The High King of Montival: A Novel of the Change (47 page)

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Authors: S. M. Stirling

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BOOK: The High King of Montival: A Novel of the Change
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The camp stretched out around them—endless rows of tents in a half dozen styles, picket-lines and horse corrals, more rows of wagons with their draught poles neatly aligned, pyramids of boxes and barrels of hardtack and beans and salt pork and spare gear stacked twenty feet high . . .
And men. Swarming, marching, heaving loads onto and off of carts and railcars from the half-dozen newly laid spur lines, bicycling as individuals and in squads and companies and battalions. Out on the open ground that in peacetime served as pasture for the herds of Des Moines and cleared ground for the murder-machines on the city wall more columns and blocks drilled, the sun sparking off armor and honed metal. Lines of crossbowmen advanced, knelt, fired their weapons in a series of deep sharp
tung
sounds and worked the cranks. Forests of pikes crossed, countermarched, lifted and fell to the calls of bugle and drum . . .
The army of the League of Des Moines was enough to make the hair bristle up under your bonnet. Artos kept a calm front, but he had been staggered by its size as well. In all, more than sixty thousand men were camped here already. He mentioned that, and Abel shrugged.
“Plus what the Sioux can kick in. Though technically the Lakota are
your
men, now, Rudi . . . Artos.”
“Twelve thousand men,” Red Leaf said. “That’s as much as we can spare and still cover our frontier. But they’re the best light cavalry anywhere, and mostly combat-experienced.”
Unlike your plowboys and the Farmer and Sheriff scions
went unspoken.
“We can help you with supply; extra bows, arrows, mail shirts, helmets, and things like horseshoes,” Kate put in helpfully, topping him neatly.
Red Leaf nodded. “I gotta say, though, this is impressive. Just the
numbers
. I haven’t seen this many people all together since the Change, and that’s just the army, not the city.
That’s
just ff . . . damn amazing.”
“It’s not full mobilization,” Heuisink said, jerking his head at the camp. “If we called up all the militia, we could field somewhere over a hundred thousand. More if we had time to train the Unorganized National Guard reserve. We’ve got a program in hand to give everyone
some
training but that’s for the future. Then if we really had to we could raise a quarter million. That’s not counting any allies. Iowa’s the biggest dog in the pack but we’re only about a quarter to a third of the total population of the Midwest . . . nobody knows exactly, we’re the only people who do a real census.”
For an instant Red Leaf looked as though he’d swallowed something sour. Artos nodded soberly. Sandra Arminger had a mania for collecting numbers—statistics, they’d called it in the ancient world—and the Dúnedain Rangers had sent explorers very far afield; both estimated that there were between fifteen and twenty million human beings between what had been Guatemala and the high Arctic, halfway through the third decade of the Change Years. Around half of them lived in Iowa and its immediate neighbors; over a tenth in Iowa alone. A rough rule of thumb was that a well-organized farming community could put a tenth of its total numbers into the field in time of war; more if the war was short and close to home.
Potentially the Midwestern bossmandoms could raise a
million
troops.
“But this is about as many as we can reliably feed out west, providing we get the railways repaired,” Heuisink said. “I have to admit the Nebraskans have been working hard at that and they’re well organized for once, and we’ve been helping. Even so, after a certain point the horses pulling grain eat everything they started out with. That point comes later on steel rails than it does on roads, but eventually you get there anyway.”
That admission made the Sioux look a
little
less unhappy, but not much. If you had an enemy who could shrug off the loss of whole armies as great as any you could field, and simply replace them with new ones just as large, the end of any struggle became rather predictable. Artos remembered things he’d read and that Sir Nigel had told him about Rome.
“Now it’s time for the State banquet,” Kate said firmly.
Mathilda laughed at the look on Artos’ face. “Enjoy it while you can, darling,” she said. “We’re going to be traveling very fast indeed as soon as they get those treadmill railcarts for the horses ready.”
“Hippomotives,” Abel said and looked at him. “Which will be by day after tomorrow, the engineers say. I’m a little puzzled why you’re taking any troops. It’d be faster still if you and your friends just went hell-for-leather, and you said you need to get back as soon as possible.”
“Partly to make it more difficult to overrun us with a raiding party, and even more the politics, my friend,” Artos said.
The which Matti advised me on.
“They’re expecting me, back home. Me and the Sword of the Lady.”
He touched the crystal pommel.
“And they’ll be glad to hear of the mighty host you’ve raised to their aid. But a mighty host a thousand miles away is one thing, and soldiers there to see and smell another; a sampling will be . . . reassuring, so it will. And I’m making sure that word gets there quickly enough.”
 
 
“I’m not altogether certain it’s appropriate to start a whacking great war by stuffing yourself and listening to music, much less speeches,” Artos said.
The banquet was in the throne room of the Bossman’s palace in Des Moines—that wasn’t precisely what they called it, but it was what they meant. A great dome soared above in a fantasy of rare woods and columns, and the floor tiles of colored marbles swept in a circle around an oculus in the middle of the chamber, itself edged with a railing of gilt brass and wrought iron. The banquet tables were arranged in a larger ring around the oculus, and the Regent’s seat was back to the throne at the base of the great staircase that swept upward between two tall bronze statues of robed maidens holding lanterns.
Those glowed as the gas flames heated their incandescent mantles. The scent gave a faint tang beneath the odors of the roast suckling pigs, glazed hams, turkeys, barons of beef or buffalo or elk, lamb and veal, platters of smoked sturgeon, potatoes whipped with cream and scallions and garlic or scalloped or au gratin, tender asparagus, salads of greens and nuts and bloodred tomatoes, hot breads and a dozen more dishes. More lights of the same sort flared and hissed on the huge cut-crystal chandeliers above, and a spendthrift extravagance of fine beeswax candles burned on the tables, glittering on glassware and polished silver and gold and fine cloth. All the wealth and power of Iowa were here, the Sheriffs and richer Farmers, the National Guard generals and the industrialists of the city.
Most of the younger women were in local imitations of the cotehardie Mathilda had introduced and Kate taken up last year, a blaze of brilliant color and jeweled bands around gauzy, elaborately folded wimples and wrists and waists. A rather smaller proportion of the young men were in parti-colored hose and doublet and houppelandes with trailing dagged sleeves, but there was a fair number nonetheless. The sight gave him a moment’s sorrow for Odard. Matti glanced at him and he touched her hand, knowing she shared it; the young Baron of Gervais had delighted in that peacock display. Some of them looked as if they’d plundered the same books the PPA and its Society ancestors had referenced, with a wild disregard for mixing periods.
“At least Mother keeps the Associates to the fourteenth century, mostly,” she sighed.
“Little did you know what you did when you entranced Kate with your tales of court at Portland and Castle Todenangst,” he said to her. “I hear they’ve taken to tournaments, too.”
Matti grinned. “I never really did like the cotehardie. At least I don’t have to wear one here in
summer
.”
The older folk stuck to dresses and the bib overalls that were gentleman’s garb here, or even to the archaic suit and tie, though the greenish formal uniforms of the Iowa National Guard were common as well.
Servants in bow ties and white jackets swept away the last of the food and set out delicate desserts of pastries and ice cream, and the priceless rarity of coffee only slightly stretched with chicory. Artos sighed within; now would come the speeches. Iowans loved after-dinner speakers even more than Associates or the Faculty Senate down in Corvallis, if that were possible. You could tell none of them made offerings to Ogma the Honey-Tongued or Brigid, who was the patroness of eloquence and rhetoric, either. Mackenzies loved argument and debate, but at least they mostly did it well.
“Get used to this, Rudi,” Mathilda said. “A King’s life has a
lot
of ceremony.”
He sighed openly. “You know, acushla, there’s many a thing I want to
do
as High King, starting with winning this war but not ending there. Things that need doing, and I think I can do them well—more of them with you to back me, and our friends. But it bewilders and amazes me that so many wish to have such a job
as
a job. I’d rather work in a sawmill. I’d sleep better and my digestion wouldn’t suffer, so it wouldn’t.”
Mathilda chuckled and began to reply. Then she stiffened, staring at the side of a towering silver basket full of colorful fruits. Her hand darted out and seized a porcelain coffeepot and whipped it over her shoulder.
“
Assassins!
” she screamed, in the same instant—not in fear, but at maximum volume to cut through the buzz of white noise.
A real scream sounded . . .
Artos rose and turned before the first syllables were out of Matti’s mouth, pushing off with one foot against a table leg and swaying his torso aside. A nine-inch curved blade flashed by, brushing his ear with cold fire; he wasn’t sure whether it had been aimed at him or Mathilda, but he was sure that the bow tie and white tuxedo coat weren’t the man’s real uniform. Not that it mattered, and half the killer’s face was covered in scalding-hot coffee. The bladed palm of his own left hand whipped down into the shoulder of the assassin’s knife arm, striking with a dull axlike sound as bone and cartilage snapped. In the same instant his knee pistoned up into the man’s crotch. He was wearing a cup beneath his trousers, but that still brought a shrill shriek.
Artos turned instantly, leaving the first assailant. Mathilda was handicapped by the cotehardie, but in seconds she had the man efficiently facedown on the table with his functional arm in a paralysis hold and his own kill-dagger pricking behind one ear. He heaved and screamed in rage despite the agony until she reversed the weapon and rapped him behind one ear with scientific precision.
Artos had his own problems. The whole head table was dissolving into a chaos of screams and flashing knives.
Mary and Ingolf were back to back in front of Abel Heuisink, who was clutching at a spreading red stain on his side and stamping at something out of sight on the floor as if on a scorpion. Ingolf had another of the false waiters by the wrist and had disarmed him by the straightforward method of squeezing and twisting until the bones broke with a tooth-grating crackle, while he used the captive arm to whip the man forward into a crunching head butt. He could see Virginia Thurston, née Kane, taking down another with a spectacular leaping kick with one hand braced on the table; she’d insisted on wearing the gold-riveted blue jeans that were formal wear in her native Wyoming.
Fred was nearly as fast, but he’d been delayed by snatching at a saber hilt that wasn’t there. Iowa was a civilized realm, where men didn’t carry swords or fighting-knives to a state dinner. Father Ignatius was on his feet, one hand wrenching the rope belt of his black robe free; from the way it whipped through the air as he sidled in front of Mathilda the knot at the end had a lead core. Artos snatched a cover off a plate and dove to his right towards the Regent of Iowa with desperate speed, thrusting it out like a buckler between her and the Cutter. The dagger there clanged against the antique silver, but that left him draped across the table and off balance.
Kate Heasleroad was as helpless as he, sprawled backward and pinned by the royal clothing, but she scrabbled and kicked furiously, and the heavy skirt took the first stab of the dagger. Artos scissored his legs and came erect in time to catch the man under the jaw with the heel of his palm. He wasn’t set for the full bone-shattering power the blow could deliver, but it jarred through his arm and shoved the smaller man back on his heels. He was vaguely conscious that Bjarni had closed with the only other assassin, taking a stab in the belly that the mail vest under his shirt turned, then grabbing him in a bear hug and squeezing, squeezing . . .
The last man was back on the balls of his feet, knife held out and point down with his thumb on the pommel, an expert’s grip that could stab or back-slash with rattlesnake speed. Artos stripped the little sgian dubh out of his knee-sock. Perhaps thirty seconds had passed since Mathilda saw the first man’s reflection in the silver before her and saved them all, and the guards were closing in at last—there weren’t as many of them in the throne room as there had been in mad Anthony Heasleroad’s day.
There was the briefest pause as the knife-man’s eyes locked on his.
“Don’t do it, man,” Artos said. “Surrender and I’ll pledge your life.”
The blue gaze narrowed, and the knife-point began to move. Artos looked into the face of desperate courage, and killed it.

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