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

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