Dies the Fire (30 page)

“With y'all in a second,” he said.

Then he took his workpiece out of the coals with a pair of pincers, gave it a quick once-over, nodded, and picked up a smoothed nine-foot pole with his other hand. The metal was a twelve-inch tapering double-edged blade shaped like a willow leaf and about as broad as two fingers, but it was mounted on a round steel tube. Using the pincers, then the anvil and a hammer, Hutton forced the tube sleeve onto the pretapered uppermost section of the pole.

The wood began to smoke almost immediately; the sleeve was heated past the red-glowing stage.

Quickly he reversed the spear and plunged the whole head and a foot of the shaft into a big bucket of water. There was a volcanic hiss and spurt of steam, dying away to a muttering and bubbling. The hot metal would shrink as it cooled, binding unbreakably to the wood.

“Saw somethin' like this in Calgary, up in Canada, when I was workin' rodeo—went for the Stampede there couple of years,” Hutton said.

He took the spearhead out and wiped it dry, then wiped it again with an oiled rag, then braced the shaft between his legs with the top three feet across the anvil and touched up the edges of the head with a two-handed sharpening hone. The steel made a
scring . . . scring . . .
sound under his swift expert strokes.

“The Mounties at the Stampede used lances 'bout like this, put on quite a show.”

“You were in rodeo?” Havel asked.

Astrid was beginning to fidget, then visibly controlled herself.

Good,
he thought.
Let's introduce the concept of
discipline
and
patience
into the Elvish ranks.

Hutton nodded. “Roughstock,” he said.

That meant riding Brahma bulls, and horses deliberately picked to buck. He glanced over at his wife, who was checking the bundles and boxes of their gear against a list.

“Angel, though, she wanted more than broken bones and trophies on the wall. She was right, of course; and I'd rather work with real horses, anyhow. By then I had enough saved to get our spread and a decent herd.”

He tossed the long spear over to Havel. The younger man ran his hands along the smooth length of it; the blade was sharpened right down to where the curve of the shoulders melded into the tubular socket, so it wouldn't get stuck in someone or something's body the way the knife-bladed weapon had.

“Used part of a leaf spring for that,” Hutton said, waving his hand back towards the vehicles by the side of the road. “It's good metal; forming the socket, that was the hard part. I made up a couple of 'em.”

He went over to the flatbed and got something else. Havel's eyes widened a bit. It was a straight-bladed saber just under a yard long in the blade, with a three-bar brass guard. A neatly made sheath of leather-covered wood held it, with chape and mouth done in aluminum beaten to shape. Hutton handed it to him, and he examined it more closely; the hilt had wooden fillets glued to the tang, covered in layers of thin braided rawhide to shape it to a man's palm. When he drew it the weapon was heavy but well balanced, blade cross-sectioned nicely from thick back to edge; the reverse was sharpened for a foot back from the point.

It felt
right
in his hand, suited to a thrust or solid chopping cut.

“
Haakkaa paalle!”
he said, giving it a flourish. At Hutton's raised eyebrow, Havel went on: “Finnish war cry from the Old Country, way back.”

“What's it mean?” Astrid asked.

“Literally? ‘
Hack them down!
' Freely translated: ‘
Kill! Kill!
' Back in the old days in Europe, the Finns fought for the kings of Sweden, who really got around—our cavalry campaigned with them all over the place. The Church had a special prayer: ‘From the horrible Finns, good God deliver us!' ”

He tried whipping the sword through a figure eight, and then winced slightly at how close he'd come to taking off part of his own right kneecap in his enthusiasm.

Hope nobody else noticed that. This is going to take some work,
he thought, and went on aloud to Hutton: “I thought you said you weren't a blacksmith!”

“I ain't; and if I was, I couldn't do a sword from scratch in four days. That's not hardly blacksmith's work at all, Mike. Just mutilating a length of leaf spring. The hard part in makin' swords the old-time way was tempering, heating and quenching just right. But that, it's alloy steel and already heat-treated better than anyone could do in a forge.”

“Hmmmm,” Havel said.

He braced the point against a stump and leaned on it; the metal bowed, then sprang straight again. He tested the edge with his thumb. It was knife-sharp, which was practical for a weapon—a razor edge was too likely to turn on bone. A flick at the stump took out a surprisingly large chip without dulling it.

“We'll have to learn how to temper steel again by hand, eventually,” he went on.

“Lord, Mike, this is
America.
You know how many tens of millions of cars are sittin' around, with every wheel hung on half a dozen sword blanks? All I had to do was be careful to keep it cool so's not to lose the temper, straighten it out with a sledgehammer, file an' cut it to shape and do the hilt 'n guard—guard's brass strip from the engine grille of the truck—then grind the blade to the right cross-section and hone on the edge. Didn't take more than a day. Astrid's pa helped a good deal, and some books on old-time cavalry I got, so I'm workin' on one for each of us.”

Havel nodded, delighted, and decided to let Astrid burble before she burst: “What was that you said about Will's books, kid?”

“He has the most
wonderful
things about horses—he's sort of like a Rider of Rohan, you know? And books on cavalry, and these notes—they're called
Horseback Archery
—”

She turned in appeal to Hutton. The Texan had begun to dismantle his improvised hearth, removing the parts he'd be taking with him and stowing the tools neatly in their boxes. He gave her an indulgent chuckle and said:

“Got to exchangin' e-mail with this fellah in Hungary, name of Lajos, Kassai Lajos. They got some real horsemen there, good as any over to here, and he's been working for years on finding out how his old-timey kin used bows from the saddle, and how they made their bows and stuff. Workin' practical, with his own horses. I'd admired to see it. He's fixin' to write a book about it, and sent me a good part of his work. I printed it up an' bound it.”

Hutton shook his head. “Hope he was close to home when things Changed; he's got him a little ranch and some horses out in the country there. If he was, he'll live if anyone does!”

Havel nodded.
Well, there's a change for you,
he thought.
Last month, you could chat with someone in Hungary. Now you can't talk to anyone outside shouting range.

Out in the meadow, Luanne and Signe and Eric were riding—galloping down a row of light sticks set in the ground, swerving in and out around each in succession in a series of S-curves, very much like the rodeo event called barrel racing.

He saw that Hutton hadn't been boasting about his daughter; Luanne was leaning in to each curve with effortless grace. Eric and Signe were very good; she made them look as if they were operating their horses by not particularly sensitive remote control systems.

And I'm not nearly as good as either of the twins,
he thought.
Well, practice makes perfect. I suspect a lot of the rest of my life is going to be spent in the saddle.

“Go on,” he said to Astrid. “See if you can give her a run for her money.”

“Luanne is
cool,
” Astrid said, and ran for a hobbled horse.

Hutton watched them for a moment; Havel went over and helped him lift his anvil into place on the trailer and lash it down.

“Mike,” he said, “How were you plannin' on us making a living, while we're on the way to the promised land?”

“However we can,” he said. “If we have to fight for food, we will, but I'd rather not. Overall, it depends on whether my ideas about what's going to happen are close to the mark.”

Hutton looked a question at him, and Havel continued: “It's obvious what's going to happen in the big cities—and overseas, in countries that are all big city, like Japan. Remote areas like this, or the farming country . . . I think things will collapse there too, but slower. Most people will try to hang on to what they had, and the ways they did things, as close as they can. It won't work, not in the long run.”

“They got along well enough with horses and such in my granddaddy's time,” Hutton said. “Or at least the white folks did,” he added with a grim smile.

Havel nodded; Hutton didn't have much formal education, but he was no fool—in fact, he was about the most all-round competent man Havel had ever come across, even out here in the backwoods.

“But they didn't get along without telegraphs, or steamboats, or without guns, a hundred years ago,” he said. “Not for a long time before that; you'd have to go back a thousand years, nearly, I think, before it wouldn't make a difference. Someone, something wanted us knocked
way
down.”

Hutton made a final tie-off and fingered the knot. “I hate to think the good Lord judged us that wicked. He promised to Noah no more water; but this time, He took away the fire.”

“Could be,” Havel said; he was actually an agnostic, but there was no way to disprove the Texan's idea. “Myself, I think Ken's got it right. Someone out there”—he pointed upward—“with a technology that makes ours . . . what we had . . . look like stone knives. Something so far beyond ours we can't understand it, and it's like magic. Like algebra to a monkey.”

Hutton looked aside at him. “If it was some spacemen, what do you figure we can do 'bout it?”

“Nothing,” Havel said bluntly. “I figure we'll just have to live with what they've done to us, and we won't even find out why unless they tell us someday. In the meantime . . . we have to find a way to live in the world they gave us. You and I, and our kids—mine when I have them, that is.”

He looked at the sun. “Let's start early tomorrow. We can make Lowell in three days, taking it easy. It's all downslope.”

“One step closer to Larsdalen,” Hutton said, smiling.

“If that's where we end up,” Havel nodded. “One step at a time. Lowell first.”

“Ain't much in Lowell but about thirty people,” Hutton observed.

“Right. But there'll be a fair number of other travelers stranded there. I want to look them over. We need recruits.”

“We do?” Hutton said.

“We do. Anywhere we end up, if it's worth having . . . someone else will want it too.”

Lowell, Idaho, had a sign at the outskirts: POPULATION 24—with the 24 crossed out, and “23” written beside it.

The joke was one from before things Changed.

The tiny hamlet sat at the junction of the Lochsa and the Clearwater; in normal times it was a jumping-off point for the wilderness areas around, and for white-water rafting. Now half a dozen of its residents stood across the roadway; three of them had hunting bows, the others axes or baseball bats.

Havel reined in his horse and flung up his right hand with the fist clenched. He could hear Angelica's
whoa
to her team, and the hoof-falls of the rest behind him ceased, dying away to an occasional clop or crunch as a horse shifted in place.

“Afternoon,” he said.

“Afternoon,” the burly middle-aged man who seemed to be the leader said. “Lot of road people already been through.”

Road people?
Havel thought. Then:
Well, yeah, there must have been
millions
caught away from home when the Change happened. I suppose people would come up with a nickname.

“I've got to warn you though, we don't have any food to spare. Barely enough for our own.”

Havel nodded. He'd expected nothing different. This was hard country, well away from the farming and ranching areas further west and south. The locals could probably survive on hunting and fishing until winter, but not many casual passers-by could.

“We're fixed, for now,” he said. “Got plenty of meat.”

Several of the men stiffened with suspicion.
Already?
Havel thought, and went on aloud: “Elk, venison and bear”—he touched the long wound that ran across his forehead and into his scalp—“which the bear brought on himself. We could trade some jerky for flour or rice or beans.”

The little band of townsfolk relaxed. Their leader looked at the swords the travelers all carried, and the bows. Will had rigged tubular scabbards at the right rear of their saddles, and he and Luanne and Havel were using them for the long spears—lances—he'd made. He'd also done up round plywood shields, convex circles rimmed in metal and covered in elk hide; Signe and Astrid had painted the head of a snarling bear on each, quite skillfully.