The High King of Montival

CHAPTER NINETEEN

DOMINION OF DRUMHELLER

(FORMERLY PROVINCE OF ALBERTA)

JUNE 2, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

Artos 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?’

Rollins nodded. “And blocking forces to the border. We’ve had raids before, it’s often more effective to try and catch them as they retreat with the stock they lift.”

“But this is not just a raid,” Artos said gently. “It’s a war, and they’re here to kill, not to steal cattle merely. They’re after me; and failing that, destroying this ranch would tear a hole in your southern boundary that could not quickly be put right.”

The redcoat nodded jerkily. Artos stood for a long moment. Father Ignatius cleared his throat.

“We could retreat faster than they can pursue, until reinforcements arrive,” he pointed out, his voice carefully neutral. “They may well outnumber us, and their aim is definitely to attack you, Your Majesty.”

Rollins nodded unwillingly, though obviously every fiber of his body longed to rush to the rescue; he knew that war meant hard choices. The warrior-monk continued:

“Undoubtedly they had intelligence of our route. As I understand it, their mundane means for that work as well as ever. And if they harm you, we are no better off than we were when this war began.”

Artos smiled, but the negative gesture he used was brusque; he knew that the argument had to be made, but he very much doubted Ignatius either thought he’d listen to it or really believed it himself.

“I’m not likely to do well in this war if I refuse to engage whenever the enemy has more numbers,” he pointed out. “Also we have the advantage of a fortress to serve as anvil to our hammer-while it holds out, the which it may not do for long unless helped.”

And to be sure Ritva is there, probably. It would be a world less merry with her off to the Summerlands. And I would dislike to see that branch of my blood father’s line cut off.

Mary had carefully said nothing about her twin. Everyone on both sides was someone’s brother, sister, husband, father; a King had to keep that firmly in mind, whatever his own feelings were, if he was to keep faith with his subjects.

“And besides,” he went on easily, “there’s the using of the lovely gifts my mother-in-law-to-be has sent.”

Messages and light cargo had been passing over the border with Drumheller since that realm decided to commit itself some months ago, even before the snows melted in the passes, for which he had Sandra Arminger to thank, and Abbot-Bishop Dmwoski. Besides letters, they’d found several boxed suits of plate complete waiting for them as they advanced, neatly tailored to their measurements and made of the most refractory alloy steels modern armories could work. It was the sort of gift only a monarch could make at such short notice, and a rich one at that.

Say what you like about Sandra, she’s not petty.

Ingolf spoke over his shoulder to his nephew; Mark went running to alert the Richlander cavalry regiment.

“Now this will be a careful matter of timing,” Artos said. “The problem being that it takes so long to get the horses off the hippomotive-drawn trains and deployed.”

He looked behind him at the long, long line of vehicles on the rails. In point of fact they’d be helpless as sheep in a pen if they were attacked thus, and the riders not much less so than the horses. Which meant he had to get them down and deployed at a considerable distance from the enemy, while the Norrheimer foot could spring out of their pedal-carts and be ready in instants.

Ingolf caught his eye, and he nodded curtly; their minds were running on the same track. It was the only one available in this situation, if you knew your work.

“Major Kohler, get them deployed,” his brother-in-law said. “Company columns of march. Extra quivers slung to the bow-cases. Tell the troop-leaders to prepare for a meeting engagement.”

“Inspector Rollins, the map,” Artos said.

Kohler took off at a run, bawling orders as he went; presumably the men would be waiting already, with Ensign Vogeler’s warning. Artos bent over the paper, though he didn’t need it himself. He’d always had a good eye for terrain, and now he could see, as if hovering over it on hawk wings. But physical images were still the best way to explain to others. He could trace them on the map with his finger, and to his mind’s eye they became real.

“Father Ignatius, you’ll take both field artillery batteries with the footmen, under Bjarni’s overall command. Edain, you’ll command the foot-archers, our war band and the Norrheimers both; Bjarni, you’ll be in charge until I arrive, but I’d advise listening carefully to both of them-and then making your decisions. Here’s what we’ll do-”

When he’d finished, the fleece-lined sacks with the leaders’ plate-armor were open at their feet, and attendants were stripping off their clothes. Then they helped them into the black padded undergarments, with mail insets at vulnerable points like the underarms and grommet-laces for fastening to the armor. The steel carapaces went on swiftly as they spoke.

Bjarni’s plain Norrheimer hauberk was a lot less trouble to don; he shrugged into it and grinned at Artos’ plan.

“This is like the story of the sheep, the cabbage and the wolf, and how the man had to get them across the river in a canoe,” he said cheerfully. “Still, the landwights and the High One willing, we can do it if Wyrd will have it so. You don’t want me to reinforce the burg?”

“No; you could make it too strong to storm, but then the enemy will just ride away and hover about, making a nuisance of themselves and delaying us, the creatures. The railroad is too vulnerable and we can’t do without it, we don’t have the time. It’s squashing them like a roach under a boot I’d be doing, not swatting them aside like a buzzing fly that comes back to drive you mad.”

Bjarni nodded wholehearted agreement; there were reasons his folk had named him Ironrede, hard-counsel.

“It’s not too complex, at least,” he said. “The timing will be tricky, but then it always is, eh?”

Not a word on how he and his will all die if I don’t manage the other part properly, Artos thought. I didn’t misjudge this man’s quality.

Mathilda handed him his sallet; Sandra-or more likely Tiphaine d’Ath or someone in her service-had had the new one also scored and inlaid in niello in imitation of Raven’s plumage. The black feather crests over each ear rustled as he settled it on his head, buckled the chin-cup and flicked the visor up and down; with the plate suit’s bevoir covering his neck and chin, that left no gap for a point to use. He bent, twisted and stood again. The suit’s joints worked with marvelous fluidity, as if they moved on jewel bearings like a fine watch; the articulated lames that made up the back and breast gave him nearly as much flexibility as mail, with far better protection. It was a bit lighter, too, though even hotter than chain links since there was no movement of air through it.

“Now go,” Artos said. “Your Gods go with you.”

Bjarni turned and trotted over to his railcar, gave a brief explanation to the chiefs of his tribal contingents, and then they were off again.

Artos spoke quietly to Mathilda, in the moment when they could be private: “If I fall, you must take up the Sword, mo chroi.”

She went a little white with shock, but when she spoke her voice was quiet and controlled: “Have you seen something?”

“No,” he said, and shook his head. “If anything, victory is likely, and myself surviving it. But it’s not certain. An arrow at the wrong time. . and if that happens, you must take the Sword. It would be. . hard, for you. It’s made for me and my descendants. But I’ve never known you to shirk a task because it was hard; not even when you were a prisoner, in the War of the Eye, and you and I washed dishes together!”

She stared at him for a moment, then ducked her head. “Your Majesty,” she said.

His mouth quirked. “You needn’t be quite so formal as that, acushla.” More seriously: “I wouldn’t demand this of the Princess Mathilda as my vassal. That would be stretching a lord’s authority too far. I ask it of my friend.”

A brief pressure of the hand: “Of course, Rudi.”

The First Richland Volunteer Cavalry fell in with commendable speed. Artos made a stirrup of his hands for Mathilda to mount, lifting her and the armor without much effort. Then he went to one knee for an instant, taking up a clod of dirt and touching it to his lips, the warrior’s acknowledgment of mortality.

He rose and murmured with his head against Epona’s saddle. “Lady Morrigu-Badb-Macha, hear me. Great Threefold Queen, Red Hag, Crow Goddess, Dark Mother, She who is terrible in majesty amid the clash of spears. On Your earth will the blood be spilled; to Your black-wing host I dedicate the harvest of the unplowed field whose crop is the skulls of men. Be with me now, and know that when my time comes I will go willingly to You, joyful, as to a bridal feast.”

Then he put his hand on the high cantle of Epona’s war-saddle and took a skipping step and swung up. Someone handed him his lance, and he rested the butt in the ring on his stirrup. Beside him, Ingolf grumbled:

“Yah yah, the armor fits, but I’m less mobile than the rest of my command,” he fretted. “Bad practice. A single unit should have uniform equipment.”

Artos grinned. “Your function is to command, not dash about shooting your bow,” he said. “And that gear will let you shed most arrows.”

Which is what’s bothering you-the desire to share more of your men’s risks, he thought. Commendable, to be sure, but I’m not going to let you deprive me of such a man as yourself to soothe your feelings, brother-in-law.

“I have no objection at all,” Mary said beside him.

“This is fascinating,” Fred Thurston said, looking down at his own suit. “I don’t think a sword could hurt you at all in this stuff. . except your Sword, of course, Rudi.”

“Not unless you lie still and let someone stab you in the face,” his wife, Virginia, said. “But this much ironmongery cramps my style and I’m not used to having the stirrup leathers so long. Feel like I’m standin’ up, not in the saddle at all. Still, I got this awful feeling we’re going to need every advantage we can get.”

Rollins and his forty redcoat lancers fell in around him. The red serge jackets were still visible, beneath the knee-length hauberks and plate vambraces and greaves. Their helmets were odd, a blunt serrated cone in the center with a flat brim around it, and hinged cheek-pieces; more or less a kettle helm, such as many of Ingolf’s countrymen preferred, but also like a metal hat. Their round shields bore a buffalo’s head face-on, topped with a crown that bore a cross and the French motto Maintiens le Droit.

“ ‘Uphold the Right,’ ” Artos said. “Fitting! And the gear was mostly copied from the PPA’s style, eh? Or what they used ten or fifteen years ago.”

“When we were fighting the Association for the Peace River,” Rollins said. “And it’s proved useful elsewhere. Though from what you and your horse are wearing, we’ve fallen behind the times.”

“Not necessarily. This is specialized equipment. Imagine five thousand men-at-arms in plate on barded horses.”

The redcoat whistled silently. “That would hit like a sledgehammer on an egg!”

“Sure and it would. . does, in fact. But imagine them lumbering across these plains, with horse-archers stinging like wasps and running away faster than the knights could pursue. What you’ve got there is a good compromise, and you can still shoot from the saddle as well.”

The horsemen were all ready to advance now, deployed columns of fours with Artos and the redcoats on the right and the First Richland on his left. He pulled on the guige strap that held his shield across his back, then ran his arm through the loops. A brief alarm, and then forty more Anchor Bar Seven cowboys joined them; they’d been gathering for a doomed attack of their own, and their relief at seeing a substantial force was palpable. Artos tipped his lance to the west, and the pennant flapped in the breeze.

“Forward,” he said.

Bjarni Ironrede pointed his red-running sword downward. “Plant the standard!” he barked. “Shield-wall, shield-wall! Positions!”

The raven banner’s butt-spike was rammed into the hard prairie dirt, and a hundred warriors formed up to either side of it, their big round shields overlapping with a hard clattering rattle of ironbound birch. Those in the second, third and fourth ranks stood ready behind them. That gave everyone the place they’d need; then they relaxed for a moment, leaned on their pair of spears, many pushing up their helmets and taking a drink from their canteens as the foe drew off. They didn’t stop just out of bow-range, either; as soon as they weren’t masked by the Norrheimer force the catapults on the walls opened up on them, bolts and round shot hissing by overhead and driving them a thousand yards away.

Bjarni took a drink himself, the warm stale water flowing blissfully down his throat; this climate sucked the water out of a man’s body, he found, and it was turning into a warm day, with scarcely a cloud in the sky. His breathing slowed after the mad dash from the railcars and the brief savage fight; running in armor took almost as much out of you as battle. He was rank with sweat beneath his mail, but that was a familiar enough experience for a warrior and a farmer both.

The bowmen were to their left in a double rank-what Edain Samkinsson called a harrow formation. Everyone was facing south and a little east, which put the afternoon sun over their right shoulders and in the foe’s eyes. To their right and behind them was the burg, and most particularly the gate guarded by the flamethrower, the fire-drake’s breath whose ugly work lay twisted and blackened and smoking still before it. Ladders and leather ropes dropped from the ramparts as he glanced that way, pushed and pried away.

The Christian mass-priest Ignatius was getting the eight light field-catapults set up in front, spreading the trails, testing the elevating and traverse screws, hooking the armored hoses to the pumps and the hydraulic jacks that cocked the springs. A priest, but a man too, and a dangerous one for all he was so quiet. Dangerous with his hands, more so with his head.

“Good,” Bjarni grunted. “This is a solid position, with the fort at our backs. We can hold this ground.”

The endless horizons here still made him feel nervous and out of place, but the iron-copper stink of blood and the dung smell of cut-open bodies were wholly familiar-for that matter, it was not altogether different from the autumn hog-butchering time. Syfrid came up beside him, with his son Halldor bearing his white-horse flag; the Norrheimers were formed up about two hundred yards from the walled burg of the local chief. That had been his own inclination, reinforced by messages born by runners let out by the little postern gate in the nearest tower.

The godhi here has his wits about him, he thought. And there are many enemy dead around the walls. The Cutters are brave men, killers, but they’re tired and they’re confused. They’ve been hit from different directions, distracted with a new task before they could finish the first. This can work. Thor, lend me your might!

“Are these the Cutters that are supposed to be so fearsome?” the lanky chief of the Hrossings said contemptuously.

He kicked a body aside and leaned on the haft of his ax. Many of the men had shoved enemy fallen aside with their feet as well, to make for better footing. Most Norrheimer helmets had a nasal bar; Syfrid’s had a triangular mask instead, with large holes cut for the eyes; it gave him the look of a predatory bird, and the twin horse-tail plumes that rose from either side of its peak added to his height. His teeth showed yellow-white through his thick brown beard.

“They were as awkward as hogs on river-ice,” he went on; the blade of his bearded ax was wet, and there was a shiny line on his helm where a shete had grazed it. “Not much more work than slaughtering-time after the first frost, Lord King.”

“We caught them mostly by surprise,” Bjarni said; he’d been using his ears as they came west. “And they fight on horseback by preference, with the bow; they dismounted to storm this burg, not to stand shield-to-shield with us. I’d not care to be caught out here on the plains without horsemen of our own, or a burg to retreat to.”

He glanced left. “And plenty of good bowmen,” he added.

They were mostly his men, but they’d been selected by Edain the Archer from among the many volunteers and he’d seen to their gear and had been bully-damning them into constant practice all through their journey. Privately the Norrheimer king was impressed by how much they’d improved and more than a little awed by how even the best of them still fell far short of the master-bowman’s skills.

The man is like Ullr come down among us, he thought. He’s called the Archer and is the best of these Mackenzies. . but their battle line must be fearsome if they can produce a man like that. And he knows every trick to make arrows count for more in battle, too. I wish he were my handfast man, and not Artos’. Some like to hoard gold or weapons or horses, but what a King should covet is men. Good men can always get you gold and gear and stock.

“Here they come,” said Syfrid, who’d kept his eyes fixed on the enemy; he crouched a little, shifting his ax to a one-handed grip and bringing up his shield.

“Come and kiss this!” he shouted at the enemy, and flourished his war-ax; then he turned, bent a little, and slapped it on his buttocks in derision.

“Are they supposed to kiss your ax or your arse?” Bjarni said, and everyone within hearing laughed.

This time the enemy had all had a chance to get mounted; their chiefs had called back their storming parties from around the wall, and they broke forward in two compact bodies from either side of the wrecked building by the rail line. They charged straight towards his men, and already he could see them rising in their saddles and drawing.

“Shield-wall!” Bjarni shouted, and his signalers repeated it by horncal l.

The snarling dunt of the ox-horn trumpets brayed beneath the gathering thunder of hooves. The shields of the rear ranks came rattling up, overlapping like a shingled roof or a dragon’s scales, with the warriors’ spears making the spikes of a porcupine. Bjarni nodded even as he raised his own; they were notably faster and crisper at it than they’d been when they left Norrheim.

And then the artillery cut loose; eight tung-crack! sounds as the heavy springs released and the throwing arms smacked into the padded stops. The weapons were Iowan-made, light six-pounders; they called them scorpions after a deadly stinging insect of the far southern deserts. His own folk used catapults mainly on ships, and sometimes to defend towns. Bjarni had wondered whether they and their horse-teams were worth the bother of dragging along in the field. Now he watched the fist-sized iron balls smash into the enemy, traveling so fast that their passage was a blur until they struck. Again and again, gruesome tangles where they’d aimed low to set the shot bounding through the thicket of horses’ legs.

We must have this art in Norrheim too, some part of Bjarni thought. We can’t afford ignorance, as if we were wild-men. We won’t be isolated forever.

And then the crews crouched under their own shields as arrows arched up in a mist like rising threads. He could hear a piercing whistle, and the shafts seemed to fly faster as they approached. He ducked his head and held the shield higher.

“Draw. . wholly together. . let the gray geese fly. . shoot!” came Edain’s bellow.

Shafts began to arch out in return in pulsing volleys. Just then the first flight from the Cutters struck the shield-burg like a stream of gravel striking an old sheet-metal barn, but one that did not stop. Bjarni grunted in surprise at the force of the impacts against his shield; as he watched, four gleaming points showed through the tough birch plywood and sheet steel and the felt covering on the inside. The metal boss over the grip kept his hand safe, but he could hear men cursing or screaming as points went home. More banged into shields, bent or snapped or glanced off hauberks and helms, but there was no way to strike back and even good mail wouldn’t stop them all.

No way to strike back here, he thought. Not for us. But the archers-

The enemy were slanting away sharply from Edain’s command, with piles of horses and men kicking or crawling or lying still in front of them. . but some of the bowmen were down too. They couldn’t hold shields up and shoot at the same time, and mostly they had less armor.

Still, horses are bigger targets than men.

Then the Cutters were looping away and shooting over the rumps of their horses, ready to turn in a circle and come back to peck at their foes once more. The fieldpieces began to speak again as the crews scrambled to their machines; they outranged the saddle bows by two or three times.

“The bastards can shoot,” Syfrid said, looking at his shield; there were seven or eight arrows standing in it, and some of them had punched through a handspan or more. “If they could do that to us over and over again-”

Bjarni used the hilt of his sword to hammer the points back out of his own shield, then a sweep of the blade to cut the shafts on the other side.

“They won’t,” he said stoutly.

He glanced eastward down the long curved length of the railroad where the railcars stood with their doors open like the wings of birds. Artos was there, invisible behind the swell and drop of the land, waiting for precisely the right moment to appear and strike.

Not waiting too long, I hope!

“Deploy them in double-rank line,” Artos said.

Epona paced forward, treading the hard ground of the dry prairie beneath her hooves. The sun was four hours past noon, moving to a point where it would be in their eyes, but not too low yet on this long summer’s day. Tiny white grasshoppers spurted ahead of the hooves of the horses; the ironshod feet made a drumhead of the soil, a low muffled rumbling at this steady pace, and a plume of dust rose and drifted behind them. The visor of the sallet acted like the brim of a hat while it was slid up along the smooth low dome of the flared helmet, and the land rolled in green-tawny waves ahead of them.

“Two-deep is pretty thin,” Ingolf observed.

“There are more of them than of us, even with Bjarni tying some down,” Artos said. “I don’t want them to flank us. Your Richland heroes are a little green for a maneuver as complex as refusing a flank in the middle of a moving cavalry engagement. And I don’t want them piling up and colliding when they try.”

Ingolf ’s mouth twisted in agreement. “But they’ll do fine in a straight-up charge.”

“That they will. There are old soldiers, and bold soldiers-”

“-but few old, bold soldiers,” Ingolf finished.

“Also it will avoid getting into a long arrow duel.”

Ingolf nodded again. His countrymen here were mostly from the landed classes, who had the leisure to practice with horse and shete and saddle bow. The Cutters didn’t just practice; they would be men who rode to earn their living on the open range, long hours every day. And who shot from the saddle every day too, to fill the cookpot or to protect their herds or just because there was nothing else to do while you were herding but shoot at thrown targets or bushes or cow-pats or prairie dogs, except stare up the south end of a northbound cow. Their rulers had been at war for most of the past generation, too; they would all have fought before.

“We’ll do better if we get stuck in hand-to-hand,” the Readstown man pointed out.

“Also true.”

The youngsters all had good mail shirts and steel helmets, and they were better drilled than the enemy. The Sword of the Prophet had discipline, and their standing army, but the Ranchers and their men fought more like a swarm of bees. A shirt of light mail wasn’t all that much of an advantage against arrows. It was a very considerable one in a hand-to-hand fight with blades.

Montana is poor in metals and rich in men; no great cities before the Change and plenty of rangeland. When the old world fell, the folk were mostly able to escape, but there are few of the great steel towers for salvage.

The Church Universal and Triumphant’s hostility to all outsiders and its bans on many types of machine hadn’t helped, either.

Ingolf nodded, raised a hand in salute and turned his horse. Mary followed him, though she paused to say:

“The hand of the Valar over you, brother.”

“The Crow Goddess spread Her wings over you, sister,” he replied. “And may She be with Ritva, too.”

“So mote it be.”

Ensign Vogeler’s brass trumpet blew a call, and the First Richland shook themselves out from column into two lines staggered so that each man had a clear view ahead, moving smoothly on horses who knew the trumpet calls as well as their riders. Men and mounts looked harder and leaner than they’d been at home, but the humans were just as cockerel-confident. The redcoat commander gave them a pawky glance and angled over beside Artos.

“First battle?” he said.

“For most of them. Ingolf has experience and to spare, and his second-in-command fought the Sioux in Marshall and Fargo. A few others.”

“They’ll be brave, then,” Rollins said sardonically. “Fool’s courage.”

“Which works as well as any other; a man’s first charge may be the best he ever has in him. Now, we’ll be the pivot on which the door turns. We’ll need to keep your men well in hand.”

The older man looked slightly offended. “We’re the Force,” he said. “Your Majesty.”

“That’s what I’m counting on and why I’m using you here, Inspector,” Artos pointed out, and grinned.

Mathilda rode behind him and to his left-his sword side, which meant that she could use her shield to cover him in a melee.

“You know how to get him going, don’t you?” she said softly as the redcoat reined aside to lead his men.

“It’s part of a King’s trade,” he said, then turned his head. “Eh, Fred?”

The younger Thurston nodded. “That’s not quite how Dad put it, but it amounts to the same thing.” A frown. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Yes, you can,” Artos and Virginia said simultaneously; she bit back a snort of laughter.

“And you’ll have your opportunity soon enough,” he said.

The dark handsome young face turned southward and west. “We’re not far from the border,” he said. “The old Idaho border. Red Leaf said there was news about my mother and my sisters.”

“They’re safe enough,” Artos said.

Which is probably true. Even a bad man will love his mother or his younger sisters, more often than not. My judgment of your brother Martin was that he was ambitious beyond reason, and ruthless as a stoat, but not the sort who lacks all human connection. And Virginia is giving you a very worried look. She doesn’t know or love them; she loves you and she loves the prospect of vengeance on those who killed her father and took her family’s ranch.

“Now let’s cut a way for them to freedom, eh? And to a payment on an account the Cutters owe the whole world.”

The pillar of red smoke had grown as they approached. Now they came over the last rise of land and saw the Anchor Bar Seven homeplace laid out before them. Ahead the strip of cultivated fields, to the right the dam and lake, and then beyond that the walled headquarters on its not-quite-hill. It was toy-tiny in the distance, and the figures of the men who fought beneath the walls were like ants, but he knew. Knew where each was, the pitch of the land, the range of the weapons on the towers. Things that might be played out in his mind, each turning on the pivot of his decisions like the throwing-arm of a trebuchet. They were many, but the thread of his actions led through them like a vein of gold in quartz.

And it is the best course, he thought, shivering a little internally. Not a certain one, because the world is not made so that anything is certain, but the closest to certainty and near enough for King’s work.

“Here they come again!” Syfrid said harshly.

The enemy were forming up, just beyond catapult range. The ground between them and the Norrheimers was littered with dead men and dead horses, or some of both not quite dead; every time they came across the killing ground to within bow-range of the men of the shield-wall the catapults Ignatius commanded reaped them, and then the engines from the towers, and then Edain’s bowmen.

“They’re paying,” Bjarni observed.

“So are we,” Syfrid said. “We’ve lost thirty men, and more wounded, and all we are is bait. We haven’t landed a blow since we chased them away from the wall.”

“Not bait,” Bjarni said. “We’re the plug that keeps them back. They could overrun the bowmen if we weren’t here. Horses won’t run onto a spearpoint, or ram into a shield-wall.”

Syfrid jerked his head backward. “Within that burg they couldn’t touch us and we could massacre them if they tried to storm the wall.”

“They’d be all over us if we tried to retreat, like flies on a midden. Besides, Artos needs us here,” Bjarni said. “They’ve lost five to our one, maybe more, and more of their horses. They weaken themselves, like a man trying to butt through a locked door with his face. While we’re here they don’t think of anything else.”

Syfrid nodded grudgingly. “As a man will with a bit of gristle stuck between his teeth and driving him mad. But if your blood brother Artos doesn’t come soon they’ll gnaw us down and swallow us.”

“He’ll come,” Bjarni said. “And we’ll die the day the Three Spinners cut the thread of our lives; not a day sooner, not a day later.”

Syfrid’s face stiffened a little; that was an implied rebuke. Then they had more pressing work. Bjarni frowned as he watched the mass of horsemen approach. They were packed closer together, the formation a bit deeper and wider. And they were picking up speed, not holding to a hand gallop but coming flat-out. All the ones with any body armor were in the front, the men of rank. .

“They’re not going to shoot us up and retreat, they’re trying to overrun us. Something’s changed. They want, they need, to finish us quickly.”

He glanced eastward. Was that a twinkle of sun on steel, above a distant black line?

“Yes!” he said. Then he filled his lungs and shouted:

“Our brave comrades are here, they’ll strike the enemy soon! Hold fast, Norrheimer men! This time we can greet them with spears and welcome them with swords. Hold fast! Thor with us!”

“Ho La, Odhinn!”

A growl went up with a baying eagerness in it; his men were tired of being pecked at from beyond their own reach. A ratcheting clatter began as spearshafts and the flats of swords and axes were hammered on the shields, building up into a drumming thunder of defiance and anger as men stamped and roared. The catapults shot; only five were manned now, for want of crews. The beating of the hooves filled the earth, and the ground to their front was a solid mass of riders. The first flights of arrows were rising from the bowmen to his left, and then every man in the enemy host rose in the stirrups. The Norrheimer shields came up, but this time more men fell as shafts punched through, or flicked through the gaps.

“Close up, close up, Ni?hoggr bite your balls!” he heard a voice rasping. “Close up when a man falls, don’t leave a gap!”

“Ready, ready,” Bjarni called.

He crouched with the shield-rim right up under his eyes, grunting a little as the shafts went thock-thock-thock-thock and hammered him back against his braced right leg. Two more broke off his helmet, hurting like blows with a sword, and another banged at an oblique angle into the mail over his right shoulder, breaking several of the links but not penetrating the stiff linen padding beneath. The ground was shaking beneath him, thousands of hooves hammering through it. A few men around him were wide-eyed; more were mouthing curses or calling on their Gods or just baring their teeth and screaming hatred and rage. The arrowstorm slackened as Cutters began slapping their bows back into the scabbards and drawing their shetes, a long rippling glitter along the enemy line, a flexing as they slid their shields onto their arms.

“CUT! CUT! CUT!”

Bjarni rose and held his sword up, sucked the hot dusty stinking air into his lungs:

“Now!” he screamed, and slashed the blade downward towards the foe.

The shields came down from overhead and every man behind the front rank threw a spear. The heavy weapons weren’t really made for that, but the target was close, close. Three hundred punched into the mass of horsemen, and they staggered. The front rank of Norrheimers crouched, butting the ends of their spears into the dirt as if they faced so many bears or boars, and the charge struck like wagonloads of anvils. Horses reared and struck out at the shields with their hooves, and Norrheimers shouted and stabbed at their faces and chests and guts, holding up their shields to stop blows as the riders hammered at them from above.

“Kill them! Kill the swine! Don’t prick their pimples, kill!”

Near Bjarni a horse took a spear in the belly and went mad, bounding forward in a great leap, then falling screaming like a woman in childbirth, thrashing blindly. That did what no spurs could; it broke the shield-wall as the half-ton beast collapsed forward onto men and kicked about. Instantly a wedge of horsemen were thrusting into the gap. Bjarni threw himself forward; the first of them was a man with a thong-bound yellow beard beneath a scarred contorted face. He had a mail shirt and a helmet of leather covered in metal plates and topped with a horsehair plume dyed scarlet, and he dodged a spear and leaned far over and slashed with terrible skill. A man spun away with half his face sheared off, screaming in a spray of blood.

The wounded man rammed into the Norrheimer king, broke Bjarni’s forward rush and left him staggering, his shield swinging wide in an instinctive try for balance. His hirdmenn threw themselves forward to cover him with reckless abandon, but more Cutters were pushing through behind the chief in the plumed helmet. The blade went up, fluid and sure.

Then the fixed snarl behind it turned to a gaping scream. Syfrid was there, his shield slung over his back and his ax in both hands, extended in the follow-through to the blow that had hacked the Cutter’s thigh open and chopped through the bone, with a spray of blood following the blade in a curve that seemed to hang in the air like a trail of scarlet light behind a torch.

Bjarni was back on his feet; a guardsman put his shield against his back to help him.

“Behind you, Syfrid!” he shouted.

Now they don’t know whether to shit or go blind, Artos thought grimly.

He took a deep breath of the thundery air, smelling of endless grass like a giant haymow, and horse and sweat and oiled metal and leather. His men were sweeping in from eastward now, between the railway line and the little lake where the ruins of the pre-Change ranch-house lay, a long rippling line of armor and the plunging heads of horses. They rode up the long shallow rise from the tilled fields towards the modern settlement, jumping the little irrigation ditches without effort or splashing through them in wings of spray. There was a huge clot of Cutters hung up at the Norrheimer front, and his lips skinned back in what might have been a smile.

A moving horse under close control was a weapon in itself and one of terrible power, besides what its rider could do. In a melee, the saddle of a frightened stalled horse was like trying to fight while sitting in a chair-a skittish chair that jerked you around at short, unpredictable intervals. The Norrheimers were breaking their ranks and wading into the Cutters, spear and sword, ax and hamstringing seax-knife, giving more than they received. Their archers had closed up and were shooting into the enemy’s rear, steady careful aimed shots.

Artos blew a hufff of relief. He couldn’t see it at this range, but that close control meant Edain was still alive, as surely as a glimpse of the oak-colored curls would have. Every time you took a pot to the well, there was a certain chance of it breaking, and he didn’t want to be the one to ride to Dun Fairfax with that news. Plus Edain was his closest friend, Mathilda aside.

And he’s my strong right arm, with the strength of the good brown earth that bore him.

The rest of the Cutters were turning to meet the new threat, all of them that could break away; they had the sun behind them, an advantage since it meant his men were staring straight into it. He’d always been good at calculating numbers quickly, but now he knew. Eight hundred twenty-six, more than half of what they had left. More than he had, but not impossibly more; they were good riders, but their horses looked tired. His eyes flicked over the battlefield and then he saw the light pedal-cart that Ritva had taken ahead on the scout with Rollins’ men, abandoned a hundred yards eastward of the wrecked warehouse. It was empty, the doors wide open, and feathered with arrows until it bristled like a porcupine. His mind sketched distances.

Possibly, he thought. Possibly. Or possibly she’s dead, though I see no bodies. Poor Ritva, it was always like a game to her, even when the stakes were life and death, the which she knew full well. They say our father was like that; that there was always a bit of a grinning boy on a dare in him, even at the end when he knew he was dying.

The trumpet brayed again, and the First Richland moved up from a trot to a canter; they would all switch to a gallop when they were closer, to get the horses to the target without being blown. Epona responded automatically, and he glanced over his shoulder.

Then he blinked. Virginia Thurston still had her visor up, and. .

I’ve always known she hated the Cutters. He’d seen her scalp one of her neighbors who’d gone over to them, on the border of the Powder River country last year. I didn’t suspect quite how much she hated them, though.

Though all the Powers knew they deserved it, the sight of her white staring face was still a little disconcerting. She had her bow in her hands and an arrow on the string, not being trained to the lance. He looked around again, and the Cutters were much nearer; the two forces were coming together with the shocking combined speed horsemen had in open country.

“It was a complex plan,” he admitted to himself with another mirthless grin. “But sure, it was complex in conception, not execution. It’s simple enough the now. There they are, and we bash them. Time to kill.”

Filling his lungs: “Sound charge!”

Rollins’ trumpeter sounded it, and it went down the line.

Then he used the edge of his shield to knock down his visor, and the bright world narrowed to a slit.

“Morrigu!” he called, then screamed on a rising note that built to a banshee shriek: “Morrigu!”

The arrows lifted from the oncoming Cutters, and the Richlanders and redcoats shot back. Behind him Virginia was screaming wordless hate as she drew and loosed, and Fred called: “Ho La, Odhinn!”

The long lifting stride of the great mare was like floating, like flying. The arrows came down with a whistling rush, and he brought his kite-shaped four-foot shield up and let the lance incline down. Shafts went thunk into the shield, skipped and broke and glanced from his armor with sounds like a metalsmith’s hammer striking, and felt like that too, but it was nothing. A few broke off Epona’s barding, and she bugled shrill defiance.

Behind the raven visor his teeth pulled back from his lips; the men ahead would kill him if they could, and he intended to return the favor. Swelling speed, dust, the huge bellows sound of Epona’s lungs working, strings of slobber from her mouth spattering her barding and his armored legs. The lancehead came down; the others to his right followed in a rippling wave. He rode lightly, picking his man, some Montana Rancher with the rayed sun of the CUT painted on his steel-strapped leather breastplate.

The man brought his shield up, but the light leather targe barely slowed the point of the lance. The Cutter’s body flexed like a flicked whip as the lancehead punched through him and blood burst out of his nose and wide-open mouth. Impact shocked Artos back against the tall cantle of the war-saddle and the lance cracked across.

He threw away the stub and swept out the Sword.

Shock.

The world seemed to slow for an instant, sounds deepening. Arrows moved past him, and he could see how they twirled as they flew. Cold fire ran through him, and he screamed in what might be agony or joy beyond bearing, and he could feel his connection to everything that was. Raven wings beat behind him, vast, implacable, fanning the fires that consumed worlds. He was those fires, the twisting transmuting light at the heart of exploding suns, the primal blaze that set the universe alight and made the very fabric of things. Time rushed past him, and he rent the substance of eternity as time itself rent apart cheap cloth. Behind him new life would rise.

This is how it is to wield the lightning, some lost fragment of selfhood knew. This is what it is to be a God, a lord of sky and storm and war!

He screamed again as the riastrad took him and the Dark Mother’s mantle covered his eyes. He danced among veils of stars and galaxies, and the substance of his being flung outward. A tug at his hand, and a man’s arm flew upward; a backhand cut and ruin flopped away. Epona slammed into a lighter horse shoulder to shoulder, and the beast flipped backward to land on its wailing rider. Men hammered and stabbed at him, but shield and armor protected him like Her wings. He struck and struck, and struck and struck, killing with each blow. An ax twisted the metal of his visor, and he ripped it off with an impatient sweep of his shield-hand and cast it aside. He was wholly of the moment, and the observer at the still and hidden heart of things, the pivot on which the worlds turned.

Men saw his face, and the hardened fighters of the CUT screamed and threw themselves aside and fled. A few drove their own blades into their throats before he could reach them.

Sword and man and horse were one.

And that One was Death.

“Rudi!”

A voice was calling him, beneath the long slow sonorous song that was the dance of Time running from glowing Creation to the flaming Rebirth. The Sword struck, struck-

“Rudi! Come back! Now!”

Light and darkness blew through him. He was a man who rode a horse, and-

“I am the smile of the Mother and the grin of the Wolf, the dancer and the Dance! I am light, and lust, and power, and love, and hate! I-am-Artos!”

“Rudi, please, please don’t leave me!”

Shock.

He gasped, mouth struggling to suck in air to a body burning its substance with supernal speed. A wave of weakness, as he stared at Mathilda’s white tear-streaked face. He blinked, and then screamed again as he collapsed back into himself, as if the universe crammed itself into a grain of sand. Time resumed.

The battlefield had fallen still, except for the sounds of agony in the background. Men were staring at him; some had thrown themselves down and beat their faces against the earth, or hammered at their own temples with their fists. Many wept.

“I. . I’m me, Matti. Thank you.”

The bulk of the Cutters were still in front of him, though a spray were already in full flight southward. He rode out towards them; Epona reared and milled the air, shrilling a challenge, then came down again, pawing the earth with one hoof. He thrust the Sword towards the sky.

“Hear me!” he called into the echoing silence. “This is no mere war of men for land or power. Your lords have sold you to demons who are the enemies of humankind, and of Life and Mind itself; their victory would be your own eternal defeat. If you stand here, every one of you will die. Run, and some will see their homes again; not many, but some. Tell your people what I have told you, I, Artos, High King of Montival, who am the Sword of the Lady. Go!”

He never knew what followed in the next few minutes. When he came to himself he was standing and Mathilda had her arm around his waist, holding something to his lips. He drank, choked on the strong almost tasteless vodka, drank again. The Sword was sheathed again; it never needed to be cleaned or sharpened.

“God, that was scary,” Ingolf said slowly.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Artos said. “From the inside, it was far worse.”

“Ah. . you want a pursuit? Our horses are fresher, we could probably catch a lot of them.”

Artos shook his head. “No. No need to lose men in little scrimmages, and it’ll be dark soon.”

“I hate to see so many get away.”

Artos’ hand touched the pommel of the Sword, and he spoke with the certainty of a man saying the rain would come when the clouds rolled in black:

“I told them the truth. Not one in ten of them will cross the border alive.”

He looked around. The after-battle tasks had resumed, and folk were pouring out of the gates; a few score of the enemy were captives, not counting their wounded. The Drumhellers were giving those first aid, rather than the mercy-stroke, though of course they tended their own hurt first. . and the strangers who’d come to rescue them. Bjarni’s men had taken the gravest losses, but most of them were still on their feet. He gave Mathilda’s arm a squeeze, more symbol than anything else when they were both in full plate, but symbols were important-more important than anything else, he was finding.

Then he walked over to where the Norrheimer flag stood. Bjarni was there, looking downward at something. .

Syfrid of the Hrossings, Artos thought.

Lying on his back, mouth still a little open and his great ax in one outflung hand, two arrows through the mail on his chest. Lanky Halldor Syfridsson glared across his father’s body at Bjarni.

“Wyrd bithful araed,” the Norrheimer king said. “Fate is that which cannot be turned aside.”

“Now my father is dead,” the younger man said, a tear streaking his blood-spattered face. “As you wished!”

The redbeard shook his head; blood clotted the close-cropped whiskers as well. It pooled on the ground around them, and the flies buzzed hundredfold.

“No, by almighty Thor and Forseti who hears oaths! Your father was not my friend, but he was my father’s man, a worthy godhi and a strong warrior, brave and cunning, and we fought side by side.”

“He should have been King!”

“He would have made a good one, but that was not his wyrd. We were rivals, yes. So the Gods made men: to contend with each other for power and place, as they made bulls or stallions to be rivals to lead the herd. Yet I did not wish him dead.”

“So you say!”

The Hrossings and Bjornings bristled at each other, and the men of other tribes looked alarmed; that was perilously close to calling Bjarni a liar. Artos stepped forward and pulled the sheathed Sword from its frow.

“Hold!” he said, and held it pommel up between them. “Look. Look and see the truth of each other’s hearts!”

They did, their eyes meeting through the crystal. Artos felt a humming, a meeting and merging. Bjarni’s face went pale. The long horselike countenance of the younger Norrheimer seemed to waver. Then it firmed as he clenched his jaw.

“I have wronged you, lord. I say it. Accept me as your handfast man!”

“I will. It’s right to grieve for a father, but this day Syfrid feasts with the heroes in Valholl. He waits your coming, and your sons, and the sons of your sons.”

Halldor went to one knee, and Artos stepped back smiling very slightly. He and his party faded away, to leave the Norrheimers to settle their own affairs. A man in a long mail hauberk rode up and slid from the saddle with the ease of one who’d lived on horseback.

“Mr. Mackenzie?” he said, extending a hand. “I’m Avery McGillvery, the Rancher here. Many thanks! Your sister gave us just enough warning-she’s in our infirmary, resting.”

“Ah, and that’s good news!” Artos said. He felt something inside him thaw.

“And then you showed up just in time. They’d have been over the wall in another ten minutes.”

Inspector Rollins came up, grinning as well. “A and B troops are nearly here,” he said. “Another four hundred men.”

“So, the Force is with us!” Artos said.

The Rancher and the Inspector laughed. Artos and his party looked at them in surprise.