Dies the Fire dtf-1

by S. M. Stirling

  He scrubbed down his hands and forearms with some of the snow lying in the shade of a whortleberry bush, trying not to think about hot showers and soap. She passed him his coat again, and winced a bit doing it, pulling her hands back protectively and curling the fingers as he took the garment.

  “Damn, let me look at that.”

  He took her hand in his and opened it. The palms looked worse than they were, because the strings of skin from the burst blisters had turned black. Havel drew his puukko again, tested the edge by shaving a patch of hair from his forearm, then began to neatly trim the stubs of dead skin; that should help a little, and reduce the chafing. There hadn’t been time for her to really grow any calluses yet.

  “I told you to put more of the salve on them,” he scolded. “You’re pushing it too hard. When something starts bleeding, say so and someone will spell you on the stretcher.”

  “I’m doing less than Eric is, Mike,” she said.

  “You’re also forty pounds lighter than Eric, and most of that’s on his shoulders and arms,” Havel said bluntly. “I thought you had more between your ears than he does, though. You’ve got nothing to prove.” And you’re certainly not the cream-puff airhead I thought you were, he thought. Massively ignorant, but not stupid.

  She learned quickly, rarely had to be told how to do something twice, and didn’t stand around waiting to be found work.

  And she’s no quitter or whiner. Complains less than her brother.

  “Eric may be bigger, but I’m a lot younger than Dad-I don’t like the way he looks,” she went on, leaning a little closer and lowering her voice. “Mike, he goes gray sometimes when he’s been on the stretcher for twenty minutes, especially on the steep parts. The doctor’s warned him about his heart. What will we do if he… gets sick… out here? Carrying him and Mom-”

  There she’s got me, he thought, looking over at the elder Larsson.

  The flesh had melted away from him, but it didn’t make him look healthy, just sort of sagging, and his color was as bad as Signe thought. Cold and the brutal work and lack of proper sleep or enough food was grinding him down, and he wasn’t a young man or in good shape.

  And this isn’t the way to get into shape at his age. Much more of this and I wouldn ‘t bet on him coming through. But I can’t take him off carrying the stretcher for at least some of the time. There’s too much else to do and I’m the one who knows how to do it.

  “By the way, Mike,” Signe said, obviously pushing the worry aside with an effort of will. “There’s something you should consider about ‘mystical crap,’ as you put it.”

  His brows went up and she continued by putting her hand out, fingers cocked like a pistol and making a ffff-fumph between lips and teeth, uncannily like the way his gun had sounded when he tried to fire it.

  Have to admit, you’ve got a point, he thought, and was about to say it aloud when he heard Eric’s voice, cracking with excitement: “A deer! She got a deer, and it’s running away!”

  Havel was on his feet and running forward in an instant, scooping up the rabbit stick and tumbling Signe on her backside with a squawk; she was up and following him half a heartbeat later, though.

  He passed Eric, but the twins were right on his heels as he flashed into the clearing; their legs were long and their hightops were better running gear than his solid mountain boots. Astrid was a hundred yards ahead, sprinting fast with the bow pumping back and forth in her left hand; and the blood trail was clear enough for anyone to follow-bright gouts and splashes of it on snow and mud and last year’s dry grass sticking through both. He pushed himself harder, knowing all too well how the tap could turn off suddenly on a trail like that, unless-He went through a belt of lodgepole pines, like seventy-foot candlesticks; the ground beneath them was fairly clear, and the wounded animal was following the trail; that wasn’t too surprising, since it was on level ground and would make for maximum speed. Massive tree boles flashed by him, and then they were out into bright sunlight with mountain ridges rippling away to the west and south like endless green-white waves on a frozen sea. Thin mountain air burned cold in his chest; Astrid’s hair was like a white-silk banner as he pulled past her. Then the trail jinked a little higher.

  Good! he thought exultantly. Make him work at it!

  The blood trail wasn’t dying off; getting thicker, if anything. Then he saw the animal in a patch of sunlight not far ahead.

  That’s no by-God deer, he thought.

  It was an elk; a three-year bull still carrying his rack, a six-pointer, and he knew it must be badly wounded-a healthy elk could do thirty-five miles an hour in a sprint, and twenty all day long. As Havel neared it staggered, gave a gasping, bugling grunt of pain, and began to collapse by the rear. Blood poured out of its nose and mouth; the forelegs gave way, and it lay down and groaned, jerked, and went still with its thick tongue hanging out of its mouth.

  Astrid and the twins were only a few seconds behind him. “Stand back!” he said sharply, controlling his breathing.

  As if to back up his words the beast gave a final galvanic kick; it was a little thin with winter, but sill magnificent-glossy reddish brown on most of its body, with a shaggy gray mane on its thick neck and a yellowish patch on the rump around the small white tail. He could just see the fletching of the two-foot arrow against its rib cage behind the left shoulder; Astrid must have been lucky. The blade of the broadhead had struck with the edges up and down, slipping between two ribs and going through right into the lungs, probably cutting a big artery or nicking the heart too. The arrow could never have punched through the outer ribs if it had struck horizontally, not from a twenty-five pound draw.

  Even so, that was a light bow and a short shaft to bring down something this size; bull elk were the size of a medium-sized horse. This one wasn’t quite full-grown, but it would dress out at four hundred pounds or more of steaks, roasts, chops, ribs and organ meat, enough to feed six people for a month. The main problem would be carrying it; in this weather it would keep a long time once he’d drained it properly and dressed it out.

  Astrid was dancing from one foot to another and crowing with glee: “He stepped right onto the trail! He was only twenty feet away! Go me! Go me! I got him, I got him!”

  “That you did, kid,” Havel said. “That makes up for a hell of a lot of lost rabbits!”

  Signe hugged her sister and danced her in a circle. Even her brother gave an admiring whistle.

  “I take it back, Legolamb,” he said. “I’m gonna say ‘sorry’ with every mouthful.”

  Havel nodded agreement and moved in to make sure of the elk with his knife; on the one hand there was no point in letting it suffer, but on the other he didn’t want a hoof through his skull or six inches of pointed antler in his crotch either.

  “Sorry, brother, but we needed it,” he said, in an almost noiseless whisper-he never spoke that aloud, not wanting to be thought gooey or New-Agey-and passed his hand over the beast’s eyes and then his own.

  Maybe we could camp for a day’s rest, he thought. Mrs. Larsson isn ‘t looking very good, and—

  Then what he was seeing through the stand of mountain ash penetrated.

  “Eric,” he said. “Come on.”

  “What?” the young man said.

  Havel pointed and grinned. “The ranger cabin’s just through there,” he said. “I figure we can get your mom into a real bed and start the stove in about twenty minutes.”

  Clean underwear, even, Michael Havel exulted the next morning.

  What was more, he was clean; it made his gamy clothes repulsive, but he pulled them on and padded out into the hallway carrying his boots and followed his nose to the kitchen, gratefully taking a cup of bad instant coffee from Astrid at the doorway.

  The four-room log cabin had been built by the WPA back in the thirties, and it had a big woodstove with a water heater, plenty of stacked firewood, a meat safe and even some food in the pantry-flour in a sealed bin, canned fruit and vegetables, salt and pepper and
baking soda-left for just this sort of emergency. There were blankets in a cupboard too; even in this year of grace 1998 you didn’t have to assume vandals and thieves would be by, not in the middle of the Selway-Bitterroot, you didn’t. That kind usually didn’t have the stamina for a three-day hike through frigid mountain forest from the nearest road.

  For castaways like Havel and his passengers, the Forest Service would be forgiving.

  The radio was thoroughly dead, and the batteries too-not even a tickle from the tongue taste-test, which didn’t surprise him although it was annoying as hell. Right now he was satisfied with something besides MREs or cold rabbit stew for breakfast.

  Signe Larsson was cooking; he’d done ribs and steaks last night, and started a big pot of “perpetual stew” that still simmered on the back plate. If you brought it to a boil now and then, you could add fresh ingredients and water daily and keep it going indefinitely.

  “Flapjacks,” she said over her shoulder; her wheat-blond hair was loose, and still slightly damp and tousled from washing with a scrap of soap. “And canned peaches to go with them-yum!”

  “Food for the gods,” he said sincerely, accepting a plateful; his body craved starch, and sugar only a little less.

  Eric and Astrid were concentrating on eating; like their sister, they’d bounced back with the resilience of healthy youth.

  I did too, Havel thought. Only the rubber’s just the slightest touch less resilient at twenty-eight!

  Ken Larsson was looking less like walking death; partly due to a night on a real mattress, even if there were only blankets rather than sheets, and mostly that his wife seemed to be doing a lot better too.

  “OK,” Havel said, looking out the window after he’d cleared his plate the second time. It was just past dawn, with sunrise turning the snow on the peaks opposite rosy pink; if he hadn’t quit soon after he’d left the Corps, this would be the perfect time for a cigarette. It was a pity tobacco was so goddamned bad for you!

  “We can make it in two days if we push hard,” he said to Ken Larsson. “The emergency people ought to get help back here a lot faster than that; there’s a year-round crew at the Lochsa Ranger Station, and Lowell’s only a ways down I-12.”

  “Good luck,” the older man said. When Havel rose, he stuck out a hand. “And thanks, Mike.”

  “Hell, just doing my job,” Havel said, flushing a little-and being careful not to squeeze too hard, because Larsson’s hand was as mucked-up as Signe’s or Eric’s. “You and your family are my responsibility; I’ve got to see you safe.”

  “I won’t forget it, Mike,” Larsson said.

  Havel grinned. “We’d better get going, before everyone gets all soppy,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Eric said indistinctly through a last mouthful of pancakes. “Got to get Mom to a hospital.”

  He glanced sidelong at Signe, who was just setting down her own plate. “Though sis here is going to be real disappointed we’re not going to Montana.”

  “It’s amazing how repulsive you get when you’re not starving,” Signe said.

  Eric laughed, and went on to Havel: “The ranch next to our place there uses our pasture, and pays us by doing the maintenance and looking after our horses when we’re not visiting,” he said. “They’re real ranchers. And the owner’s son isn’t a bad guy, except that he had the bad taste to let my worse half here go mooning around after him making a spectacle of herself like a-hey!”

  Signe Larsson held the opened salt shaker over his coffee cup. “More?” she said sweetly.

  “You ruined it!”

  “Salt for bacon, Eric,” she said in a tone that could have cut crystal. “And you are a pig.” She was smiling when she said it, but her eyes were dangerously narrowed.

  Ken Larsson cleared his throat: “You two, can it. Remember that your mother’s hurt.”

  They both looked abashed; Havel grinned mentally. Not that ragging each other does their mother any harm, but guilt is the Ultimate Parental Weapon, he thought.

  The two sisters and Larsson accompanied their brother and the pilot out onto the veranda; everyone’s breath showed, smoking silver in the rising light, but with warmth and food that was exhilarating, not depressing. Havel set his pack with a shrug and a grunt; they could take the remaining MRE, three bouillon cubes, and the chocolate bar; it was enough to keep them comfortable all the way there.

  “See you in three days, Ken,” he said. Then he looked at Astrid and Signe. “Hey, Astrid, you really did good with that elk. That was important.”

  The girl glowed. Good, he thought, and went on: “So now you’ll all have plenty to eat. Do not go hunting,”-which she showed a natural aptitude for, now that she’d lost her inhibitions-“and in fact, I’d very much prefer it if none of you went out of sight of the cabin. It would really hurt my feelings if any of you got eaten by a bear before we got back.”

  He caught Signe’s eye. The older girl nodded.

  “I’ll keep an eye on her, Mike,” she said.

  “Let’s get going!” Eric Larsson said impatiently. “We can’t stop now!”

  “The hell we can’t,” Havel said, setting his pack down against a rock; it was two hours before sunset.

  Right on cue, he thought wearily. Christ Jesus, we males are predictable sometimes.

  They’d made better time than he’d expected: twenty miles at least, and they might make four more before sundown. At that speed, they could reach Highway 12 sometime around noon tomorrow.

  If they didn’t wreck themselves today.

  He went on: “We’ll walk fast for an hour, and then we’ll rest fifteen minutes, and then we’ll do it all over again. A man can walk a lot further than he can run. Right now we’re at the fifteen-minutes-rest stage. We’ll keep going till moonrise, eat, sleep, and get going again at dawn, and make it by lunchtime tomorrow.”

  “Who died and made you God?” the youth asked.

  “I know what I’m doing here,” Havel said shortly. “You don’t.”

  “I think you’re the hired help,” Eric spat back. “And that means what I say goes.”

  Havel surprised him by laughing, deep and obviously genuine. “Kid, if there’s anyone I work for here, it’s your dad-and he has enough sense to listen to an expert.”

  “And I don’t like the way you look at my sister!”

  Havel laughed again: this time the sound was a little taunting. “It’s 1998. If you try to play whup-ass with every guy who looks at Signe Larsson with lust in his heart, you’re going to have to be a lot better at it than I think you are.”

  Eric came forward an inch, then jerked to a halt, looking at the rabbit stick in the older man’s right hand. Havel grinned.

  “That shows some sense.”

  He tossed it to rest by the side of his pack, then held out both hands and made a beckoning gesture with curled fingers.

  “Let’s get this over with, kid,” he said.

  Eric flushed-the disadvantage of being so blond, even with a tan-and came in with his fists up in a good guard position, moving lightly for someone his size: he was six-one, long-limbed, broad in the shoulders and narrow in the waist. Very much like his opponent, except that Havel was built in nine-tenths scale by comparison.

  The young man’s big fist snapped out; the blow would have broken Havel’s jaw and several of Eric’s fingers, except that the ex-Marine jerked his head aside just enough to let it brush by his left ear; at the same instant he stepped in and swept his shin upward with precisely controlled force, then bounced back lightly, moving on the balls of his feet and keeping his own hands open.

  “Kill number one, kid,” he said, as Eric bent and clutched himself for a moment. “Or at least I could have ruined you for life. And never try to hit a man in the head with your fist. You’ll break your hand before you break his head.”

  Eric was red-faced and furious when he straightened, but he didn’t make the bull-style charge that Havel had half expected. Instead he set himself and whirled into a high swe
eping kick; it was well executed, except for being telegraphed, and a little off because his right foot slipped in the squishy mixture of mud and pine needles underfoot.

  Havel let his knees relax, and the foot swept over his head. His hand slapped up, palm on the other’s thigh, and pushed sharply.

  “Shit!” Eric screamed as he landed on his back, more in frustration than in pain.

  Then: “Shit!” as Havel’s heel slammed down to within an inch of his face. The older man bounced back again, smiling crookedly as Eric rolled to his feet and backed slightly.

  “Kill number two. This isn’t Buffy the Dojo Ballerina. All right, let’s finish up with the lesson. We haven’t got time to waste.”

  Ninety seconds later, Eric Larsson wisely made no attempt to resist as the back of his head rang off the bark of a Douglas fir. Fingers like steel rods gripped his throat, digging in on either side of his windpipe, and he fought to drag air in through his mouth-the swelling had made his nose nonoperational.

  Havel looked at him with the same crooked smile; there was a pressure cut on his cheek, but otherwise he was infuriatingly undamaged.

  “Kill number six. And you forgot one thing, kid,” he said. “Never bring your fists to a knife fight.”

  Eric Larsson’s eyes went wide as Havel stepped back; something silver flashed in his hand, and the young man looked down at a sudden cold prickle; the odd-shaped hunting knife was touching just under his ribs.

  “Kill,” Havel said. The knife reversed itself, lying edge-out along his forearm, then swept across Eric’s throat with blurring speed. “Kill.” A backhanded stab, letting the cold steel touch behind his right ear. “Kill.”

  Havel stepped back another pace; the younger man was chalk white and keeping himself from trembling by sheer willpower. He sheathed the knife and cocked an eyebrow, his expression cold.

  “So, have we settled the ‘Who’s the big bull gorilla?’ question?”