The Given Sacrifice

NOVELS OF THE CHANGE

Island in the Sea of Time

Against the Tide of Years

On the Oceans of Eternity

Dies the Fire

The Protector’s War

A Meeting at Corvallis

The Sunrise Lands

The Scourge of God

The Sword of the Lady

The High King of Montival

The Tears of the Sun

NOVELS OF THE SHADOWSPAWN

A Taint in the Blood

The Council of Shadows

Shadows of Falling Night

OTHER NOVELS BY S. M. STIRLING

The Peshawar Lancers

Conquistador

A NOVEL OF THE CHANGE

S. M. Stirling

A ROC BOOK

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA), 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, USA

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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com.

First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,

a division of Penguin Group (USA)

Copyright © S. M. Stirling, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed
in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in
or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
Purchase only authorized editions.

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Stirling, S. M.

The given sacrifice: a Novel of the Change/S. M. Stirling.

p. cm—(Novels of the Change)

ISBN 978-1-101-60319-2

I. Title.

PS3569.T543G58 2013

813’.54—dc23 2013016134

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is
entirely coincidental.

     The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility
for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

Thanks to my friends who are also first readers:

To Steve Brady, for assistance with dialects and British background, and also natural
history of all sorts.

Pete Sartucci, knowledgeable in many aspects of Western geography and ecology.

Thanks also to Kier Salmon, unindicted co-conspirator.

To Diana L. Paxson, for help and advice, and for writing the beautiful Westria books,
among many others. If you like the Change novels, you’ll probably enjoy the hell out
of the Westria books—I certainly did, and they were one of the inspirations for this
series; and her
Essential Ásatrú
and recommendation of
Our Troth
were extremely helpful . . . and fascinating reading. The appearance of the name
Westria in the book is no coincidence whatsoever.

To Dale Price, for help with Catholic organization, theology and praxis.

To Brenda Sutton, for multitudinous advice.

To Walter Jon Williams, John Miller, Vic Milan, Jan Stirling, Matt Reiten, Lauren
Teffeau and Ian Tregellis of Critical Mass for constant help and advice as the book
was under construction.

Thanks to John Miller, good friend, writer and scholar, for many useful discussions,
for loaning me some great books and for some really, really cool old movies.

Special thanks to Heather Alexander, bard and balladeer, for permission to use the
lyrics from her beautiful songs, which can be—and should be!—ordered at www.heatherlands.com.
Run, do not walk, to do so.

Thanks again to William Pint and Felicia Dale for permission to use their music, which
can be found at www.pintndale.com and should be, for anyone with an ear and salt water
in their veins.

And to Three Weird Sisters—Gwen Knighton, Mary Crowell, Brenda Sutton and Teresa Powell—whose
alternately funny and beautiful music can be found at www.threeweirdsisters.com.

And to Heather Dale for permission to quote the lyrics of her songs, whose beautiful
(and strangely appropriate!) music can be found at www.heatherdale
.com, and is highly recommended. The lyrics are wonderful and the tunes make it even
better.

To S. J. Tucker for permission to use the lyrics of her beautiful songs, which can
be found at www.skinnywhitechick.com, and should be.

And to Lael Whitehead of Jaiya, www.jaiya.ca, for permission to quote the lyrics of
her beautiful songs.

Thanks again to Russell Galen, my agent, who has been an invaluable help and friend
for more than a decade now, and never more than in these difficult times.

All mistakes, infelicities and errors are of course my own.

THE HARVEST KING

Seven Devils Mountains

(Formerly western Idaho)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

June 12th, Change Year 26/2024 AD

I
am so fucked,
Pilot Officer Alyssa Larsson thought, as the glider hit a pocket of cold air, shocking
and utterly unexpected.

The nose went down and she had a feeling like her stomach was floating up into her
throat, like skiing down a steep slope and going over a bump into a jump.

Like falling, in other words.

Get out of this pocket, fast! Dive out!
training and reflex said.

She did. Her hands and feet moved on the controls of the glider with delicate precision,
coaxing the last ounce of performance out of the Glaser-Dirk 100. Air whistled by,
the loudest thing in the profound silence of the sky; the cockpit was paradoxically
stuffy and smelled of lubricants, ancient plastic and fresher leather and fear-sweat.
The falling-sled sensation went away, but she’d gone down three or four hundred crucial
feet. Her head whipped around, and she saw uncomfortably high ground all around her,
a situation that had gone from
chancy
to
bad
all at once. This was unfamiliar territory, known only from the map—that was the
whole point of reconnaissance flying, but it made things a lot more dangerous. Over
the country she knew well the spots for likely lift were all as familiar as the feel
of her bootlaces. Here, not so much.

Of course, I know where the nearest three landing points are. Only now I can’t get
to any of them.

She was over dense forest, with a saw-toothed ridge of nearly vertical rock directly
ahead; she could get to it, but not over it to the steep river-valley beyond. Alyssa
shoved the goggles up on the forehead of her leather helmet, hiding the snarling face-on
bear’s head worked into the hide there. Her eyes peered at the air over the ridge.

Shit. No birds.

Birds were a good way to find air moving upward; lots of them didn’t like to flap
if they could avoid it. So probably no updraft directly ahead. She was sweating and
her mouth was dry, but there was no
time
to be afraid. Her hand moved on the stick, very gently, no rudder, just the shallowest
of banking turns to cruise along the face of the ridge looking for a spot where there
was
an updraft.

No joy.

The aircraft was losing one foot of altitude for every forty it went forward towards
a sheer slope, and there weren’t that many feet left before you ran into the trees
and rocks below. She was moving faster than a galloping horse, faster than a pedalcar
on rails, faster than virtually anything else in the world except a peregrine falcon
stooping or a catapult bolt, and when hundreds of pounds hit at speed . . . the gentle
floating of the glider would abruptly transition to nasty un-Changed calculations
of kinetic energy release and the strength factors of human bone and tissue.
Her
bone and tissue. The only good thing was that this wasn’t happening over enemy-held
territory; it was pretty well uninhabited around here these days.

If I can get this thing down in one piece, we can bring in a horse team and pack it
out.

They’d been built to disassemble, and been modified since to do it more thoroughly.

“All right, my beauty, let’s
do
this,” she muttered.

Some of her older instructors had been pilots before the Change, when powered aircraft
could just bull their way through the air. Most of the time she agreed with the modern
school which held that dancing with the invisible currents of the sky-ocean was preferable,
but right now something to just
push
would be welcome. And aesthetics be damned.

“Well, shit, Bearkiller,” she told herself as she leveled out again, sparing a quick
glance downward.

“OK, the Bear Lord was aloft in something a lot less aerodynamic and with a lot higher
stall speed than this over mountains not all that far from here when the Change hit.
With Dad and Aunt Signe and all in the backseats. Uncle Mike walked away . . . well,
swam away . . . from a real hard landing, the rest of the family survived too; so
will you if it comes to that.”

Although he just
barely
survived. Holy Mary Mother of God, if he hadn’t—

Since she’d gotten her wings a little while ago she had a much better grasp of what
a combination of blind luck and superlative piloting had been required at the very
beginning of the Bearkiller legend. Her mind blanched at the thought that the whole
world she knew including her personal self wouldn’t have existed if her aunt’s future
husband been just a
little
less skillful or fortunate.

So I’ve got to live. Maybe as much depends on me!

She turned away from the ridge to try and get closer to base. That ridge ahead was
going to be
really
close, looking like a fanged jaw reaching for her. Her gut tightened in an involuntary
effort to haul the sailplane upward by sheer willpower. She absolutely needed to climb
at least a bit, but she
couldn’t
put the nose any higher. If she tried she wouldn’t climb, she’d just drop below stalling
speed and fall out of the sky like a leaf in autumn as the wings lost lift.

Like a leaf in autumn except for the last crunchy bit. Just a little more, then slam
the stick down once I clear the crest to get some margin back, then go looking for
an updraft—

Speed was dropping. Dropping fast,
too
fast. Reflex tried to make her turn the nose down again, but that would mean diving
into the mountain slope so bloody damned close below.

Just another hundred yards . . .

Stalling felt like slipping backward an instant after the controls went mushy.

Oh
fuck
me, what utter brass-assed moron came up with this mission in the first place—

The left wingtip brushed the top of a tall larch less than a second later. Whirling
impact, battering, tossing, the scream of tearing metal. She shouted and flung her
arms up in front of her face.

•   •   •

High King’s Host, Boise Contingent HQ

County Palatine of the Eastermark

(formerly eastern Washington State)

High Kingdom of Montival

(formerly western North America)

June 1st, Change Year 26/2024 AD

Fred Thurston was dickering with a would-be defector from what remained of the United
States of Boise’s army. Rudi Mackenzie stayed in the shadows at the back of the tent,
arms crossed on his chest, ignored after a single startled glance and a jerk of Rudi’s
head towards Fred. The man who was now High King Artos of Montival kept silent; he
was scrupulous in not interfering in the chain of command without very pressing need,
and with Fred such was very rare indeed.

Though there’s need more often than I’d like with others.

Artos the First was a young man, a Changeling as it was called here—he’d been born
near Yule of that year—but the High Kingdom of Montival was far younger. Its armies
were cobbled together from what had been a dozen separate realms, many of them with
a history of mutual suspicion or outright battle. Everything was a makeshift of constant
improvisation.

You fight with what you have, not what you’d wish,
Rudi thought.

Even if you were fighting the biggest war since the Change. Certainly the biggest
in North America since then, if you didn’t count the desperate scrambles in the months
after the machines stopped. Not the biggest in the world, probably; Asia still weighed
heavily in the nine-tenths-reduced total of humankind. Rumors trickled in now and
then across seas pirate-haunted when they weren’t empty. They spoke of warlords fighting
each other and invaders from Mongolia and Tibet across the ruins of China, and the
bloody rise of
Mahendr Shuddhikartaa hai—
Mahendra the Purifier—carving out a new empire called Hinduraj on the Bay of Bengal. . . .

The world is wider and wilder than we can know. But this is the part the Powers have
set me to ward.

The defector and Fred had gotten down to cases more rapidly than Rudi would have considered
tactful at first, which was another reason he was leaving this in his friend’s capable
hands. Someone who’d grown up among Boise’s folk would understand them in ways that
Rudi never quite could, even bearing the Sword of the Lady. The officer wouldn’t be
his subject unless and until he came to an agreement with Fred, and even then only
indirectly.

He and Fred had gone all the way to Nantucket and back together on the Quest; they
were comrades and allies, but lord and sworn follower as well. Fred had come to understand
the relationship those words implied, but most Boiseans didn’t. Worse, they thought
they
did
understand it.

Being ignorant is truly bliss compared to being misinformed, especially if you’re
aware
of the depths of your own ignorance. As Mother says, it isn’t what you don’t know
that will kill you, it’s what you think you know that just isn’t so.

“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” the officer said at last, saluting; he hadn’t been invited
to sit.

“I’m not President yet,” Fred replied sharply. “There’s a little matter of elections
first. I expect to win them . . . but I also intend to do it fair and square.”

The man looked very slightly anxious; he was in his thirties, with Brigadier’s insignia
on his loose olive-green linsey-woolsey field uniform of boots and pants and patch-pocketed
jacket. Fred wore the same kit, the uniform of the realm that called itself the United
States of America and ruled much of Idaho from its center at Boise, but without marks
of rank at all apart from the Stars-and-Stripes badge on the shoulder. That ostentatious
plainness was a statement in itself.

“But we have an agreement, sir?” the man said.

“Certainly, Brigadier Roberts. Unless you insist on having the personal parts in writing?
That could be embarrassing down the road, unless we altered some of the details.”

So you’d better
hope
I win the vote
went unspoken between them.
And use what influence you have to make sure I do. Someone else might not consider
themselves bound by our negotiations here.

The man licked his lips; they were thin, like his face, and together with his cropped
blond hair and pale yellowish eyes gave him the look of a wolf that had gone a little
too long without a meal. Those eyes flicked towards the back of the big tent. The
High King had never made any secret of the fact that one of the things the Sword gave
him was the ability to tell truth from falsehood. By now, nearly everyone believed
it.

Or more precisely, I can sense the intention to deceive,
Rudi thought.
The which means my simply standing here keeps him . . . relatively . . . honest.

Though with a man as fundamentally untruthful as this, whether
anything
he said was true at heart would be a matter for philosophers to split hairs over.

“Of course not, sir. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t trust your word.”

And oddly enough, he
does
trust Fred’s word. Wise enough not to judge others by himself, at least.

Fred nodded. “Report to my chief of staff, and we’ll slot your men into the overall
TOE. He’ll show you where to plant the eagle.”

He stood and returned the brigadier’s salute, then shook hands. The man left, his
stride growing brisker with relief, and there was a clank as the armored guards outside
the tent’s entrance brought their big oval shields up and thumped the butts of their
long iron-shod throwing spears to the hard-packed earth. Silence fell for a long moment,
amid the smell of hot canvas and dust and horses and woodsmoke from the encampment
beyond. There were sounds—voices, someone counting cadence, the massed tramp of booted
feet, iron on iron from a field smithy—but they were curiously muffled.

“I don’t like that deal at all,” Fred said quietly, when the defector was well out
of ear-range, looking at his right hand and turning it back and forth. “I’ll do it
for three-and-a-half-thousand men . . . to
save
three-and-a-half-thousand men . . . but I don’t like it at all.”

Rudi Mackenzie smiled wryly as he came forward and sat across from him.

“I don’t
like
it either, Fred. And neither of us
likes
fighting battles, but you do as you must, not as you would. You must have seen it
with your father; I certainly did with Mother, by Nuada of the Silver Hand who favors
Kings! It may mean
dying
for the people. . . .”

Fred ran a hand over his hair, which was cut short in a cap of soft black rings. “I
think I’d actually prefer that, sometimes.”

“We’re all
going
to die sometime, to be sure. More often ruling well means we have to do things like
shaking hands and breaking bread with men we’d rather put facedown in a dungheap with
a boot to the back of their necks. The which hand-shaking and bread-breaking is nearly
as unpleasant as death and wears harder on the soul.”

Fred grinned in weary agreement and kneaded the back of his neck. “Thor with me, this
sort of thing wears you out worse than a march in armor. And that’s an attractive
image. The manure pile and the boot and his face, that is.”

Rudi nodded. “And you can wash muck off your boot, but it’s harder to get clean of
that
sort.”

He jerked his head towards the entrance, the long copper-gold hair swirling about
his shoulders. Fred sighed and nodded.

“Should I have been more . . . tactful?”

“No, you were about right, I’d say. He’d smell a trap if you were all hail-fellow-well-met
and inviting him to sit down for a yarn and a tankard of beer with a slap on the back
in good fellowship. And he’d despise you if he thought it was genuine. Best to make
it a matter of business and advantage on both sides.”