Dies the Fire

by S. M. Stirling

  Naysmith licked his lips and spoke out: "I heard the Wa-terses arguing—sounded like Billy was yelling at Nancy." That was the bowyer's eight-year-old. "Then she started crying and screaming at him to stop, and … well, we hadn't been listening too hard before, you know, Boss?"

  He nodded understanding. There wasn't much privacy in camp; the tents were set far enough apart that ordinary conversation didn't carry, but shouts certainly did. A convention had grown up of pretending you didn't hear family arguments—one of the little forbearances that made the tight-knit group's life tolerable.

  "But it got sort of scary. And I could hear Jane screaming at him to stop, too. Then he started hitting her—hitting Jane, that is—and then Reuben tried to make him leave her alone, and he started hitting the kid, real hard, yelling bad stuff, really bad. So Jake and I went over and dragged him out. He tried to slug us too, and he smelled and acted drunk, and we sent someone for you, Lord Bear."

  Havel looked around the circle of firelit faces; most of the men had close-cropped beards like his, and most of the women braids. Underlit from the flames, they all had a hard feral look, new since the Change. He held up the whiskey bottles again. There were resentful murmurs; pre-Change liquor was already extremely valuable as trade goods, like tobacco.

  "This isn't from our stores. I think we can all guess how Billy got it from the townies over there."

  He uncorked it and took a slug, baring his teeth and exhaling as the smooth fire burned its way down his gullet.

  "That's the real goods, and no mistake. The man who took Bearkiller equipment for this didn't cheat Billy the way Billy did the rest of us."

  More formally: "Anyone want to speak for this man? Anyone have a different version of what came down here tonight? Anyone know another way he could have gotten this liquor?"

  There was an echoing silence; Waters didn't have many friends, and since he was obviously guilty as sin the few he did have weren't going to court unpopularity by swimming upstream. Being severely unpopular in a small community like this was unpleasant to the point of being dangerous, when you had to rely on your fellows for your life in a world turned hostile and strange.

  Havel tossed the empty aside and handed the full bottle to someone, and it passed from hand to hand, with a little pawing and cursing and elbowing if anyone kept it tilted up too long—there was just enough for a sip for everyone who wanted one.

  "One last time, does anyone want to speak for Billy Waters? It's any member's right to speak freely at a trial."

  More silence, and Havel nodded. "Hands up for not guilty. Hands up for guilty . anyone want to propose a punishment? Or shall I handle it?"

  There was a rumble of you're the boss and let Lord Bear decide.

  He sighed. "Let him go," he said. The two men stepped aside, and Havel moved forward.

  "Waters, you sad and sorry sack of shit," he said in a conversational tone, and then his open hand moved with blurring speed.

  Crack!

  Waters went down as if he'd been hit across the face with the flat side of an oak board, but nothing was broken; Havel had calculated the blow with precision.

  Waters cringed and tried to scramble back as the Bear-killers' leader stepped forward, moving with the delicate ease of a great cat.

  "On your feet! Christ, you're getting the beating whatever you do. Take it like a man, Waters, not a yellow dog!"

  Havel raised his voice a little after the older man crawled upright, holding a hand to the side of his face.

  "Do you remember what I said to you when you joined the Bearkillers, Billy?"

  The man nodded quickly. "Said I shouldn't go on no benders, Lord Bear. Look, Boss, I've been making the bows good, haven't I? I'm real sorry and it won't—"

  "What I said was that if you went on a bender and slapped your wife and kids around, I would beat the living shit out of you the first time, and beat the living shit out of you and throw you out on your worthless ass the second time. Didn't I?"

  Waters's mouth moved. The second time he got the yes out audibly. Then he licked his lips and spoke:

  "I was just giving Nancy a spanking, Lord Bear—she back-talked me. A man's got a right to do that."

  Havel nodded. "Yeah, sometimes you have to give a kid a swat on the butt to get their attention, like using a rolled-up newspaper when you're housebreaking a puppy."

  He held up his right hand; his index finger rose to make a point. Billy Waters watched it with fascinated dread as it approached his face.

  "Since you are such a stupid sack of shit, I will now demonstrate, using visual aids, that there is a big fat fucking difference in kind between a spanking and a punch in the face."

  Then he closed the hand into a fist and struck with a short chopping overarm blow. This time the sound was more like a maul striking wood.

  Havel rubbed his right fist into the palm of his left as Waters rolled on the ground, moaning and clutching his face. Havel's knuckles hurt—the move wasn't one he'd have used in a fight, but the purpose here was punishment … and education, if possible.

  Waters staggered up without an order this time, for example, which showed some capacity to learn.

  "That's what it's like to be punched in the face by someone a lot stronger than you are, Billy. Did you like it?"

  Waters swallowed and lowered a hand from his right eye; the flesh around it was already puffing up. He shook his head wordlessly.

  "I'll bet punching Reuben out made you feel like a real man, didn't it, Billy?"

  Crack.

  Havel struck again, with his left palm this time. The man spun to the ground and hugged it, rising only when Havel encouraged him with the toe of his boot.

  "Now, where were we?" Havel said, when the bowmaker was back on his feet, swaying a little. He went on, his voice flatly cold: "Yeah, we were talking about how a real man acts. Reuben, now, he tried to defend his mother against long odds, which is a pretty good example. God knows where he learned it, since he didn't get the idea from you! I think we've established that a real man doesn't punch little kids in the face, though. Haven't we? I'm waiting for an answer, Billy."

  "Yes, Lord Bear."

  "Now let's move on to the subject of how a real man treats his wife. A real man doesn't slap even a ten-dollar hooker around, if he's got any self-respect, much less hurt his own woman. Much less ten times over the mother of his kids. A real man busts his ass to feed his family, fights for them if he has to, dies for them if he has to. And he treats his wife with respect every day of his life, treats her like a queen—the queen of the home she makes for their children."

  Crack. Crack.

  Havel struck again with both sides of his open hand, forehand and back. Waters slumped to his knees, blood pouring from his nose and the corners of his mouth where the lips had cut on his teeth.

  "Chuck that bucket of water on him," Havel said, without looking around.

  Someone did, and awareness came into Waters's eyes once more. Havel bent, forearm on thigh, so that he could speak close to the man's face, more quietly this time.

  "By now, you probably feel a bit hard-done-by, Billy. Just remember this: anytime you want, you can be treated with respect by me and everyone in the outfit. All you have to do is earn it! Now get out of my sight. Go puke out the booze and clean yourself up. I'm giving you this one last chance, for your kids' sake."

  Havel turned to the assembly as Waters scuttled away. His voice was hard and pitched to carry, but calm: "I cannot abide trash behavior. I will not tolerate it in the Bear-killers. Remember, we're supposed to look out for each other; so don't let this sort of thing get started. Lights-out in an hour, people. We'd all better get ready to turn in."

  The crowd dispersed, murmuring, as he walked back towards the command tent; most of the murmurs were approval. More than a few slapped him on the back; he answered with polite nods, but stayed wordless. Signe followed, leading their horses.

  "Mike—" she said.

  He turned with a wry smile. "S
orry, askling, but I'm not fit company for man or beast right now."

  The smile turned into a grimace. "I feel like I need a bath—and a strong drink, to get the taste of that out of my mouth."

  She smiled and leaned forward, kissing him with brief gentleness. "Well," she said, "It's not as if either of us is going to fly off to the Cote d'Azur tomorrow, right? What say we make a date for the next nice sunset?"

  He grinned suddenly. "I'll look forward to it."

  "And you'll treat me like a queen, hey?" she asked, smiling impishly.

  He swept an elaborate courtly bow. "And so will everyone else," he said. "If I have anything to say about it."

  When she'd left, he stood smiling his crooked smile for a moment.

  "And maybe, just maybe, I will," he murmured to himself.

  For Ken Larsson was right; he had been very damned lucky indeed, so far. And …

  "How did your dad put it, Signe? Yeah. People live by myths, but myths change … the Change threw 'em all up for grabs. And the first king was a lucky soldier."

  Chapter

  Twenty-six

  "Complicated plan," Sam Aylward whispered. "Depends on the enemy doing what we want."

  Juniper nodded. "It also allows a good chance for us to run away if things go bad," she replied softly, concentrating on the view through her binoculars.

  "It also depends on the Sutterdown folk doing what they promised."

  "Ni neart go cur le cheie," she said. "There's no strength without unity. We can't do this by ourselves."

  She lay at the edge of a patch of woods that covered a low rise in the valley floor. Beyond that was a narrow strip of plowed land grown with weeds, earth turned before the Change but never seeded. Beyond that was a wire fence, now down and derelict, and a narrow two-lane road; beyond that was a fair-sized wheatfield, reaped but with the grain still lying in windrows, and beyond that a line of trees along the irregular course of a small creek.

  The sight of the grain lying out disturbed her, even though the land was well beyond the clan's borders and into Sutterdown territory. Every night it lay out was one more for the birds and animals to eat more, and the risk of it spoiling was unbearable. In fact, she could see jays at it now, and crows, and a rabbit hopping through looking for good bits.

  The waste of war, she thought. Bad enough before the Change. Worse now.

  She laid the glasses down and turned her head, looking through a fringe of cloth. The long hooded poncho they'd christened a war cloak was light fabric, splotched in gray-green-brown, and sewn over with loops that held twigs or served to break her outline; Sam called it a ghillie suit. All the Mackenzie fighters wore one, and even though she knew where they were, she could see no more than a few— Dennis, lying with the ax blade beside his head, and John Carson beyond him.

  The Englishman had taught them that trick; he was willing to give advice, or train, or fight, or even lead a small group, but not to command overall, though they'd offered him that. What had he said?

  Hasn't been an Aylward ranked higher than sergeant in seven centuries, Lady. I wouldn't want to break the tradition.

  She didn't look behind herself.The horses were safely on the other, eastern side of the woodlot; Eilir and half a dozen other kids too young to fight but old enough to be trusted held them, ready for retreat. If worse came to worst, most of her people could probably flee … but she didn't expect that.

  I've never felt like this outside the Circle, she thought, but the musing was distant. It wasn't that she was brimming with confidence; she just … waited.

  The first Sutterdown men to come by were running, and for real; weaponless, some leaking blood, but not too badly to keep them from making good speed. They came down the road and vanished around the corner as it curved eastward, to her left. The rest came in a clump; many more wounded or limping, some lying in a cart drawn by a single horse. She knew that meant others were dead; that a rear guard was spending their lives buying time for the rest to retreat and make their stand.

  Even wondering if they'd stop didn't make her feel anxious—just a slight tension, like a tight string on a guitar.

  They did stop. Reverend Dixon was there, the only man on horseback, but sharing his parishioners' danger. She could hear his voice, though not make out the words: harsh, hectoring, shaming the men into halting and turning to face the foe once more. But she could feel the power in it, as he gestured with the Bible in his hand.

  I'll never like him, and we may be enemies someday, but respect him I must, however reluctantly. He's no hypocrite.

  There were a hundred or so of the Sutterdown militia, working with frantic speed to make an improvised barricade where the road turned east, hauling fence posts with a tangle of wire and shoving a couple of abandoned cars into place before rocking them over on their sides; forty of her Mackenzies waited along the edge of the woods. Silence fell again, more or less; birds sang with cruel indifference, and insects burrowed and bit.

  And the braying sound of a trumpet came from the northwest, towards Sutterdown, faint but menacing. A man on a bicycle came from that direction too, stopped on a straight section of the road just beyond bowshot of the militia's barricade and looked about with binoculars of his own.

  She lowered her own lest the reflection give her away and waited; he seemed to give only perfunctory attention to the side of the road. The barricade got a close going-over, and the scout wrote in a spiral-bound notebook. Then he extended a fist with all but one finger clenched into a fist, pumped it in an unmistakable gesture, and pedaled off towards Sutterdown again.

  When he returned, the whole band was with him. Only two of them were on horseback, one who seemed to be the leader—he had a tall feather plume on his helmet—and a standard-bearer beside him. The flag that hung from the crossbar on the pole was black, with a cat-pupiled red eye on it; her mouth quirked slightly, at the evidence that someone—perhaps this Protector—had a nasty sense of humor.

  Or as Mike said, a weak grasp on reality; possibly both.

  The rest were on bicycles. Her lips moved again, in a silent curse. With bicycles and good roads, raiders could travel fifty miles in a day and strike without warning; and in the short run bicycles required neither the skilled care nor the expensive feeding of horses. That alone made things different—and worse—than in any of the history everyone was mining for clues on how to live in the Changed world.

  Take bandits, add bicycles and shake, and what do you get? Instant Mongol!

  Now someone seemed to have figured out how to apply the same advantage on a large scale. You couldn't fight from the saddle of a bicycle, but then, nobody around here could fight from the back of a horse either. Not yet.

  Sixty-three, she counted; that didn't include the banner man. Thirty with crossbows.

  Pre-Change crossbows, or made well since; they also wore short sleeveless tunics covered with metal scales, helmets, and had small shields slung across their backs; and they all seemed to have long knives or shortswords at their belts. Many carried hatchets as well.

  The remaining dozen had knee-length hauberks of rings or scales; their armor had sleeves, and they wore steel-splint protection on their forearms and shins. Their shields were thick and broad, strapped with metal, and they were armed with heavy spears, long swords or axes. The mounted commander halted them along the eastern side of the road, and Juniper felt a stab of anxiety—had they seen her folk?

  No, she decided. He's just holding them there ready to charge.

  She could see them laughing as they dismounted from their bicycles, leaving them on their kickstands, forming up in a column shield to shield; a few paused to piss by the side of the road, holding the skirts of their armor aside.

  The invaders had a supply wagon with them as well. It wasn't horse drawn, though: men powered it, seated on six bicycles bolted into a frame. Scrawny men clothed in rags, whose feet were chained to the pedals of their machines.

  Now, are these the Good Guys, or the Bad Guys? she tho
ught grimly. Nice to know your first impression isn 't mistaken. Cernunnos, Lord of the Gates of the Underworld, make ready!

  The crossbowmen formed up in a double line and began walking towards the Sutterdown position; they moved in open order, leaving gaps for the second rank to shoot through. Archers and crossbows opened up on them as they came within a hundred yards, but they ignored them— and ignored the man of theirs who fell kicking with a bolt in his thigh, except that they shuffled their ranks to close up the empty space.

  At eighty yards they stopped with a single long shout. The first rank leveled their crossbows and fired, a harsh unmusical snapping of strings and whistle of bolts; then they dropped the forward ends of their weapons to the ground, unshipped the cranks at their belt, hooked them to cord and butt and rewound.

  The second rank fired as they reloaded; then the first raised their weapons again, steady and methodical …

  They'll keep shooting until the militia are badly shaken, she thought.

  Behind them the full-armored fighters were shouting and slapping their weapons on their shields, waiting their turn.

  Then the heavies will go in. Morrigan witness, nobody really knows how to fight this way. A hundred Romans or Normans could wipe the floor with the lot of us. But the Protector's bunch are a little less ignorant than most.

  "But perhaps not so wise as they supposed," she murmured to herself, and whistled softly in signal.

  BOOM!

  The deep throbbing note of the drum echoed out across the empty fields, seeming to quiver in the hot still air, fading into distance. The noise from the road dropped away; the crossbowmen halted their mechanical rhythm of aiming and firing, looking over their shoulders. So did the heavy infantry preparing to charge.

  BOOM!

  It was the sound of a four-foot Lamberg drum, beaten two-handed with split canes; the instrument her Scots ancestors had employed to shatter the spirit of their enemies. She had only one here, rather than massed ranks, but the sound rippled up her spine and seemed to jolt in her skull.