The Sea Peoples Read online

  ALSO BY S. M. STIRLING

  NOVELS OF THE CHANGE

  ISLAND IN THE SEA OF TIME

  AGAINST THE TIDE OF YEARS

  ON THE OCEANS OF ETERNITY

  DIES THE FIRE

  THE PROTECTOR’S WAR

  A MEETING AT CORVALLIS

  THE SUNRISE LANDS

  THE SCOURGE OF GOD

  THE SWORD OF THE LADY

  THE HIGH KING OF MONTIVAL

  THE TEARS OF THE SUN

  LORD OF MOUNTAINS

  THE GIVEN SACRIFICE

  THE GOLDEN PRINCESS

  THE DESERT AND THE BLADE

  PRINCE OF OUTCASTS

  NOVELS OF THE SHADOWSPAWN

  A TAINT IN THE BLOOD

  THE COUNCIL OF SHA–DOWS

  SHADOWS OF FALLING NIGHT

  OTHER NOVELS BY S. M. STIRLING

  THE PESHAWAR LANCERS

  CONQUISTADOR

  ACE

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by S. M. Stirling

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  Map by Jade Cheung

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Stirling, S. M., author.

  Title: The sea peoples: a novel of the Change/S. M. Stirling.

  Description: First edition. | New York: ACE, 2017. | Series: Change series; 11

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017019825 (print) | LCCN 2017024613 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399583186 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399583179 (hardback)

  Subjects: LCSH: Regression (Civilization)—Fiction. | Quests (Expeditions)—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION/Alternative History. | FICTION/Fantasy/Epic. | GSAFD: Science fiction. | Fantasy fiction. | Alternative histories (Fiction).

  Classification: LCC PS3569.T543 (ebook) | LCC PS3569.T543 S43 2017 (print) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019825

  First Edition: October 2017

  Jacket art by Larry Rostant

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To Jan, for being wonderful

  CONTENTS

  Also by S. M. Stirling

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Maps

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Robert W. Chambers, author of The King in Yellow, one of the seminal texts of modern fantasy and horror, and pioneer of the unreliable narrator. If he was good enough for Lovecraft to be inspired by (aka “steal from”), he’s good enough for me to do the same!

  Thanks to Kier Salmon, unindicted co-conspirator, who has been my advisor and helper on the Change since the first.

  To Gina Tacconi-Moore, my niece, flower girl at my wedding twenty-nine years ago, Queen of Physical Fitness and owner of CrossFit Lowell, who gave me some precise data on what a really fit young woman, such as herself, could do.

  To Steve Brady, native guide to Alba, for assistance with dialects and British background, and also natural history of all sorts. He saved me from an embarrassing error about vultures this time, for example!

  Pete Sartucci, knowledgeable in many aspects of geography and ecology.

  To Miho Lipton and Chris Hinkle, for help with Japanese idiom; and to Stuart Drucker, for assistance with Hebrew.

  Diana L. Paxson, for help and advice, and for writing the beautiful Westria books, among many others. If you liked the Change novels, you’ll probably enjoy the hell out of the Westria books—I certainly did, and they were one of the inspirations for this series; and her Essential Ásatrú and recommendation of Our Troth were extremely helpful . . . and fascinating reading. The appearance of the name Westria in the book is no coincidence whatsoever. And many thanks for the loan of Deor Wide-Faring and Thora Garwood, on whom she gave fresh advice and help for The Sea Peoples.

  To Dale Price, for help with Catholic organization, theology and praxis.

  To John Birmingham, aka that silver-tongued old rogue, King Birmo of Capricornia, most republican of monarchs.

  To Cara Schulz, for help with Hellenic bits, including stuff I could not have found on my own.

  To Lucienne M. Brown, Pacific Northwesterian and keen wit, for advice and comments.

  To Walter Jon Williams, Emily Mah, John Miller, Vic Milan, Jan Stirling, Matt Reiten, Lauren Teffeau, and Sareena of Critical Mass, for constant help and advice as the book was under construction.

  Thanks to John Miller, good friend, writer and scholar, for many useful discussions, for lending me some great books and for some really, really cool old movies.

  Special thanks to Heather Alexander, bard and balladeer, for permission to use the lyrics from her beautiful songs which can be—and should be!—ordered at http://faerietaleminstrel.com. Run, do not walk, to do so.

  To Alexander James Adams, for cool music, likewise: http://faerietaleminstrel.com/inside.

  Thanks again to William Pint and Felicia Dale, for permission to use their music, which can be found at www.pintndale.com and should be, for anyone with an ear and salt water in their veins.

  And to Three Weird Sisters—Gwen Knighton, Mary Crowell, Brenda Sutton and Teresa Powell—whose alternately funny and beautiful music can be found at http://www.threeweirdsisters.com.

  And to Heather Dale, for permission to quote the lyrics of her songs, whose beautiful (and strangely appropriate!) music can be found at www.heatherdale.com, and is highly recommended. The lyrics are wonderful and the tunes make it even better.

  To S. J. Tucker, for permission to use the lyrics of her beautiful songs, which can be found at http://sjtucker.com, and should be.

  And to Lael Whitehead of Jaiya, http://www.broadjam.com/jaiya, for permission to quote the lyrics of her beautiful songs. One of which became the Montivallan national anthem.

  Thanks again to Russell Galen, my agent, who has been an invaluable help, advisor and friend for decades now, and never more than in these difficult ti
mes. I’ve had good editors, but none who’ve helped my career and work as much.

  All mistakes, infelicities and errors are of course my own.

  PROLOGUE

  BETWEEN WAKING WORLD AND SHADOW

  Where am I? Prince John Arminger Mackenzie thought. I was at the fort . . . we stormed the wall . . . something fell on me. . . .

  Something loomed ahead of him, then vanished again in the blur.

  Is that Carcosa?

  Thinking about the ramparts glimpsed for a moment was a distraction from the pain, as John stumbled along with his feet bleeding on the ruts and rocks of the roadway and his shoulders screaming every time the two pulled on the pole.

  I don’t know what they are but they have hands.

  His hands were tied in front of him, and the stick was run between his elbows and his back, an arrangement which made it impossible to look up without straining his neck muscles and impossible not to stumble if he didn’t.

  What’s different? he thought. Why am I having so much trouble concentrating? Apart from being in the enemy’s hands . . . and how did that happen? Why can’t I remember?

  There had been windup record players in the places he lived most of his life, they were expensive but gave a reasonable sound . . . unless something happened to make one skip. That had always jarred his natural ear for music with a sense of discontinuity, like being startled out of a deep reverie by a flick from a wet towel.

  Now his awareness itself was jumping like that needle. Was there really nothing but dank mist around, except for a stretch of roadway beneath his feet? Had he been plodding through a fog forever?

  The world became clearer, fading into solidity again, and he wished it hadn’t. A gibbet stood by the side of the highway. The corpse hanging from it was withered and blackened, and one arm was tied out with a stick and string as a pointer, but what it pointed to was nowhere because it swayed and turned in the wind. The eyes moved and looked at him as the face came around, teeth forever bared by withered lips in a silent scream. A crow plucked at its rib cage.

  The crow was dead, with white bone showing through tattered feathers. So were the flies clustered around those eyes.

  The pain hovered, always there, but John’s mind didn’t seem to be. A heavy scent filled the air, like roses and rot at the same time. The light was bright but directionless and he felt as if he were locked in a closet despite being able to see clearly.

  They’d been winning, and then the flaming tower had broken apart and fallen towards him just as they came over the wall. He’d thought, I’m going to die, and . . . then there had been the ruined temple in the jungle and the . . . woman-thing called the Rangda and her horde of little men with huge eyes . . . and the temple had split and the Pallid Mask had taken him through . . . and . . .

  Am I dead? Surely I haven’t been that bad . . . but I haven’t had a chance to make confession. . . .

  Pain. There was always the pain; the pole thrust between his elbows behind his back dragging him along, and looking down and seeing the sweat and blood drop into the white dust of the road. The muscles in his shoulders and arms ached as if they might snap like rotten string, and his feet were swollen lumps of fire.

  He’d seen the castle-city-whatever that its dwellers called Carcosa as the Tarshish Queen approached the harbor of Baru Denpasar. It looked weird enough, a fantastic concoction of walls and turrets, tall slim bulbous-tipped towers and domes, all made of coral rock that varied from cream to crimson. He hadn’t studied it much since; local belief was that if you looked at it too long, then . . . things . . . could happen to your mind.

  Not that I have much choice now, he thought, and closed his eyes.

  Instantly something slammed into his back. It felt like a whip of barbed steel.

  “I could not bear to think you did not behold your new home,” that soft voice said.

  Still in the Old French that only one trained to be a troubadour . . . and this, whatever it was . . . would know.

  What he saw resembled that castle on the shore he’d seen a few days ago, but it was different as it loomed up to the south. The fields around it were a mixture; sometimes he was looking at rice paddies not much different from those around the city of Baru Denpasar, sometimes at something more like Montival or tales of Old Europe, with reaped sheaves and tattered-looking buildings of half-timbering and slate, and sometimes . . .

  A child stood beside the road with a dog in its arms, watching the approaching cavalcade. As they drew closer, he could see that the dog had no legs, only seared stumps, and it cried endlessly and silently as the child reached down and tore off another mouthful with his pointed teeth, raising a bloodied smile as the Pallid Mask’s party rode by.

  The impulse to close his eyes again was overwhelming, but he didn’t dare. Instead he started to pray silently:

  Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio, contre nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto præsidium!

  John blinked. For an instant, before it faded into a mist, he was looking at a ceiling. Why would he be looking at a ceiling? He wasn’t even in the world right now, as far as he could tell.

  As if I were back home, with nothing to worry about but Órlaith trying to make me do some work.

  His mind was skipping again. This time it was filled with a familiar mix of love and fond exasperation.

  She’s a devil for work, my big sister!

  CHAPTER ONE

  HILO

  CAPITAL CITY, AUPUNI O HAWAIʻI

  (KINGDOM OF HAWAIʻI)

  NOVEMBER 26TH

  CHANGE YEAR 46/2044 AD

  Crown Princess Órlaith Arminger Mackenzie looked south and shoreward towards the Hawaiian capital of Hilo, shading her eyes with a hand. The planks beneath her feet were the quarterdeck of the frigate RMN Sea-Leopard, pride of the Royal Montivallan Navy and new-built in the Astoria yards; eighteen hundred tons of Douglas fir and Garry oak and Sitka spruce, cordage and sailcloth and copper sheathing and brass and steel salvaged from the dead cities, at nearly three hundred feet from bowsprit to rudder the most powerful warship afloat in the Pacific.

  It had also been packed to the gunwales with double its normal complement on the trip across from Montival, nearly seven hundred souls, since there weren’t enough transports to spare the warships. The Sea-Leopard wasn’t as busy or as crowded now: the sails on the three towering masts were furled as she lay at anchor, and all the extra personnel plus the liberty party were ashore. Most were members of the crowd whose surf-murmur carried over the thousand yards or so to the docks, apart from the ones whose main ambition on dry land was to find a bottle and go from upright and sober to horizontal and unconscious with the least possible interval in between.

  After this trip I find that a wee bit attractive, Órlaith thought dryly. Sure and it would be the more so if I’d been sleeping in a hammock in the hold with two inches’ space on either side and someone on a pallet on the deck below and nobody washing much for that there’s not enough fresh water for anything but drinking. Even the rats are probably swimming for it.

  She’d been in a bunk in the Captain’s cabin, sharing the space with the Admiral and six others, and had gotten admiring looks for not taking the whole for herself. Now everything on board was squared away and shipshape, down to the neat coils of cable and hawser, and the pyramids of roundshot and racks of bolt next to the long rows of massive catapults on the gun-deck below. There had been a good deal of coming and going by everyone except Órlaith herself; her setting foot on Hawaiian soil was a political matter, and had to be staged with due ceremony.

  Shore leave or no, the Sea-Leopard could still be ready to sail and fight in the very short time it took the topmast hands to run up the ratlines and reach the gaskets on the sails; the catapults would be cocked and loaded by then and the anchors cast off with empty casks to float the ends of their cables for later attention. The Montivallans
were among friends . . . but it never hurt to be ready.

  Admiral Naysmith had been standing with her hands clasped behind her back, hard-featured square face with the little blue burn-mark of the Bearkiller A-List between her brows impassive above the white linen tropical-service uniform jacket and gold-braided epaulettes. Now she nodded at the signal-flag that went up a mast rigged on the dock ashore and turned to the ship’s captain.

  “We’re ready to proceed, Mr. Edwards,” she said. “Make it so. And a signal to that effect to the Japanese flagship, in the Crown Princess’ name.”

  Naysmith cocked an eye at Órlaith, who nodded approval. The orders ran down the chain of command, more and more specific as they did. Signal-flags of their own went up the halyard to the mizzen-peak. Órlaith politely ignored the exchange, studying the town instead; she liked and respected the blunt-spoken Bearkiller’s professionalism but they weren’t close, and she was careful not to infringe on her area of authority. As overall commander of the expedition Órlaith was entitled to tell her what she wanted to accomplish, but how to do it was the Admiral’s business.

  She suspected that the middle-aged Naysmith had doubts about someone of the same twenty-two years as her own eldest child—who was a lieutenant somewhere in the fleet—being in charge of a major expedition, bearer of the royal Sword or no, though of course she’d never say a word to that effect. Looking at it from the outside she had something of a point. Órlaith had grown up watching famously good strategists in action, but she knew she wasn’t equal to either of her parents.

  Yet. And they started as young as I am now, overshadowed by their famous parents . . . two of whom . . .

  Her maternal and paternal grandfathers had been deadly enemies from the Change on and had ended up killing each other in single combat with several thousand witnesses in their respective armies whooping them on.

  Ah, well, youth is the one disease age always cures . . . and we of House Artos are not a long-lived breed, anyway . . . and besides, it’s an interesting view. It’s my first time off the mainland, even if I’m not traveling just for the pleasure of it.