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

hands on the hilt, heaving air in through an open mouth for a moment before he could stand on legs suddenly a little wobbly.
    His face was nearly as red as the brick color of his short-cropped beard, and sweat dripped off his nose and soaked the padding under his knee-length mail byrnie. His body was strong—not overly tall, yet broad in the shoulders, thick in chest and arms—but he ached in every inch, though the morning sun was still low in the eastern sky and the battle was as young. The sweat stung in minor cuts he hadn’t noticed until that instant, and places where the mail coat had been hit hard enough to rasp skin raw even through the stiff quilted padding of the gambeson.
    Healers and helpers dragged the wounded back towards the tents and surgeons’ tables at the center of the shield-wall circle. He saw one wisewoman in green with the laguz -rune on her chest, her own hand bandaged, helping along a warrior whose leg was drenched with blood and who cursed every time that foot touched the ground. Around him hale men were stepping back to the rear rank, letting the fresh second file move forward.
    “Where’s Ingmar?” he said, asking after the guardsman who was assigned to ward his right side.
    “Dead,” his uncle Ranulf said succinctly, and jerked his helmeted head back; there was a gilded boar on the crest. “I’m going to see to the rear of the shield-wall.”
    He took off at a springy trot, despite his forty years and the weight of his gear. The whole array shook itself in the moment’s rest, passing canteens from hand to hand or taking spare weapons from the stacks behind the rear ranks. A few had the strength to hoot insults or jibes at the enemy, where they’d drawn off. His standard-bearer stood behind him to the left, a younger cousin holding the tall lance with the Bjorning war-flag—made by his long-dead mother of heavy black-edged white silk, straight along the upper rod-stiffened edge and the pole, but joined by a loose curve. Gold streamers edged it, and on the cloth was a black raven shaped of jet beads, with wings outspread and seeming to beat in the wind. Over its chest was the blazon of the pre-Change war band his father had served in, two letters—AA, but with the outer arm of each curved and the inner vertical so that they made a near-circle together.
    The cousin set the point of the shaft in the ground and took Bjarni’s sword, wiping it down and giving it a quick touch-up with his hone. Someone else handed the chieftain a fresh shield; a sword would last a lifetime with luck, but a shield was lucky to endure an hour of sharp steel and strong men and heavy blows. Bjarni worked the strained fingers of his sword-hand inside the steerhide glove and shook out his wrist. On that side was Syfrid Jerrysson, the chief of the Hrossings, leading his fighting tail of hirdmenn and levied farmers, a tall lank man with a dark brown beard showing the first gray threads. His long-scale byrnie was made of polished washers riveted to a leather backing. The overlapping disks of stainless steel were spattered with the filth of battle, but enough metal still showed to give a cold glitter in the pale sunlight of earliest spring. Fresh scratches showed as well.
    The fifteen-year-old who held the Hrossing banner of a stylized white horse on green looked pale and gulped down nausea; from disgust at the sights and stinks, Bjarni thought, not fear. The sword in his free hand wavered a little.
    “Never seen death before, Halldor?” Syfrid gibed at his son; the boy flushed, took stance and braced his back and the pole that bore his tribe’s standard. “It’s time, then!”
    “I haven’t seen this much death before either,” Bjarni said; he’d been in fights since he came to a man’s age, but not pitched battles. “Not all in one place.”
    “I have,” Syfrid replied. For a moment his voice was remote. “In the year of the Change, yes . . .”
    Then he went on briskly, but with a grudging note in