Free The High King of Montival: A Novel of the Change by S. M. Stirling

chest over his mail hauberk. Even to someone who didn’t know him, he looked to be exactly what he was; a fighting-man vastly experienced, shrewd, and dangerous as an angry bear when the steel came out. And unlike Fred Thurston he was accustomed to making do with scratch bands of amateur warriors.
    “Princess Mathilda is in charge of our logistics . . . our supplies; she will set rations and give all orders concerning forage and shares. Virginia Thurston is horse-mistress.”
    The rancher’s daughter nodded. She also snorted a little; to her way of thinking nobody here knew anything about the beasts.
    “Father Ignatius is master of the making of camps, the setting of watches, and all matters concerning health and order. Edain Aylward is master-bowman and chief of archers. Don’t waste my time quarreling with any one of them. Understood?”
    Sober nods. These Norrheimers were more stiff-necked than his clansmen at home, and almost as fond of argument and dispute, but also a bit more practical. Vastly more so than, say, nobles of the Association.
    “Then let’s be off. March!”
     
     
    He paused a half hour later, to look back over the cleared snow-covered fields to Kalksthorpe, squinting against the sun before they entered the shade of the low pines.
    “What’s wrong, Rudi?” Mathilda said, snowplowing her skis to a stop beside him and thrusting down her poles.
    He frowned and rubbed his left hand across his face. The right stroked the pommel of the Sword; he did that often now, a habit that felt ancient already.
    “I . . . I don’t know,” he said. “It’s . . . as if I’m concentrating all the time.”
    “You’re a King and running a war, Rudi!”
    He shook his head. “It’s not just that. It’s like I’m concentrating all the time , sure. As if it stops only when I make it, instead of the other way around. Just now I found myself looking through the list of candidates for Chancellor of the Realm in Montival! Which is not only odd, but premature in the extreme!”
    She smiled at him. “Oh, that’s easy. Father Ignatius.”
    She’s right , he thought; something clicked in his mind in acknowledgment as she went on:
    “Though you may have to hit him alongside the ear and throw the chain of office over his head while he’s dazed.”
    Artos chuckled. He does take that humility business rather seriously , he thought.
    Aloud: “And I feel like a pipe a lot of the time. Like a pipe with something rushing through it, and being worn away by it.”
    Her thick brows frowned in concern. “What does that really mean?” she said.
    “I don’t know!”
    He made a gesture of apology as she flinched a little; he seldom raised his voice. Then he looked down at his clenched fist and forced the long sinewy fingers to unfold.
    “You know that engine they have down in Corvallis, at the university? The one that can be set to do all sorts of calculations?”
    She nodded, and he knew they were thinking of the same thing. The great room, and the cogs and gearwheels and cams, moving smoothly as the hydraulic turbine whined, and the white-coated attendants like priests of a mystery, or a glimpse of the ancient world.
    “The Analytical Engine.”
    His mouth quirked a little bitterly. “Thinking about what the Sword does . . . I feel like a dog in that room with the Engine, looking at it and trying to understand it, with my nose going around in circles and my ears drooping!”
    Forlornly, she tried a joke: “I didn’t understand it anyway, Rudi!”
    He sighed and rubbed his forehead again. “And sometimes I can feel things happening through the Sword. As if it was carving a path from . . . somewhere . . . to somewhere . . . to do . . . something. But I haven’t the least idea what.”
     
    COUNTY OF THE EASTERMARK
BARONY OF DAYTON
PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY SOUTHEASTERN WASHINGTON STATE)
MARCH 16, CHANGE YEAR 24/2023 AD
     
    Eilir ghosted through the chill darkness to where her