Dies the Fire dtf-1

by S. M. Stirling

  “In the end, I meant.”

  “In the end? Got run over a little while before I graduated high school,” Havel said. “Broke his back; I found him trying to crawl home. I had to put him down.”

  And he kept expecting me to make it better, Havel remembered. Right up to the second I pulled the trigger.

  “That must have been terrible,” Signe said, laying a hand on his.

  He turned his over, and they linked fingers. “Yeah, I missed him.”

  To himself: I couldn ‘t have proven in a court who did it, but then, I didn’t have to.

  A flicker of grim pleasure at a memory of cartilage crumbling under his knuckles: Beating me out with Shirley was one thing, but killing my dog…

  “Is that why you didn’t get another dog?”

  “Nan, didn’t have the time, and it’s not fair on the animal if you don’t-they’re not like cats,” Havel said. “Now things are different.”

  Signe nodded, and looked over to the open space; it was square-dancing now.

  “That fiance thing seems to be breaking out all over,” she said. A pause: “You… you’ve been sort of quiet since you got back, Mike. I… there wasn’t anything with this Juniper woman, was there? Eric won’t talk about it at all.”

  “Just giving things a rest,” he said, sitting up and resting his free arm on his knees. “And yeah, I won’t deny there was a sort of mutual attraction, pretty strong for short acquaintance. She had a lot of character.”

  Signe froze, her hand clenching on his, and he went on: “But we decided we both had commitments elsewhere; she had her kid to look after, and her people. I do have commitments here, don’t I?”

  Signe nodded, flushing redder. “Ummm… I hope so. Nice night for a walk out?”

  Havel uncoiled to his feet, pulling her up. “Walking’s nice, but we can do that any night. Right now, why don’t we dance?”

  She smiled, a brilliant grin that made her eyes like turquoise in the firelight.

  “I’ll dance your feet right off, mister!” she said.

  A room on the new second floor of the Chief’s Hall held the clinic. Juniper Mackenzie swung her feet down from the stirrups and over the edge of the table; her voice was almost a squeak: “I’m what?” she said.

  “Pregnant.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The room was still a bit bare; glass-fronted cabinets, rows of medicines and instruments and herbal simples, anatomical diagrams, and a well-laden bookshelf. It smelled of antiseptic and musky dried wildflowers and fresh sappy pine. Judy finished washing her hands-the stainless-steel sinks had come from the kitchen of a Howard Johnson’s ten miles northwest-and turned, leaning back against the counter as she dried her hands on a towel and spoke tartly: “Look, Juney, I’m not a doctor and I’ve felt inadequate often enough trying to do a doctor’s job here, but I am a trained midwife and I can recognize a pregnancy when I see one!”

  “I simply can’t believe I’m… ” Juniper said, letting the sentence trail off weakly.

  “Pregnant,” Judy said with sardonic patience. “Preggers. Knocked up. Expecting. Enceinte. In the family way. Have a bun in the oven. Providing a home for someone back from the Summerlands-”

  “I’m familiar with the concept! I thought I was just missing a period because I’d lost weight-how could this have happened?”

  Judy’s voice dropped into a sugary singsong she never actually used with children: “Sometimes, little girl, when the Goddess and the God fill a man and woman’s hearts, so that they love each other very much, they show their love by-”

  “Oh, shut up, you she-quack! What am I going to do about it?”

  “You want a D and C? Pretty straightforward at this stage.”

  “No,” she said, firmly and at once, surprising herself a little; her mind had apparently made itself up without telling her. “No, I’m definitely keeping it.”

  She looked around the room. It was bright and cheery, morning sun bright on fresh-sawn wood and paint, but the only personal touch so far was a watercolor Eilir had done for Judy back before the Change. It showed the Goddess as the Maiden of Stars; the features were done in a naif schoolgirl style, but held an enormous benevolence.

  I never thought there would be any child but Eilir, she thought. But it seems You had other ideas…

  “Not much doubt about who the father is,” Judy said. “Not unless there’s been a miracle-and you’re not a virgin, not Jewish, and that legend’s from the wrong mythos anyway.”

  “No,” Juniper said. “No doubt at all. But let’s not be spreading the parentage abroad, shall we? It could be… awkward down the line.”

  “Well,” Judy said, briskly practical, starting a new page in the file on the table. “It isn’t your first time; that’s good. How did Eilir go-apart from the measles, that is?”

  “She was premature, eight months and a bit, but otherwise fine; seven pounds and no problems, no anesthesia and no epidural, three hour delivery. No morning sickness, even. I was just sixteen, and didn’t realize what was happening until about three months in.”

  Judy’s brows went up. “Well, that’s an old-fashioned Catholic upbringing for you.”

  “Speaking of my mother, now that I think back on it, I remember her saying that I was easy, but a bit early, too.”

  “Likely to be a genetic factor with the premature birth, then,” she said. “Have to check carefully later.”

  “I’ll just have to make him feel welcome, I suppose,” Juniper said, smiling a little and putting a hand on her stomach.

  “He?”

  “Suddenly… I’ve got a feeling.”

  Judy wrote again: “Now, we’ll put you on the special diet and the supplements-thank the Mother-of-All and the Harvest Lord we aren’t quite as short of food as we were! Apart from that, pregnancy isn’t an illness and a first-trimester fetus is extremely well cushioned, so there probably won’t be any problems; you won’t have to start being really careful until the fourth, fifth month unless something unusual happens. Report any spotting, excessive nausea-”

  Juniper nodded, listening… but half her mind was drifting over the mountains eastward.

  Mike, Mike, we didn’t plan on this! How are you faring?

  Twenty-two

  “Something’s happened here,” Michael Havel said thoughtfully, lowering the binoculars and looking at the rising smoke in the distance.

  The June wind stroked his face; it was that perfect early-summer temperature that caresses the skin the way a newly laundered pillowcase does at night.

  Even better if I didn’t have to wear this damned ironmongery and padding, he mused absently-in truth, he’d gotten so used to it that he only noticed it when he consciously thought about it.

  “Pretty country otherwise,” Signe said. “Lovely colors.”

  He nodded. Acres of blue flowers nodded among the rippling tall grass along the fringe where hills gave way to flatland, sprinkled with yellow field-daisies; this area of upland plain in western Idaho had been called the Camas Prairie once, when it was the hunting ground of the Nez Perce bands.

  His horse shifted its weight from hoof to hoof, tossing its head and jingling the metal bits of its bridle, eager to be off and doing.

  “Quiet, Gustav,” he murmured, stroking a gauntlet down the arch of muscle that made its neck.

  Most of the rolling lands southwestward were green with wheat or barley rippling in the breeze, with field peas or clover, save where a patch of fallow showed the rich black soil. Distant blue mountains surrounded the plain on all sides, giving it the feel of a valley; small blue lakes and little farm reservoirs added to the impression, but there were occasional gullies or creekbeds below the general level. He couldn’t see any cattle from here, but a herd of pronghorns ran through a wheatfield, bounding along at better than fifty miles an hour with their white rumps fluffed-something had spooked them.

  He handed the glasses to Signe and leaned his hands on the saddle horn, cocking his head slightly
to one side. There was a rustling chink of chain mail as his helmet’s rear aventail slid across the shoulders of his hauberk. He had good distance sight, but hers was about the best he’d ever run across. To the naked eye the pillar of smoke was distant, and the cluster of buildings at its base barely visible where they nestled under a south-facing hill.

  “I can’t see anyone moving either,” Signe said at last. “I’m not sure I can see people at all. They should be out fighting the fire, if there’s anyone there at all. But… I don’t like those crows and buzzards. See the clumps?”

  That could mean plague, he thought. Trying to burn the bodies, and then the last survivors crawling away to die… but I doubt it. That’s a farm, not a town; they wouldn’t have enough people for that.

  “We’d better scout it, cautiously,” Havel said.

  With people so afraid of sickness, news spread even more slowly than it had right after the Change. It was doubly difficult to keep informed, and doubly needful.

  “Luanne and Astrid?” he asked.

  They were still the best riders, bar Will, and they rode light; it was unlikely anyone could catch them. Plus Astrid was still their nearest approach to a good mounted archer… and it was his observation that when girls were told to go take a look at something and come back, they were less likely to get themselves into unnecessary trouble by pushing on regardless.

  “I wouldn’t send them together,” Signe said.

  There was a smile in her voice. Havel looked over at her, and there it was, framed by the round helmet with its bar-nasal in front and curtain of chain mail to the rear.

  “I thought Astrid thought Luanne was, ah, radical cool,” he said.

  “She did,” Signe said; now she was grinning. “But not anymore.”

  “Que?”

  “Astrid caught her making out with Eric behind the chuckwagon two nights ago, which was disgusting-and I see her point, you know? The thought of someone making out with Eric… that is disgusting. Anyway, then Luanne told her how she’d understand when she was older and her figure developed-a real low blow. So now Astrid’s not talking to her anymore.”

  Havel made a strangled sound. “I don’t know if she’s worse when she’s pretending to be an elf, or when she’s relapsed into being a real human teenager. I do know-”

  The young woman finished his sentence for him: “-that Gunney Winters never had to face this sort of problem in the Corps. They wouldn’t have taken Astrid at Parris Island, though, Mike.”

  “We’ll do the scout ourselves, then. Get Will.”

  “You’re the bossman.”

  She reined around and cantered off. Havel looked after her briefly; the rest of the outfit were waiting a quarter mile back, wagons-there were a lot more of them now-stopped on alternate sides of the narrow ribbon of road, with outriders on the edge of sight, others working at the horse and cattle herds to keep them bunched, and some folk on foot by the vehicles.

  Half old-style cattle drive, half gypsy caravan, half small-scale Mongol migration, he thought wryly.

  Then he turned back to look at the long country ahead, thinking. He was uneasy, and he’d never liked that when he didn’t know precisely why. Presently hooves thudded behind him, and he nodded over his shoulder.

  “Will.”

  “Mike?” Will Hutton said. “You called?”

  “Well, first thing, Luanne and Astrid have decided to spend the afternoon together making armor links, to teach them to enjoy each other’s company more.”

  Hutton grinned. Making the rings was about the most unpopular chore in the Bearkillers: not particularly hard, just tedious, frustrating, finicky detail work with dowel and pliers, wire cutters, a little hammer and punch, and roll after roll of galvanized fence wire.

  “What do you think of that place just behind the ridgeline for a camp?” Havel went on, pointing.

  “Fine, if you want to stop this early.”

  They all looked up to estimate the time; it was about two o’clock. Pre-digital mechanical watches had become a valuable type of trade goods, along with tobacco and binoculars and bows.

  Hutton went on: “Flat enough, good water and firewood, good grass, good view. You don’t want to try and make Craigswood today?”

  Havel shook his head. “I’m not easy about what I can see from here,” he said. “I want to find out more before we’re committed.”

  “Nice if we could do some trading here, at Craigswood or Grangeville, or just pick up stuff,” Hutton observed. “There’s a lot of things we could use, or are gettin’ short of, not to mention more remounts. Some training we could do easier if we stopped for a week or two, as well.”

  “That all depends,” Havel said. “See that line of smoke there? Looks like a farm or a ranch house where something got torched, and nobody’s moving, but you can see it’s been worked since the Change-fresh-plowed land, and spring plantings. We’re going down to check. Have Josh and a squad keep an eye out from here, out of sight on the reverse slope. If things have gone completely to hell in this neighborhood, we may have to take another detour.”

  Will nodded and reined his horse about, gliding away at a smooth trot.

  Christ Jesus, I was lucky there, Havel thought; he didn’t think he could be as good a chief-of-staff and strong-right-arm, if their positions were reversed.

  “Equipment check,” he said to Signe, and each gave the other’s gear a quick once-over.

  They were both in full armor. That was Bearkiller practice anywhere not guaranteed safe, now that they had enough chain hauberks for the whole A-list. He looked at the bear’s head mounted on his helmet for an instant before he put it back on and buckled the chin cup.

  Well, it doesn ‘t smell, and it makes good shade on a sunny day, he thought.

  He’d gotten used to the way the nasal bar bisected his vision, too.

  Plus bear fur won’t make the helmet work any worse if someone tries to hit me on the head.

  He told himself that fairly often; it beat admitting that he just didn’t want to deal with one of Astrid’s sulks. They both pulled their bows out of the leather cases and fitted arrow to string.

  We’re mounted infantry with cavalry tastes, he thought to himself. But if we keep working at it harder than anyone else, then we’re going to have a real advantage.

  They put their horses down the slope, slowly until they were in the flat, then up to a walk-canter-trot-reverse rhythm, their eyes busy to all sides. The horses were fresh, and the day was pretty; at least until they came to the dead cattle.

  “Very dead,” Havel muttered.

  Hacked apart, and the bodies rubbed with filth, and a chemical smell under the stink made him suspect poison, which a couple of dead crows confirmed. He looked beyond them to the fields. The wheat was a little over knee-high on a horse, with the heads showing-harvest would be in another five weeks or so-but great swaths of it were wilted and dying.

  “Roundup,” he said. Signe looked a question at him.

  “See how the wheat’s wilted in strips? Someone went through spraying weed killer on it, Roundup or something like it. The stuffs available in bulk anywhere there’s much farming and it acts fast.”

  Her face had gotten leaner and acquired a darker honey-tan, but it still went a little pale. Havel nodded. Wasting food like this was the next thing to blasphemy.

  The dirt road joined a larger one, and they slowed down as the drifts of dirty-brown smoke rose ahead. From the clumps of squabbling crows, he knew there were bodies of men or beasts in the fields to his right. Men probably, given what had been done to the cattle; the way they didn’t fly away also told him that the feast hadn’t been disturbed.

  So did the coyote that sat looking at him with insolent familiarity, and then trotted off unconcerned. Havel suppressed an impulse to shoot an arrow at the beast. It had already learned that men weren’t to be feared as much as formerly…

  But if men are less the wolves will be back soon, you clever little son of a bitch, he thought grim
ly. Try pulling tricks like that with them, trickster, and you’ll regret it.

  When they came to the sign and gate they were coughing occasionally whenever the wind blew a gust their way, but the smoke smelled rankly of ash, not the hot stink of a new fire.

  “Clarke Century Farms,” Havel read. “Homesteaded 1898.”

  The first body close enough to identify was just inside, tumbled in the undignified sprawl of violent death; a fan of black blood sprayed out from the great fly-swarming wound hacked into his back with a broad-bladed ax, where the stubs of ribs showed in the drying flesh. There was already a faint but definite smell of spoiled meat.

  Someone had taken his boots, and there was a hole in the heel of one sock.

  A dog lay not far beyond him, head hanging by a shred of flesh, its teeth still fixed in a snarl. The bodies hadn’t bloated much, although lips and eyes were shrunken, but that could mean one day or two, in this weather; the ravens had been at them, too. In the field to the left was a three-furrow plow that looked as if it came from a museum and probably did. A stretch of turned earth ended where it stood.

  One dead horse was still in the traces before it, and a dead man about four paces beyond, lying curled around a belly-wound that might have taken half a day to kill him. Two of the big black birds kaw-kawed and jumped heavily off the corpse when Havel turned his horse to take a closer look.

  “Crossbow bolt,” he said, when he’d returned to his companion. “Looks like it was made after the Change, but well done.”

  They passed another pair of bodies as they rode at a walk up the farm lane to the steading, near tumbled wheelbarrows.

  The main house hadn’t been burned; it stood intact in its oasis of lawn and flower bed and tree; a tractor-tire swing still swayed in the wind beneath a big oak, and a body next to it by the neck. There was laundry on a line out behind it. The smoldering came from the farmyard proper, from the ashes of a long series of old hay-rolls, the giant grass cylinders of modern fanning, and from where grain had been roughly scattered out of sheet-metal storage sheds, doused in gasoline and set on fire.