Dies the Fire

by S. M. Stirling

  "Yeah," Havel said, taking the canteen back. "But you're dressed up like Richard the Lionheart for a good practical reason, not just because of the way it looks."

  Although it does look formidable too.

  The gear and helmet added bulk and menace to the older man's lean muscular toughness. Hauberks had to be individually tailored; Havel's was nearly finished, but Angelica and Signe and Astrid were doing something confidential with it.

  I'm not looking forward to wearing that stuff myself, especially when it gets really hot, he thought. But I'd much rather be uncomfortable than dead or crippled.

  "That fancy dress may be practical too, so to speak," Hutton said, nodding his head towards the welcoming party. "These're hard times, Mike. People need somethin' to hold on to, besides the things that broke in their hands when the Change came. Might be that those old-time things are what these Indians need to get them through."

  Havel thought for a moment, then nodded. "Tell me something, Will: how come you're not running this outfit?"

  Hutton grinned. "Two reasons. First is, I'm the only black man in it—you might have noticed we're sort of thin on the ground here in Idaho. Simpler to tell you what needs doing and let you get folks mad at you; 'specially since you take advice pretty good for a dude your age."

  "Well, that's honest, if not very flattering. What's the other reason?"

  "You were stupid enough to want the job, Mike," Hutton said. "I ain't. 'Boss' is just another word for 'got a headache.'"

  Havel snorted laughter, then stood in his stirrups to wave at the reception committee. Several of them waved back, but he waited until another rider cantered in out of the north before he moved.

  Josh Sanders drew rein; he was equipped much like the Bearkillers' leader, with boiled-leather protection, sword, shield, bow and helmet.

  "That's all of them, Boss," he said, pointing off towards the Nez Perce. "No ambush that I could spot."

  Havel nodded; the Hoosier was a first-rate scout, mounted or on foot.

  "All right. Report to Angelica"—who was camp boss and in charge when he or Will wasn't there—"and tell her I want her and Will with me while we dicker and . hmmm, all the Larssons. Pam to keep everyone on alert, but don't be conspicuous about it."

  Sanders's eyebrows went up. Havel had never liked the blind-obedience school of discipline; when there was time, he preferred to explain things. It cut down on mistakes when people understood why they were doing something; he'd also never imagined he was infallible, and Sanders was smart. Letting your troops' brains lie fallow was wasteful and dangerous.

  Besides, he thought, this may be a small outfit now, but Josh'll need to play leader too someday when we've grown.

  "We want them to think we're tough but peaceful," he said. "Will and Eric and I can do the tough; women, kids and old people along are more likely to make 'em think we're not looking for a fight."

  "That makes sense," Sanders said. "Angelica and the Larssons, pronto, Boss."

  He cantered off. Will cocked an eye at Havel. "Mebbeso you're smarter than you look," he said.

  Havel chuckled and turned in his saddle. The Bearkiller caravan was about a thousand yards behind him; four wagons now, and nearly fifty people in all, counting kids. They'd pulled off the narrow country road onto a fairly flat stretch of roadside sagebrush—ease of access was one reason they didn't use the Interstates much. Folk had pitched camp and were getting on with the work of the day …

  * * * *

  Signe Larsson sighed and reached for the weights as the wagons pulled off to the side of the road.

  "No rest for the wicked," she said.

  "If you want, I'll swap you a chores day for a weapons training day … " Luanne hinted.

  "That is so not funny, Luanne. 'Sides, the cows were such fun for me yesterday. It'd be greedy of me to snatch another day with them."

  Luanne grinned, unhitched her horse and vaulted into the saddle, reaching for her lariat as soon as her boots touched the stirrups. Signe began a set of wrist curls with the fifteen-pounders. She sat on the plywood bed of the wagon, with her feet on the pavement, bracing her elbow against her thigh as she raised and lowered the leather-covered steel pipe handle of the weights. The wagon was the first they'd made, rigged up from the Huttons' trailer, and the height was convenient for the effort—the boring, miserable effort that was never finished.

  Wrist curls on the right, on the left, stand and raise the weights to shoulder height and lower them sloooowly, waist-to-shoulder in front …

  Though the chores would be just as mindless, and the chores are never finished either. God, the good old days, they were awful. You can't even listen to music unless somebody wants to sing, and they're usually terrible.

  "How long do I have to go on doing this?" she grumbled aloud.

  Her arms and shoulders ached a little, though she did feel a lot stronger than when she'd started this right after the Change. Pamela Arnstein was a few feet away, practicing lunges and cuts at a billiard-sized hardwood ball strung on a line and hung from a fishing pole, moving as if her legs had steel springs inside them.

  "How long? For … the … rest … of … your … life," she said, pacing the words to her breathing.

  The dulled point of the practice weapon went lock against the wood and knocked loose a chip. Arnstein was wearing a singlet and sweatpants; the flat muscle of her arms and shoulders stood out like straps under sweat-slick skin as she lowered the sword and stood panting, speaking again: "If you want to use a sword with any useful heft, that is. It's why I stopped doing this seriously before the Change," she went on, reaching for a towel and rubbing herself down. "It was just such a drag maintaining the upper-body strength you needed. Goddamn whoever invented testosterone—it's not fair, like an athlete using steroids. And if you think it's hard on you, try getting back into this sort of shape when you're in your thirties. You want to be on the A-list, you keep at it."

  "Yes, sergeant-at-arms," Signe said, smiling.

  "Swordmistress! Astrid might be listening!"

  They both laughed; Astrid loved lurid archaic-sounding names for things, and sheer stubborn repetition had carried the day for her more than once. She sulked horribly when she lost—people had drawn the line at christening the outfit a "host" or a "free company."

  "The little beast would probably have had us calling ourselves the Riders of Rohan if it hadn't been for that bear," Signe said.

  She began the next set, lifting each weight back over her shoulder and down in turn. It was a rule that every Bear-killer over twelve had to train to fight, but you only had to do enough to make sure you wouldn't be entirely helpless if worse came to worst. If you wanted to be on the A-list, the people called on to fight in non-total-emergency situations, you had to pass some extremely practical tests. Administered in bone-bruising full-contact practice bouts by experts.

  All the men and the older boys, everyone except her father and Billy Waters, tried hard to get on the list. She was damned if she wasn't going to make it too.

  Of course, I'm not going to get to lie around eating grapes whatever I do, Signe thought ruefully.

  Now that they'd stopped, the teams had been unhitched and hobbled and set to graze—not that the scanty grass and sagebrush around here would do them much good, or the little herd of cattle and sheep they'd accumulated. That was one reason they wouldn't be staying long. There was good grazing not far away.

  Angelica was lifting down wire cages with chickens in them and letting the birds free to peck around, helped by Jane Waters. Billy Waters stood lounging and doing nothing, until Angelica gave him a scowl and jerked her thumb; then he picked up an ax and went looking for firewood. Ken gave her a nod and started fiddling with a lever-operated machine that was supposed to speed up riveting the rings of chain-mail armor. Annie Sanders rounded up the kids; she was the schoolteacher now, which had turned out to mean she oversaw them doing their communal chores, as well. Eric and a couple of others were unloading the heavier st
uff for a one-night camp.

  "Strong back, simple mind!" Signe called out to him.

  The box he held wobbled, and then sent up a puff of dust as he set it down. He was working stripped to the waist, and—in an objective, grudging, sisterly fashion—she had to admit that Luanne was right; he was getting cuter.

  Lost that last trace of puppy fat, she thought. Major improvement in the ass. Too bad he still uses it to think with.

  He'd never been plump—more sort of beefy-jock-muscular; now he'd lost the last softness around the edges, gotten ripped and taut.

  And his face has firmed up. But he's still a jerk and a teenager. I don't suppose Luanne could do better, considering the meager supply of unattached young guys we've got. But much as I like her, getting enthusiastic about him shows a serious lapse in her taste.

  Eric wiped a forearm across his face, where a thin fuzz of yellow beard caught the dust and sweat. He had his old malicious teasing grin on, and hooted back: "Well, then, I suppose you're lowering your IQ weekly with those weights, hey, sis?"

  Signe stuck out her tongue, then turned her back, ignoring his horselaugh.

  Luanne brought in a cow she'd roped, with its calf bawling along behind. She snubbed off the lariat to a wagon, dismounted, got a bucket of hot water and soap, scrubbed the usual places and began to milk the animal into a galvanized pail. Astrid's Biltis jumped down from some soft spot now liberally dusted with cat hair; probably a basket full of clean laundry, since the animal had a tropism for freshly washed clothing and shed like a bandit whenever the weather got warm.

  Which is a lot easier to resent now that the only way to get clothes clean is to beat them on rocks and scrub 'em by hand.

  The cat sauntered over to Luanne and began cadging a drink of milk with a weave-around-the-ankles begging routine; she got the first few squirts right into her face, since you weren't supposed to drink that yourself, and then the streams went hissing into the bucket. The cow flicked its tail and did, copiously, what cows and horses were wont to do whenever and wherever they felt like it.

  Signe had never minded helping muck out the stables at Larsdalen or the ranch, but.:. I'm getting used to living in a barnyard. Jesus!

  Luanne also fended off the calf with a boot now and then, when its indignation at seeing breakfast disappearing overcame its good sense. The cow gave a plaintive moo as Luanne swore and leaned a shoulder into it to get the udder back above the pail, giving it a resounding slap on the rump when it balked.

  "Madam, you permit yourself strange liberties!" Signe called, grinning.

  "You're channeling cows, now?" Luanne replied.

  "Beats milking them," Signe said frankly. Although milking is good for your hand grip too. Which I now know by experience.

  The cow shifted and rolled its eyes, obviously weirded out by the whole process, despite several days' practice; at least this one didn't kick … much. So far their cattle were all range beef stock, Herefords and Angus, not dairy types bred for gentleness. Even when they'd become accustomed to milking and didn't need to be secured fore and aft, they didn't like it at all. The amount of work that went into getting a pint of milk out of them was daunting, but nobody they'd met had been willing to part with milch animals.

  Yet. It was certainly right up there on the wish list Angelica kept, along with the barrel churn that Ken kept promising to finish.

  It had been sort of cool learning how to milk a cow, with Luanne and Angelica teaching her—they were both fun to be around, and Signe had always been good with animals. Doing the milking every second day wasn't much fun at all; it made your hands cramp, not to mention getting your foot stepped on or a well-beshatted tail switched into your face.

  Signe put the weights down, waved to Luanne and then went into a set of stretching exercises, head to knee, splits, touching hands diagonally behind your shoulder blades. Both Mike and Pamela insisted on that before you did any serious practice. The two of them had a lot in common, starting with a steady methodical attention to details that left her alternately enraged and awestruck.

  She finished the stretches and took her practice sword down from the rack along one side of the wagon, checked that there was no rust on the blade—Mike and Pamela insisted, even with the blunt and nearly pointless blades used for drill—and began a series of cuts, right- and left-handed, to loosen her hands and forearms.

  "Good," Pamela said, tossing her a pair of leather bracers. "You're starting to dominate the weapon. Now for real."

  "Who would have thought two pounds and a bit was so heavy!" Signe said.

  She leaned the sword against her hip for a moment as she strapped the bracers around her wrists—they helped make the bruising, jarring impacts less hard on your tendons. Somewhat less hard; you still had to watch out for the martial equivalent of carpal tunnel.

  Pamela grinned. "Anyone who's done more than a few passages with a backsword knows that a couple of pounds is of nearly infinite weight. But don't try to do it all from the shoulder. Back it up from the gut and hips. That's what the rest of your body is for."

  After that Signe slipped her targe onto her left arm and began lunges at a solid plank target shaped like a man, with Pamela holding it from behind—and moving it unpre-dictably, along with a running commentary on her form. The impacts ran back up her wrist and arm and back, but as Pam said, you were practicing to ram the blade into someone and out the other side, not pop their zits.

  She forced down memories of terror and blood and made herself spring forward, back, again … After a while she stopped, panting. Pamela handed her a tin cup of water and she drank, conscious of the sweat dripping down her face and flanks.

  "Thanks, Pam," she said, hesitated, and then went on: "Can I ask you a sort of personal question?"

  "Like we have privacy anymore? Sure."

  "Tell me … do you think Mike likes me?"

  The older woman gave a gurgling laugh. Signe flushed and gave her a glare. "Well, he seems to like you well enough!"

  Pamela laughed harder. "Oh, honey, sometimes I forget you're only eighteen!"

  "Nineteen in August," Signe said, and ground her teeth slightly at the smile that followed.

  "I'm thirty-two," Pamela explained after a moment. "Believe me, Mike thinks of me as a cross between an older sister and one of his Marine buddies. Maybe if I was the last woman in the world, but otherwise—don't worry."

  Signe felt her shoulders relax slightly. "You're closer to his age than I am," she said.

  "Honey, I'm four years older than him. Let me tell you about another of the manifold unfairnesses of the world from our point of view—" The younger woman nodded reluctantly. Pamela went on: "Besides, if there's any man in the outfit who appeals to me, it's your dad."

  Signe goggled at her in horror. "You're kidding! Mom—"

  Pamela faced her for a second: "Signe, your mom is dead. I'm real sorry and I would never have looked at your dad if she'd lived, but she didn't."

  Signe sucked in a breath. "Sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you. Things have changed so fast … actually, I meant, he's so old. Mom was old, and he's older."

  "Well, thanks! He's also the only really interesting conversationalist we've got who isn't already taken. But don't worry about it. We're not teenagers, i.e., not in a hurry. Anyway, you were talking about Mike?"

  "Well, he's nice, and we've had fun talking and riding together and … but he's never … you know. Tried anything."

  Pamela shrugged. "I don't know why. I do know he thinks you're very attractive—"

  "What did he say?" she cut in eagerly.

  "He's never said a word, it's just obvious the way he perks up when you're there—he's not much of a smiler otherwise. You know, that stoic Finn sisu thing."

  "Well, then why doesn't he want to talk about how he feels?" she said in frustration.

  "They never do! Listen to the voice of experience. That's a major reason I ended up divorced lo these many years ago. I wanted to talk about why the relationship wasn
't working. As far as he was concerned, if he had to talk about it … well, that meant it wasn't working. I insisted. He walked."

  "Weird."

  "Men are weird. Very nice in a way, sometimes, but weird. Mike . might actually be smart enough to play hard to get. Or he may think you're just too young for him. A strange man in some ways, very private."

  "That doesn't make me very happy," Signe said, quirking a smile. "I most definitely want him."

  "I don't think Mike's personal energy field is calibrated for happy. Being around him will never be dull, and it could be a lot of fun, but simple happiness isn't in the contract. Be warned." She hesitated. "Besides … it hasn't been very long since, ah, the incident. Are you sure you want to, mmm, get involved with anyone quite yet?"

  Signe flushed. "I wasn't raped!" she snapped bluntly.

  "Your call. Just a warning—if you do start radiating make-a-move signals and Mike does try something, it's not going to be a cuddle and kiss on the cheek he has in mind, you know. Not that he wouldn't take no for an answer, but he might be really pissed off if you got cold feet."

  They both looked up at a sudden sound; Pamela blew out her cheeks in relief at the interruption. Astrid was on watch a hundred yards from the road, where a little rise gave her a view of the ground falling away to northward, mounted and with an arrow on the string of her bow. She reached down and pulled a brass bugle from her saddlebow and did her best to make it sing; what she got was a flat, sourly off-key blatting hoot instead, but it carried.

  Everyone around the little caravan stopped what they were doing and grabbed for a weapon—spear, bow, ax, sword, long knife.

  Then they relaxed when she repeated the call twice, paused and blew twice again, and spurred in towards the wagons.

  "The all-clear," Pamela said. She slid her working sword back into the scabbard hanging from the wagon, and picked up the practice weapon she'd dropped.

  "Looks like Josh's got a message from the boss," Signe replied, putting up a hand to shade her eyes.