S. Stirling - The High King of Montival

His great half-mastiff bitch Garbh looked up at him to see if he wanted her to fetch the arrows. He dropped a hand to her head and she leaned into him, showing her long yellow man-killing fangs as she grinned and lolled her tongue.

“No, girl, not yet. That log will be an unhealthy place for a few hours more.”

Under his determined cheerfulness ants seemed to be crawling under his skin. They were needed at home, and home was a continent away.

KALKSTHORPE, NORRHEIM

(FORMERLY ROBBINSTON, WASHINGTON COUNTY, MAINE)

MARCH 12, CHANGE YEAR 24/2023 AD

“Kalk, how long have we been arguing?” Heidhveig said sharply.

“Off and on, since we met!” the old man said, his seamed face pushing towards her like a snapping turtle’s.

Somehow the resemblance was greater for the fringe of white hair around his bald skull; he’d been bare on top when they’d met, twenty-five years ago.

Aesir witness, he’s older than me.

They were sitting in her loom room-mostly used by her daughters and granddaughters and their apprentices these days, and for seidh. The pale winter sunlight washed over the vertical frame from tall windows on two sides. Also over a scattering of hanks of spun wool, and a stuffed tiger (made of real tiger skin) with one ear chewed off by a great-great-grandchild, a horse on wheels. . The room smelled of wool, faintly of ash from the fires that had run wild during the corsair attack on the town a few months ago, and strongly of cod-and-onion stew and baking rye bread from the kitchens. Always a little of the sea, out where the Greyflood met the Atlantic. Noises too; someone singing, children’s voices, a dog barking. Her household here had started out large, and grown more by births and weddings and simple accretion than it had lost by youngsters moving away.

“No, when we met , you persuaded me that the Change was about to happen, which is why I moved my family here from California,” she said.

He nodded. “It was good advice.”

“And I took it. I’ve given you good advice since, haven’t I? As a friend and a seidhkona.”

His nod was a little more grudging; her fame as a seeress was nearly as important to Kalksthorpe as its trade and crafts were.

“So believe me when I say Rudi and the others will be back soon. I’ve seen it.” She sighed. “Care to bet ? Say, that long table with the carved edge against. . oh, four bolts of woolen?”

“Done,” Kalk said.

And a child of seven ran into the room, her unbound maiden’s hair swirling like black mist beneath a fur cap with earflaps and the rosy flush of the day’s chill still on her cheeks. A tiny gold horse hung on a linen cord around her neck, the sign of Gna, Frigg’s messenger.

“Sails, Amma!” she said, her voice crackling with excitement. “A ship! A big, big ship!”

“Njord sink me, I should know better by now,” Kalk muttered. “Take the table, take it!”

“Feet!” Heidhveig said sternly to the girl, hiding her smile and pointing.

“Yes, Amma. Sorry, Amma.”

Gundridh Thorvinsdottir was actually a great- granddaughter, but that was what all the youngsters called her; the half of Kalksthorpe under sixteen mostly did, for that matter. The child hopped from one foot to another, taking off the muddy overboots she had forgotten and holding them in one hand; there was mud on the hem of her thick burgundy sumac-dyed wool skirt too. Her eyes still glittered; Kalksthorpe was a fishing town and a port in a not-too-small way by today’s standards, but a strange vessel this early was still a rare break in routine.

“I wonder what ship that could be?” Heidhveig said dryly to her old friend. Then: “Well, fetch me my staff, girl!”

Gundridh did, grinning again. She carried the staff carefully, though: it had a brass knob on the end, with carvings of a raven, cat and bear below, set with amber and garnet and a small compass. Her boots were tucked under one arm-which wouldn’t do her dress any good either. A brindled tabby jumped out of a basket of wool and onto the warm spot on her chair as Heidhveig walked down the hall to the stairwell and descended with a thump and grunt for each tread. She was well for someone with her years; you were well or dead, at her age and in this time and place. But her joints hurt in cold weather nowadays.

Before the Change someone had told her that you started groaning like that when you were past prime breeding age-it let the predators know you were old enough to be safely culled from the herd. She grinned a little at the thought as she came to the big hall that ran the length of the house on the ground floor and gave on the front-door vestibule. There were two hearths blazing, and it had a multitude of uses, from ritual to storytelling. But the family’s arms were also racked on the walls, and now people were bustling about quietly; the menfolk of the house and more than a few of the women were donning nose-guarded helmets and war sarks of metal-studded leather or mail shirts, and handing out spear, shield, sword, bow and ax. Even the dogs caught the mood and waited quietly. Everyone was still of a mind to be cautious after the corsair raid last year-though it was very unlikely they’d be so unlucky again anytime soon.

“Don’t count any man lucky until he’s dead,” she said to her son Thorleif, when he said that. “But this time you’re right.”

He grinned back at her, showing blocky irregular teeth, and lifted his seven-foot spear to demonstrate that he wasn’t taking any chances; he was well into middle age himself now, silver in his receding dark hair but still strong, a bold-featured man with a square jaw and beak nose. Then he thumped the ashwood shaft of the weapon against the boss of a round shield painted with a black raven on a red field. The loud, dull boom caught everyone’s attention.

“Carefully!” he said. “I don’t want anyone stabbing someone in the ass because you’re hurrying needlessly. Chances are it’s nobody hostile. Keep good order and keep the points up . Karl, you’re still not fifteen-door-guard for you.”

Heidhveig thumped her staff on the floorboards in turn. “It’s Artos Mikesson and his folk, returned with the Sword of the Lady, as the High One foretold. I felt it when he drew the blade. Everyone on this continent with the Sight did! And a good many others.”

“I didn’t,” Kalk observed sourly.

“You saw the Change coming,” she said. “How often since?”

Kalk grunted wordlessly.

“Right, Mother,” her son said. “We’ll still turn out. Practice never hurts.”

He turned to his wife. “Though if we’re to have guests …”

“We slaughtered that pig just the day before yesterday,” she murmured, her eyes going distant. “We haven’t started on that. Plenty of potatoes. . I’ll start some tortiere and sausage thawing, get out some apple pies we froze last fall, and put more dough to rise. . you get going!”

Heidhveig donned her padded coat and a long, dark blue cloak fastened with a valknut, pulling a knitted cap over her braided white hair. Her household’*s fighters crowded out the door, joining the others of the town; everyone had his assigned place. For the Heidhveigssons that meant down by the docks and boatyards. The alarm bell tolled from the stave-hof, the temple, but paced slow and steady. That meant the others could suit their pace to hers and Kalk’s determined stump rather than dashing; the old asphalt and new cobbles were slippery under a layer of wet slush, and she picked her way cautiously. Falling and breaking a hip was not a good idea these days. Breath misted white in the damp air, and edged metal gave a watery gleam. They passed half a dozen construction sites littered with tools and sawdust and chips, where houses wrecked in the raid were being replaced, solid fieldstone-and-log structures replacing old pre-Change frame for the most part.