Dies the Fire dtf-1
Page 31
“What would we trade for cattle?” someone said; visions of barbecue danced in everyone’s head at the thought-and a stomach rumbled, loudly, bringing a general chuckle.
“Oh, Sam’s bows. Arrows,” Juniper said.
She pointed to another table. It held boxes of stainless steel spoons, plus hammers and files and a section of railroad iron to use as an anvil. Spoons turned out to be the best possible starting-blank for a broadhead. Sam’s outdoor workbench under its tarpaulin held stacks of wood-walnut blocks for the risers of new bows, and roughly shaped yew limbs amid a litter of shavings, and chisels and gouges and clamps. Dennis and a few others were learning the art of the bowyer from him.
“Maybe lessons from Chuck and Sam as well. And… oh, you know that hopfield just this side of Lebanon? I bet we could scavenge or swap a lot of hops there. Over the mountains, they’ll be wanting to make beer, come later this year when there’s never a six-pack to be found. Hops don’t grow well there.”
“I could make beer, come to that,” Dennis said. “I worked in a microbrewery once; there’s a good one at Brannigan’s, over in Sutterdown, at that.” He smacked his lips. “Or we could make mead, if we had honey; don’t the Carsons have some hives?”
Voices babbled, ideas treading on each other’s toes. “That’s the happy part,” Juniper said. Into the silence that fell: “We’ve also got to find out what’s going on in the Willamette. Before it rises up and hits us unawares. And from what that forager said, Corvallis is still holding out. I’ve connections there, friends, and they could be a help to us all.”
The babble was a lot less happy this time; all they had were rumors, but they were ghastly. Juniper settled down to argue with a sigh; it was a perfect spring afternoon for a walk with Cuchulain, or maybe getting out her fiddle…
Well, by the Lord and the Lady, if you want to call me Chief, you’ll listen to me. And if I make it a point to show you that you can do without me for a while, you’ll listen to that too!
Sixteen
“Whoa,” Michael Havel said, lowering his binoculars. Then: “Someone’s been a busy little bee.”
The roadway along the south bank of the Columbia Gorge was blocked; cinderblock to chest height, making a retaining wall to hold the dirt and rocks heaped above, with a palisade that looked like it was made of utility poles atop the massive earthwork. Working parties were driving in long angle-iron fence-posts in a checkerboard pattern over the earth berm and fastening barbed wire to them.
Sunlight winked off spearheads along the palisade; in the center was a solid blockhouse-like structure, with a gate whose lower edge ran on truck wheels.
A tall flagpost rose from the blockhouse, and high above it floated a hot air balloon, tethered by a cable that stretched up in an arc like a mathematical diagram. As he watched a bright light flickered from the basket, a Morse-coded heliograph signal.
The rest hadn’t changed, not the bones of the earth and its growth. It was hot down here near the Columbia even this early in the year, and a constant gusty wind made the horses stamp and toss their heads. Basalt cliffs reared southward, black or red where stands of pine hadn’t hidden the rock with green; and beyond that loomed the cone of Mt. Hood, dreaming blue and white and perfect against heaven.
“Not much like the last time my family drove out the Banfield,” Eric Larsson said.
Dry understatement hid an edge of nervousness; probably shock at seeing what the Change had done to something familiar.
“And he picked a pretty spot-most places the south-bank hills hide Mount Hood from the road.”
“Most places the south-bank hills would overlook that berm and blockhouse,” Havel said.
Closer were thickets of willow tender green with new growth, and the shimmer of black-cottonwood leaves, green above and silver below, trembling in the wind; beneath them were sheets of yellow bells, maroon-colored clusters of prairie stars, grass widows and blue penstemon.
The great river stretched lake-broad to their north, glimmering silver under the noonday sun, mostly empty all the way to the steep northern shore. It was quiet, save for the huge murmur of the water, birdsong, the distant sound of voices, oars and footfalls.
The river’s mostly empty, he thought, turning his glasses that way.
There were sailboats on it, and what looked like cut-down yachts with wooden superstructures holding rowers pulling on great sweeps. Some of those were hauling barges, and other barges had been fitted with basic lug-sail rigs.
The older men’s silence gnawed Eric’s nerves, and he waved towards the wall and burst out: “Fuck, how did anyone get all this done so fast? There aren’t any bulldozers or backhoes working! Even if this Protector guy started right away-”
Josh Sanders clicked his tongue against the top of his mouth. “Oh, you could do the berm, no problem. Material from that hill over there. Say a thousand people with hand tools and wheelbarrows; eight cubic yards a day each, that’s no big deal; take you about a week, less if you used more labor andworked shifts around the clock. Put it on in layers, ram it down, repeat.”
“It’s not just a heap of dirt,” Havel pointed out. “There’s the cinderblock work, and the palisade, and the gate.”
Josh nodded: “I couldn’t say about the gate, but the retaining wall, that’s easy, and the palisade? Just utility poles. Shiftfire, give me the materials, the tools, ten guys who know what they’re doing and’a whole big bunch of people to do the gruntwork, and I could have put this up my own self in a couple-three days. You could bring the materials in on the railroad.”
Can I pick them, or can I pick them? Havel thought proudly. That was the biggest part of leadership.
Eric was frowning. “But the railroad isn’t working,” he said.
Keep talking; you’re helping me organize my thoughts. And that balloon is a good idea. I should have thought of that. We’ll have to get one. Christ Jesus, hang gliders and sailplanes would still fly too, wouldn’t they? Maybe I was a little premature, hanging up my wings.
“Sure, the railroad’s working,” the ex-Seabee said to Eric. “It’s the locomotives aren’t working, bro. You can pull a hell of a lot more on welded rail than you can on a road, with a horse or with men. Fifteen, twenty times as much. So you get some work gangs out levering the dead locos off to clear the tracks. Use a hand-cranked windlass for that, off a boat, maybe… “
“Even this time of year, you’d have a couple of big lines of grain hopper-cars between here and Portland,” Havel put in. “Probably they hauled those in, then got the idea of using the rails long-term.”
Josh nodded. “From the look of the dirt, that berm’s just finished. Last couple of days. I’d put topsoil on and then turf, to keep it from melting away in the winter rains.”
“Yeah,” Havel said, then pointed as the wind fluttered a banner out over the gatehouse. It was black. He peered a little closer: black, with a red catpupiled eye in the center.
“That tells us something too,” Havel said. “The folks back at Hood River weren’t shitting us; this Protector guy really is a maniac. Loopy. He’s not for real; he’s playing games.”
“Why?” Eric asked curiously, shifting in a creak of leather and chime of ringmail. “Astrid’s always using stuff out of those books. So, I grant you she’s a flake-a big-time, fresh-from- the-flake- box flake-but not a maniac.”
“She uses the good-guy stuff, Eric,” Havel said. “If I were running Portland and surroundings, I’d be using the Stars and Stripes-no matter how much of a dictator I was, and how much of a lie the flag was. You don’t put up a sign that reads ‘HEY, I’M EVIL! GEN-U-WINE SADISTIC LOONEY! REALLY, REALLY BAD!’ Particularly not if you are evil.”
“Why not?” Eric said curiously. “If you’re a bad guy, that is.”
“‘Cause most people don’t think that way, even if they are rotten. How many are going to stick with you when things go wrong, if you advertise you’re a shit?”
“Hey, it’s cool to be baaaad.”
Probably the only reason he got any traction at all was that Portland was a complete madhouse right after the Change.”
“He’s a fruitloop with a lot of troops, right now,” Josh said. “That makes me nervous, Mike. You see the heads over the gateway? Those look too fucking real for this ol’ boy’s taste.”
“Well, we are here to find things out. If Mr. Me So Bad has a lock on the Willamette, our people need to know so we can pick another destination. And they did say he didn’t usually molest travelers who toed his line. Let’s go. And mouths shut, ears open. This isn’t risk-free, either.”
Havel rode in at an easy fast walk; there wasn’t much traffic, mostly improvised wagons drawn by men, or people on foot-thin and frightened-looking and mostly very, very dirty. He wrinkled his nose; the three Bearkillers were fairly ripe in their armor and gambesons, but they tried to keep the bodies underneath as clean as possible.
The guards were another story; all equipped in scale-mail, and all looking reasonably well fed. The heads spiked to the timber of the gate above their spearheads were all fairly fresh too. Above them, some sort of machine moved to cover them behind a slit in a sheet-metal shield; he’d have bet that was some sort of giant crossbow or dart-caster… or possibly a flamethrower.
“Hi,” Havel said to their leader. “I’m here to see your Protector.”
“Not just nails-twelve-inch spikes!” Alex Barstow crowed from inside the truck. “Crates of nice big bolts. And half-inch cable, by God, a whole hundred-yard spool. Fan-fucking-tastic!”
Outside his brother Chuck quirked a smile. “That’s Alex. Do you know, even when we were little kids he could build the most fantastic castles out of matchsticks?”
A deep breath: “Do you really have to do this, Judy?”
“Chuck, I need to know what’s going on out there epidemic-wise if I’m going to do my job helping keep this bunch healthy. We’ve been over this. I love you.”
“I love you too,” he said; they embraced. “Merry meet, and merry part.”
“And merry meet again,” Judy said; they both had tears in their eyes. “See you before Beltane.”
Juniper had made her good-byes back at the Hall; she looked away, swallowing, as her friends made theirs, letting her fingers busy themselves checking her gear.
Then she waved and put her foot to the bicycle’s pedal as Judy broke free. They were well past the Carson place, due west of Mackenzie territory; everyone around here knew them by now, and more to the point was familiar with their wagons and the way they sent them out to scavenge supplies from stranded trucks and abandoned stores.
Plus farms that looked to Sutterdown for guidance tended to shun the Mackenzies-Reverend Dixon’s influence, she supposed. The Carsons and a few other cowan friends passed on news from there. Nobody would notice four Mackenzies on bicycles heading out from the wagon.
Steve scooted ahead of her, taking point as Sam Aylward called it; Vince dropped behind, and Judy pedaled beside her. The spring sun beat down on a world of green around them as their wheels scrunched, and on the quiet dirt country lane it might almost have been before the Change… save for the occasional car or tractor they passed, frozen since that evening; save for a farmhouse abandoned, or crowded with refugees.
And save for the ever-present faint acrid tang of smoke from cities burning.
“Keep your eyes open,” she told herself.
They were going to loop up north, then cross the river and see what was going on near Corvallis.
“Time to come out of the cocoon and learn.”
“You do yourself nicely here,” Havel said.
He sipped at the single malt, savoring the smoky, peaty taste as he looked around the big high-ceilinged room and the glowing Oriental rugs on the floor; evidently if you had unlimited labor, it didn’t take long to turn a library built in 1903 into a fair approximation of a palace. The wall that cut off this corner of the former Government Documents Room looked like professional work; the faint smell of fresh plaster confirmed it. Shelves had vanished, replaced by hangings and pictures that had the indefinable something that screamed money even to an art-infidel like Havel, or at least hinted at foraging parties with handcarts and sledgehammers backed up by swords and spearheads.
Dinner smells lingered a little too; skillet-roasted mussels in a coconut curry broth, a salad of pickled vegetables, garlic-crusted rack of lamb and fresh bread, finished off with a noble Dutch-style apple pie and cheeses, and accompanied by wines finer than Havel knew he had the palette or experience to appreciate.
Portland might be just getting by, uncounted millions were starving to death around the world, but the Protector and his friends certainly weren’t on a ration book. There wasn’t any point in not enjoying the dinner, either.
The smell of the kerosene lamps was a little incongruous-but the light was welcome. You missed electricity after dark.
Norman Arminger and his wife lounged on a black-leather sofa; Havel was surprised she was with him. The scantily clad servants had given him the impression of a man with serious harem fantasies. The Protector leaned back with a shot of the whiskey in his hand; his dark-haired wife had a glass of white wine.
Then Arminger spoke; he had a deep voice with an edge of humor to it. He’d been doing most of the talking, at that, but he was never boring.
“Well, it is the City that Works,” Arminger said. “I’m doing my best to transform it into the Kingdom that Works. If people are to survive above the level of cannibal bands or isolated farms, there has to be organization, leadership… and it has to be based on realistic principles. Post-industrial democracy was wonderful, but it’s not possible now. The foundations of that way of life have been knocked out from beneath us. We have to turn to older models.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Havel said. “Similar things had occurred to me, actually.”
Arminger lifted his glass with a smile. “Meanwhile, I’m impressed with the equipment you had,” he said. “Much, much better than the usual improvisations. Did you have any SCA people in your group?”
“No,” Havel said. “A lot of people expert around horses, good handymen, some books on cavalry warfare and gear, and someone who was involved with a Renaissance fencing club. HACA, I think it used to be called, or ARMA-not sure which.”
“Ah, surprising and very fortunate for you-the Association of Those Who Like Hitting Things with Sharp Pointy Things,” Arminger said. “I attended a few of their gatherings. Very focused, very practical-in the sense of recreating effective sword styles, which in those days wasn’t of much practical use at all. The Society was deplorably eclectic, although the Pensic War was always entertaining. And a surprising number of its members proved to be excessively sentimental and had to be… removed from the equation.”
“Things have Changed,” Havel said. “We also found a bowmaker, and we had one very good and one pretty good archer to teach the rest of us. That wasn’t so odd; hell, there were a couple million bowhunting licenses issued last year.”
Sandra Arminger snorted. “We prefer crossbows. Easier to make, and easier to learn.”
“And in the long run, less problem to armored horsemen,” the Protector said. “Wouldn’t want the tenants to get too uppity.”
“Less useful than a bow from horseback, though,” Havel pointed out.
“You’re aiming at doing things Mongol-style?” Arminger said, raising his brows. “Ambitious!”
“I always liked that saying of Genghis Khan’s that a year after he sacked a city you could gallop a horse across the site without stumbling. Say what you like about Genghis, he got things done,” Havel observed.
&
nbsp; Arminger grinned, a charming expression. “I think you may be a man after my own heart, Lord Bear.”
Christ Jesus, I hope not, Havel thought, with an imperturbable shrug.
“I understand you came through Pendleton,” Arminger said. That was a logical deduction; it was the major city of northeastern Oregon. “Have they started their civil war yet?”
“There was some tension between the reservation and the city, but on the whole they seemed to be doing pretty well,” Havel said. “They’ve moved most of their urban population out to the ranches and farms. In fact, they’re wondering why they didn’t see a lot more refugees from Portland than they got. They’ve got a lot more wheat than they can harvest with the hands available; it’ll all go to waste, since they can’t transport it-or plant nearly as much this fall.”
“Pendleton only had, what, eighteen thousand people in the city limits?” the Protector observed. “Seattle tried moving people east en masse, and it didn’t work very well, even before the final collapse there. Mostly it just overburdened the rural areas close by. I, ah, encouraged the surplus population here to move out southward. Mainly by setting more fires and cutting off the water supply. It’s gravity-flow here, and should last for generations with some upkeep. We’ve had some success with using water-power to run machinery; for stamping out armor scales, for instance.”
Havel sipped at his whiskey, keeping his face neutral. “I noticed a lot of damage to the city,” he said.
“The big jets coming down hard set most of the area east of the Willamette on fire,” the Protector replied. “Giant bombs full of fuel, you see-surprisingly effective. And we did more around the fringes. Nothing essential lost, though.”
He snorted. “And in this climate, the ruins will all be overgrown in a single summer-we have to cut back vines on the roads that grow two inches a day! The burned-out areas will be scrub in a year and forest in ten.”
He paused, considering. “Why did you decide to come this far west? I’ve had scouts of my own as far east as Montana and as far upriver as Lewiston, and the situation is a bit less dire out there. So far.”