Dies the Fire (45 page)

Now we get down to it,
Havel thought.

“We didn't intend on making a bid for the whole thing. You'd prefer we go somewhere else?”

“Oh, on the contrary. I can always use a group of . . . sensible . . . fighting men. Centralized government isn't possible anymore, without powered machinery or fast communications. Or without cannon for that matter. I would grant you lands, and authority over those living on them—provide you with labor, if necessary, farm tools, seed, livestock. In return, you acknowledge me as ultimate overlord, furnish armed men when I call for them, plus labor for public works like roads, and give me a reasonable share of the yearly profits from your . . . demesne, shall we call it. In return, you get the help of the whole Portland Protective Association when you need it.”

The word
demesne
tickled Havel's memory, a vague recollection of something Ken Larsson and Pamela had mentioned in one of their campfire conversations. So did the whole setup Arminger was outlining.

“Exactly what period of history were you a professor of, Lord Protector?”

Arminger looked at him with narrowed eyes; the expression on Sandra's face was identical. Havel cursed himself behind an impassive mask.

You should be consistent when you try and get someone to underestimate you.
Bad
Lord Bear. No biscuit for you!

“Ninth through twelfth centuries,” the Protector said. “Early feudal Europe, specializing in Normandy and the Norman principalities—England, Wales, Ireland, Sicily.”

“Sicily?” Havel said, trying to sound idly curious.

“Indeed, Sicily and southern Italy; conquered by Norman religious pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. They went to do good, and in fact did very well . . . rather as I plan to do.”

Havel raised a brow and smiled crookedly. He didn't want Arminger to think he was a patsy, either.

“But you
don't,
as of now, control the Willamette? Sir.”

“No,” the Protector said. “Right now, it's Portland, and part of the lower Columbia. Our current southern and western border is roughly a semicircle from Oregon City to Tualtin. Does that mean your group won't consider my offer?”

“No, sir. We will most definitely consider it—when and if we get here.”

Leaving you to assume that
here
means Portland, and that we'll come up I-84. Assume makes an ass of you and me.

Aloud he went on: “And depending on our appreciation of the situation then in the light of our own interests. I'll certainly recommend that we take your offer under advisement and send further scouts later in the year, when we're closer. The Pendleton committee offered us land; it just wasn't very
good
land when you don't have modern equipment to work it. Plus the politics there look unstable, as you said.”

Slowly, Arminger nodded; then he made a gesture of dismissal, with grudging respect in it.

“You can start on your way back tomorrow then. Ask the steward for anything you need in the way of amusements tonight, or supplies tomorrow.”

“Thank you kindly, sir.”

Havel stood, nodded his head in an almost-bow, and led his companions out the carved-teak door, moving easily, but conscious of the sweat that trickled down his flanks despite the coolness of the air. They were billeted in a yellow-brick apartment building half a block away, and he'd be
very
glad to get there.

“Mike!” Eric hissed, after they passed the guards with their halberds and crossbows. “What the
hell
were you—”

He gave a muffled
oofff!
as Josh took his arm and elbowed him in the ribs as he did it. Havel draped a comradely arm around his shoulders for an instant, and said loudly: “Yeah, sounded like a pretty reasonable proposition.”

Josh nodded. “Certainly the best offer we've had so far.”

Eric missed a step and then nodded vigorously; he was young and still had a bit of the sense of entitlement produced by being brought up rich, but he wasn't stupid. They passed through the corridor, then into a vast open area where the reconstruction work was still under way. From the looks of it, this was going to be a barracks or ready-room.

Havel stopped, looked around, and went on: “Thank God we don't have to worry about electronic bugs anymore . . . anyway, didn't it occur to you that he has a vigorous zero-fault tolerance program for those who tell him ‘no' to his face? Like, nailing their heads up over the door?”

Eric nodded. Havel thought for a moment: “You ever do any of that role-playing stuff?”

“D and D? A little. I wouldn't have figured you for the type, Mike.”

Havel gave a rare grin. Eric wore a lot better now than he had when they'd first met; he suspected it was mostly a matter of having real work and real responsibilities.

When you're in it, you grow up fast.
Aloud he went on: “I wasn't into D and D; working on my Harley and deer hunting and track and field were more my style, when I could duck out of chores at home. I even read the odd book.”

Eric mimed staggering in surprise, and Havel gave him a playful punch on the shoulder.

“But there was this girl I knew in high school in 'eighty-seven who was a fanatic about it; Shirley, real cute, and by rumor a demented mink in the sack—”

“—and you thought you could make a saving-roll into her pants?”

“Hey, I was a teenager, all dick and no brains, like some people around here right now. Thing is, she liked the Chaotic Evil types and I couldn't compete.” Seriously: “The Protector and the way he operates remind me of the guy she dumped me for—dressed in black a lot, had this little scraggly peach-fuzz goatee like a landing strip on his chin, lot of attitude, thought he was seriously bad. And he was smart, but not as smart as he thought he was—for example, he thought all those little needling jabs were going right over my thick jock head.
And
he thought he could fight 'cause he'd pranced around a dojo a little, in a black
gi,
of course.”

A reminiscent smile, and he rubbed the knuckles of his right fist into his left palm. “About the time I finally gave up on Shirley, I broke the little pissant's nose out behind the school gym—caught hell from the principal, but it was worth it, and I planned on enlisting anyway.”

Soberly: “Anyway, give you odds the Protector was his clone when
he
was a kid and always played a, what the hell was the name . . . yeah, a dwerg or a draug or a Dark Elf or magical assassin or something.”

“Now he's trying to do it for real?”

“Yeah, and it won't work in the end, I'd bet. We may have had a change in the laws of nature, but I don't think even the Change could make the world
that
much like a D and D game. Plus I think he's got this thing about the history he used to study, the feudalism thing, and
that
won't work either, at least not right away, although it's a better bet long-term than the Evil Overlord stuff. We may have had all our toys taken away, but the people he's dealing with weren't born back then.”

“I don't know, Mike,” Eric said. “He
has
taken over around here, and he looks like he's getting things organized. People will put up with a lot, for that and for food.”

“Yeah,” Josh said. “And he's also operating on a pretty big scale. What was that Russian saying Eric's dad quoted?”

“
Quantity has a quality all its own,
” Havel said. “Yup. I'm not saying the Protector would be a pushover. Even if he goes down, he could do a lot of damage first; in fact, he certainly
will
do a lot of damage whether he wins or loses.”

A glance over his shoulder, and he continued meditatively: “If he weren't such a looney-tooner, I'd actually give that proposition of his serious consideration. Even though he is . . .”

Eric made a disgusted noise. Havel went on: “I said
if,
kid. The other problem is that he's got big eyes. I think it's going to be a join-him-or-fight-him thing everywhere in the Columbia basin, eventually. Damn.”

Eric nodded. “We're still not committed,” he pointed out. “I mean, we could head southeast, try the Snake River country, or even get out across the Rockies over the summer. Try the High Plains, or find somewhere to winter and then a chunk of good farming country we could claim.”

Josh tapped the fingers of his left hand on his sword hilt; the brass strips of the guard rang a little.

“Problem with that is, first, good country isn't going to be all that easy to find without we drive off someone else. And second, we could walk straight into something just as bad as this Protector guy. I got this ugly feelin' ambitious men are going to be right common for a good long while now.”

“We'll see,” Havel said. A grin: “I mean, hell,
I'm
ambitious. And tomorrow, we ride out of here—south. He admitted he doesn't control the Willamette. I'd like to see if anyone does, and what the prospects are, before we go back and start making decisions.”

 

 

 

Kenneth Larsson wept with the jerking sobs of a man unaccustomed to tears.

“Shhh,” Pamela said, holding his head against her shoulder in the cool canvas-smelling dimness of the tent. “Shhh. It's all
right,
Ken.”

The tears subsided. “I'm so fucking
useless,
” he said. “I'm sorry, Pam.”

“For what?” she said. “Hey, Ken,
I've
been having a fine old time tonight. Young men don't make love to a woman; they use the woman to make love to Mr. Dickie. Give it time.”

He relaxed, probably amazed she didn't want to kick him out of her bedroll and never see him again. Pamela's lips quirked in the darkness.

I meant what I said,
she thought.
And besides, Ken—we
can't
walk out on each other, not anymore. We're all stuck with each other unless we want to leave the outfit.

Ken took a shuddering breath. “I haven't been much use to any woman, since Mary . . . died. I couldn't protect her or my daughters—
yeeeeow!
”

Pamela poised her fingers to give his chest hair another painful tweak.

“What was
that
for?” he gasped.

“For being
stupid,
is what. It isn't like you. Will Hutton couldn't protect his family, and he's as tough as anyone in the outfit. And Mike couldn't have alone, either—what's the old saying, even Hercules can't fight two?”

“He rescued us.”

“With Eric and Will helping!
We protect each other.
You didn't protect your family before the Change, either: the law did, and the police did, and the military did, and the State of Oregon did, and the U-S of A did. Now the outfit does. And you're our engineer, and you know a hell of a lot of history. You're at least as useful to everyone as I am, or Will is.”

Softly: “I
played
at Renaissance fencing because it was fun, Ken; I'm a middle-class Jewish veterinarian from southern California! I never thought I'd have to
kill
with it. Hold me, will you?”

A few minutes later: “
Yeeeow!
What was
that
for!”

“To drive the lesson home.” Her hand strayed.

“Thanks, but—”

“Hey, I'm doing that 'cause
I
like it, buddy! Doesn't feel bad, does it?”

“No, but—”

“There's no prize for making the finish line here,” she said. “Just two codgers having fun. . . .”

A moment later: “Well, well!” She rolled over and straddled him. “That
does
feel nice!”

“
L
ord and Lady, I don't think I can stand this much longer,” Judy Barstow said, her olive Mediterranean skin gray.

Juniper nodded. They were ten miles north of Salem, and . . .

She wiped at the flies crawling over her face, spat, and pulled the bandana up over her face again, which let her breathe through her mouth without inhaling any of them—even after many days' exposure, she hadn't gotten used to the stink. Her eyes skipped over the bodies lying by the road, and the rats that crawled bloated and insolent among them. Rags and tatters of flesh were left; the crows were at them too, but the rats were so numerous that they could drive the birds off in chittering hordes. Inside an SUV windows pullulated with heaving gray bodies. . . .

“It's almost as bad here as it was along I-5,” she said. “I don't think we should try to get any closer to Portland.”

“No,” Judy said. “I don't either. My grandfather got out of Lithuania in World War Two . . . I never really understood what he was talking about before.”