the way of it, to have come through the Change so well.

  The idea that someone could own land without being there to hold and defend it was another pre-Change mystery; maybe Dudley was old enough to understand it, but she wasn’t, not really, not down in the heart. Then she noticed the roof of the warehouse by the railway collapse in a cloud of dust, with dozens of lariats strung to saddle horns pulling at it.

  “They’re making ladders,” she said, as she unclipped the helmet from her shield, stuffed her hat into a pocket and set it on her head. “Tearing out the beams and boards for it there, and from those corrals. And fascines to throw in the ditch, and some mantlets.”

  “Jesus, you’re right, ma’am. They’re going to assault. Oh, that’s going to cost them quite a butcher’s bill.”

  They glanced at each other: But not as much as it’ll cost us, went unspoken between them.

  Counting the redcoats, and one walking-wounded Ritva Havel, the Anchor Bar Seven had perhaps a hundred and fifty fighters to man the walls, and too many of them for comfort were teenagers just big enough to work the crank of a crossbow, or women.

  That wasn’t necessarily bad; she considered herself well above average as fighters went, and she’d killed enough men to prove it. On the other hand she was also about five inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than the average woman, nearly all of the weight flat straplike muscle. That made her as tall as most men and stronger than some. Also she was very fast indeed, plus she and Mary had been brought up in the households of warrior nobles with the very best training provided from toddlerhood on. The women she saw on the wall here looked like they were housewives and weavers and cheesemakers and such mostly; doubtless brave when fighting for their homes and families, but only sketchily trained in their off-hours and smaller, weaker and lighter than virtually any Cutter they’d face.

  Probably a lot of the menfolk were out with the herds where they could do little good, and had been too far away to get back in time. Coming back now would just mean throwing themselves away against that horde, though they probably would anyway.

  This is a . . . a very, very unpleasant situation. We really must find a way to say we are so fucked in the Noble T
ongue.

  “The wall will be a big advantage,” she said, and Corporal Dudley nodded.

  She could read his thought: True as far as it goes.

  More and more of the Cutters were dismounting, sending their horses to the rear and loading themselves down with extra quivers and bundles of arrows. Pack beasts with more stood behind, and other groups had long ladders knocked together out of beams with fence boards nailed or lashed across them. Ritva put weight on her wounded leg, and hissed as she fastened the chin-cup of her open-face sallet helm. The calf would bear her weight, but only if she didn’t have to use it much or for long.

  “The leg works, sorta. Though we Rangers usually prefer sneaking around to this sort of fighting,” she added.

  “So do I,” the corporal said dryly. “If you mean prefer it to being trapped and vastly outnumbered.”

  “Don’t think of it as being outnumbered,” she said, forcing a smile and ignoring the dryness of her mouth. “Think of it—”

  “—as having a very target-rich environment, yes, ma’am, we tell that one too.”

  He passed her a dipper of water from one of the pottery jugs that hung at intervals; it was cool with evaporation through the coarse earthenware. She drank gratefully, handed it back with a nod of thanks and spoke aloud:

  “Could someone get me a bow?” she asked. “Medium weight. Heavy side of medium.”

  The word ran along the parapet, and the weapon was passed down. It was a common-or-garden four-foot recurve, an imitation of pre-Change hunting weapons but with a heavier draw. Honestly made, a sandwich glued together of sinew, a central layer of yew wood and springy horn; the riser was of mountain maple with a fitted handgrip and arrow-rest through the center. She drew it experimentally, into the full deep C-shape; heavy for her, ninety to a hundred pounds, but not impossible. Then she took a seven-foot spear out of a rack and propped it nearby point down beside her shield against the timber rampart; she wanted a weapon with a bit of reach, at least to start with.

  There was a pause, most of an hour; she spent the time reciting training mantras and whistling softly and remembering things and trying to ignore her leg. Leaning against the parapet she even managed to doze for a few minutes, though she jerked awake again immediately from a dream of wolverines tearing at her calf. The Cutters were closer then, and starting to look more organized.

  I wonder what our section of the Halls of Mandos is like? she thought. Do we just wait there to come back, or what? That sounds boring, unless it’s just a kenning for the rest of the Summerlands. The Histories aren’t clear except that we’re Sundered from the elves, but then, I’ve never met any elves so that’s no hardship, really. Are there sort of news bulletins, so you can find out how things turned out back here? Or scrying crystals, like a palantír?

  Then the enemy started to move forward. They were chanting too, the onomatopoeic war cry of the CUT, starting as a rumble and then growing into a growling blurred chorus as they lashed themselves into a frenzy:

  “Cut . . . Cut . . . Cut! Cut! Cut! CUT! CUT!”

  “I don’t think they’ll stop,” Corporal Dudley said quietly. “There aren’t enough of us to kill enough of them to sicken the rest.”

  His men were bunched around them. A little down the rampart a girl three or four years younger than Ritva was whimpering slightly without being conscious of it, but she was also propping up a heavy crossbow, ready to shoot through a firing-slit. A younger brother with the same carroty hair and freckles was struggling behind her to load another, doggedly working the lever to cock it ready to hand forward.

  “CUT! CUT! CUT!”

  The enemy began to run forward to get through the killing ground, masses of them, their leather and undyed wool dark against the tawny green grass but their faces showing lighter under helmets or hats. Here and there a mail shirt showed gray and gleaming with oil, or more often a breastplate of molded hide with steel strips riveted on, but most had only their leather jackets and shields.

  “Attacking all ’round,” Corporal Dudley said. “So we can’t shift men to meet them.”

  Every catapult cut loose, six of them, one for each tower, with a series of heavy tung sounds. This time the round shot couldn’t miss; the figures were still doll-tiny, but her mind sketched in what happened when the hard, hard metal hit and bounced and twisted through the ranks. Again and again as fast as the crews could cock and load, they were aiming for the mantlets, improvised shields on wheels taken from farm carts. Those were covering the men with the ladders and fascines.

  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 g
irl 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.