The High King of Montival: A Novel of the Change Read Online Free PDF Page A

completely without truth. Mostly his business was salvaging in the dead cities along the old American coast; there were far fewer such remains of the ancient world in his native land, and his people needed the metals and goods. But that often meant fighting, with the bands of mad cannibal savages who haunted the ruins, or with others on the same venture. The Kalksthorpe folk often clashed with his, being great salvagers themselves. For that matter, as pagans they were legitimate prey by law, but he didn’t expect Rudi Mackenzie to grasp that point, being only a kufr , an unbeliever, himself.
    God’s will , he thought. The Merciful, the Lovingkind, does as He wishes, not as we wish. It is not for mortal men to question Him. I live, my son Ahmed lives, my blood brother Jawara lives. We will purge our homeland of a great wickedness. Praise be to the One!
    He sighed again and went on aloud: “Ready to sail, Inshallah , with the morning tide in week, ten days, if all work hard and we no need cut timber. Not much food though, for all people these, even for short voyage. We all go hungry before end.”
    Rudi Mackenzie showed his teeth in an expression that did not even pretend to be a smile. “Needs must. I grudge every day. My people need me at home, and they need me now.”
    Then a voice cried out: “Sail! Sail ho!”

CHAPTER TWO

    BEND
CAPITAL, CENTRAL OREGON RANCHERS ASSOCIATION
MARCH 20, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
     
     
     
    “T his city is going to fall,” Signe Havel said bluntly. The Rancher-delegates who made up the CORA assembly roared—some in agreement, some in protest, some to hear themselves make noise, as far as she could tell. It echoed off the walls of the old pre-Change theater; shouting faces shone desperate in the light of the gas lamps, a thick smell of sweat and burnt methane and hot lime, wool and leather and linen. The representatives of the city itself and the smallholders who farmed the irrigated land upstream and down mostly just stared at her wide-eyed.
    “Why can’t you stop them?” someone shouted.
    Signe leaned forward and braced her hands on the sides of the podium, and the lames of her articulated suit of plate clattered slightly against each other, despite the backing of soft leather. Moving quietly in armor was like trying to tiptoe in a suit sewn with cowbells. She wanted them to notice it; notice the nicks and the indented lines that looked like someone had taken something sharp and pushed it against the steel very hard . Which was exactly what had happened, and she still had the bruises underneath.
    “You may notice we’ve all been trying to do exactly that, your people and mine.”
    She paused to let the way she looked—and for some of the closer delegates, smelled—reinforce the words.
    Rationally it’s silly to wear sixty pounds of metal to talk to people, she thought. But then again, who ever said war is a rational activity? And the whole world went crazy when I was eighteen. It’s been getting worse ever since. My armor is a symbol, and Mike taught me about the value of symbols. He used them and knew he was using them, even when he believed in them himself. Because symbols hit down below the part where knowing makes any difference.
    She was very tired, tired enough that her eyeballs felt as if they’d been rolled in a mixture of fine grit and cat hair before they were stuffed back in their sockets. There was probably enough red around the pupils to drown out the blue.
    I’m forty-three now. I can’t go for days without sleep anymore. Willpower makes up for the tired and the hurt and the hungry, but every time it takes a bit more water from the well and someday soon I’m going to run dry.
    “It hasn’t been working, no matter how hard we try, because they outnumber us three to one,” she said, when the noise had died down a little.
    If anyone but Mike Havel had been flying that light plane over the Bitterroots on Change Night, she and her family would have died like