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

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.
    The towering roof-upon-roof of the hof was in the center of the town’s only open square, with its gilded carvings and dragonheads snarling from the carved rafters. Folk mostly followed their trades in their own homesteads these days, but past the temple lay the part of town down by the Greyflood and the piers which held businesses smelly, smoky or requiring more space; fish-salting works, renderies that turned whale oil into soap or candles, foundries, worksheds, tan-yards, timber-yards. The half-built ribs of a ship rested on a slipway.
    A low palisade with gates marked off the town from the docks proper, much lower than the double log wall that ringed the town elsewhere. Most of the seaward defenses were out in the water, a sunken pattern of great logs set in the harbor bed tipped with steel blades waiting to rip out the belly of any ship that didn’t know their pattern. Blockhouses at either seaward end of the wall held catapults that could smash boats trying to row foemen ashore. The fishing boats were mostly hauled up in long sheds, but the larger salvage craft rested at their moorings, the long slender bowsprits reaching over the cobbled roadway. The savage figureheads below were dismounted and stowed; no sense in risking the landwights’ anger.
    Nearly anyone who could walk at all was behind the fighting levy, peering past shoulders and shields and spears. Thick patches of mist lay on the estuary’s ruffled gray water this morning; warmer water was coming in from the south, meeting the still-strong hand of winter. Then the tips of two masts appeared, ghosting slowly forward under the slight onshore breeze.
    “Schooner,” Kalk muttered, peering; his sight was still keen for distant things. “Big one . . . Moorish-built . . . no, it’s not that one we captured and Artos took south! Close, but not that one . . . looks like she took some damage somewhere ...”
    The crowd tensed, then broke into a hum as a flag appeared at the mainmast; blue, with a green white-topped mountain, overlaid with a longsword whose guard was the crescent moon. Anchors rattled and splashed, and the ship swung steady, pitching slightly with the waves. A tall man sprang to stand on the frame of the bow-catapult, standing easy as a cat on the slippery moving metal. Red-gold hair hung to his armored shoulders, a bright dash in a world of gray and brown and dark green.
    Then he drew his sword. A low murmur of awe went through the watchers at the silvery flash of blade and pommel.
    “Hail!” someone shouted, and in a moment the crowd had taken it up:
    “Hail! Hail!”
    Heidhveig shivered a little and drew the cloak closer with her gloved hands. There was a glitter to the steel that was like music—like trumpets and drums, like the silver chime of bells on the bridles of destriers, a song that could seize the hearts of men and transfigure them.
    “More potent than Tyrfing, forged for the hand of a King , ” she quoted softly: those had been the High One’s words, spoken through her while she was in trance on the seidhjallr , the Chair of Magic.
    “What do You plan now, old man? Your daughters will bring you many a hero before this is finished.”
    The rhythmic shouting broke apart in cheers, and boats set out to shuttle the crew ashore. Heidhveig waited,