Dies the Fire (79 page)

While the Protector's men sit fat and happy in nice warm barracks. We can't even really besiege the place because we can't get
around
it. Christ Jesus, did these ranchers have to go take a poll of all their cows before they could do what was fucking obviously the one possible thing to do? The only result being that we lost a month of passable weather to do it in.

“We aren't going to get into that by walking up and pissing on the gate, that's for sure,” Brown said.

The fort—
castle,
Havel told himself—was mostly reddish brown dirt, and then light-brown log palisade above that, stout ponderosa logs with their bases set deep amid rock and poured concrete; the whole of the earthwork was covered in a dense net of barbed wire secured by angle-iron posts driven deep into the soil. The mound that bore the tower was just behind the wall, northward from the east gate; starting high, the thick-walled timber structure had a hundred feet of vantage over the bridge that spanned Echo Creek.

About twenty feet of the bridge's pavement had been removed from the western edge, leaving the steel stringers exposed. A notch in the earth wall held the fort's gate, a massive steel-sheathed timber structure with a blockhouse over it; a drawbridge winched up by woven-wire cables covered the gap in the bridge when it was down, and reinforced the gate when it wasn't.

Right now it wasn't, and he could see the tiny figures of men walking on the parapet above, behind the heavy timbers. The morning light glinted on edged metal as they moved.

The wind down from the heights had a tang of iron and ice in it, along with the cold scent of pine and damp earth. He looked from the steep heights of Echo Summit to the north, across the little valley's flatlands to Browder ridge five thousand feet above to the south; both were timbered, but not densely—stands of Ponderosa and lodgepole pine for the most part, interspersed with scrub and open meadow. The creek tumbled down from the north, crossed the prairie—making a little U-shape with the bridge at its apex—and then joined another, larger stream that flowed at the foot of the southern hills; both had water now, though they were dry most of the summer. The U gave the castle what amounted to a natural moat over nearly half its circumference to supplement the one its builders had dug themselves.

The valley floor was sere autumn grassland; it had been called Lost Prairie once.

Aylward snapped his fingers. “Bugger! The location looked wrong, but of course that's why they put it there!” he said, evidently continuing an internal argument. “No mortars! I've ruddy well
got
to get my reflexes adjusted to the way things are now!”

Brown looked puzzled. Ken Larsson spoke without looking up from where he balanced a map board across his saddlebow.

“My son-in-law will enlighten you.”

Havel nodded: “Before the Change, you wouldn't put a firebase—a fort—down on a low spot like that, not with high hills so close to either side. Death trap. Anyone could have put a mortar on the hills and hammered them there. We have to get a lot closer, a trebuchet is sort of bulky—and what we throw isn't explosive.”

The CORA leader's name fitted his appearance—his hair, eyes, and skin were all shades of that brown, and so were his rough outdoors clothing and wide-brimmed hat, and the horse he rode.

“And they've got that wall and tower an' about two hundred men with crossbows,” he said, and spat aside in disgust. “Got dart-throwers there, and something inside the walls that lobs rocks, and containers of gasoline; they can hit all the way from the south hills to the north. Our local council of the Association tried havin' a run at them before you fellahs arrived—didn't like the thought of 'em settin' up shop here—and they stopped us before we got started, so we yelled for CORA.”

And CORA insisted on
talking
about things for most of a month,
Havel thought.
God knows how long it'd have gone on without the Mackenzies. Though to be fair, with the way they're spread out meetings aren't easy.

“Siege?” he asked. He suspected the answer, but . . .

“Nope.” Brown pointed south at the low gnarled mountains. “That's bad country, all wrinkled like an ol' lady's . . . ass.”

Then north. “That's worse. Oh, you could get around on foot, even take a horse, we got people who know the country real good . . . but it wouldn't be no damn use at all. This is the perfect place for a cork on Highway 20. And according to Ellie Strang, they've got plenty of food in there anyway. Enough to last to spring if they aren't picky.”

“Ellie Strang?”

“She, ah, sort of works there. Local gal, not what you'd call respectable, but patriotic.”

“Be a right butcher's bill, trying to storm it, even if it weren't for that riverbed between,” Aylward said.

Will Hutton cantered up along the roadside verge; avoiding the pavement was easier on the horse's hooves, when you could.

“Everything's ready, boss,” he said to Havel. “Ken's people are champin' to get set up.”

The Bearkiller leader grinned at the others. “You know what Arminger's problem is?” he said.

“He's a bloody maniac?” the Englishman replied.

“No, that's
our
problem.
His
problem is that he thinks it's 1066 come again.”

The Englishman touched the bow slung over his shoulder, and looked at the Bearkillers' hauberks. “It isn't?” he said.

“Let my father-in-law-to-be tell it. He's the intellectual.”

Ken Larsson made a rude gesture with his hook before he spoke. “Look, Alien Space Bats may have stolen our toys—”

Several men snorted laughter.

“—but we're not eleventh-century
people.
We know how to do things they couldn't,
including
things that don't require powered equipment or electronics or explosives. Someone's done something to . . .”

“Mucked about with,” Aylward said helpfully. “Buggered for fair.”

“. . . those parts of natural law, somehow. But all the
other
parts seem to be working as usual.”

He held up his hook. “I lost this hand because someone cut it mostly off with a sword. But I didn't get gangrene; we had a doctor who didn't rely on eye of newt and dust from a saint's tomb. You expecting to lose many men to dysentery?”

“Of course not,” Aylward said, indignation in his tone. Then: “Oh. Well, bugger me blind. I see what you're driving at.”

“Yes. We can keep a camp clean, if not a city, just because we
know
why clean water is important. And the same thing applies to other tricks.”

Havel took up the thread: “Which I sort of suspect Arminger doesn't know much about. His interest in history stops about the time of Richard the Lionheart. I think
he
thinks it's been all downhill since then.”

Larsson grinned. “Why do guys like that always imagine they'll be the king and not the man pushing a plow?”

“Plus his men are mostly frighteners,” Aylward said thoughtfully. “Hmmm.”

“Yes, and frighteners aren't Norman knights, either; different motivations. Meanwhile, let's go have breakfast,” Larsson said.

The command group turned and cantered eastward down the verge of the road, eyes slitted against the rising sun; it got a bit warmer as the orange globe rose. The valley got wider as well; they turned off 20 and onto a local road that wound southward around a butte that hid them from the Protector's castle.

There were over a thousand people camped on a long sloping shoulder of that rise. You could tell who was who easily enough. The Bearkillers' encampment was laid out in neat rows of tents and wagons—not too many of the latter, since this was an A-list expeditionary force, not the whole outfit. Surrounding it were coils of barbed wire, and mounted sentries rode the perimeter. The Mackenzie camp was further upslope, among the pines; less geometric, but taking advantage of the ground for shelter from the keen wind and prying eyes as well, tents in circles around central hearthfires.

They'd brought their supplies on packhorses—the enemy controlled all the roads across the mountains—but they didn't look as if they lacked for much.

And as for the CORA men . . .

Well, I've never really seen a gypsy camp,
Havel thought.
But I think that's how they were supposed to do it, pretty much.

Every rancher-member of the association had arrived as he—or in a couple of instances, she—pleased, and with what followers they could muster; and that ranged from four mounted men with their bedrolls to thirty or forty with a chuck wagon and a big pavilion tent for the bossman and his family. They'd come
with
what they pleased too, which often meant as much of the comforts of home as they could carry. They'd also scattered themselves across a huge sweep of hill and down the tree-clad banks of Hackleman Creek towards the blue of Fish Lake, just visible now. Herds of horses and cattle moved in that direction as well.

The smoke of their campfires wafted towards the riders, along with the sounds—a farrier's hammer shaping a horseshoe, the shouts of playing children . . .

Havel's eyes met Aylward's. They'd only met the day before, but they'd already discovered a great deal in common.

Shambolic,
Aylward's lips shaped soundlessly.

What a cluster-fuck,
Havel's eyes replied.

Brown seemed to catch some of the byplay. “Well, you've got some womenfolk with you too,” he said defensively.

“The only ones in our camp are in our support echelon, medicos and such, and some who're wearing a hauberk,” Havel said bluntly. “And
those
all passed the same tests as everyone else on our A-list. The noncombatants and kids are all back where we've got our base set up.”

Brown flushed a little. “We're providing most of the men for this fight,” he said. “And the supplies. We've got plenty of veterans, too.”

But no single one with enough authority to get you all organized,
Havel thought. He didn't say it aloud, or let it show on his face; they weren't here to quarrel with the locals. Instead he went on: “Granted. And you've provided first-rate intelligence—”

“—that drawing of the gate and drawbridge is going to be extremely useful, I think. See you at the noon conference.”

One corner of Havel's mouth drew up as the mollified rancher smiled and turned aside with his men. Aylward laid his rein on his mount's neck and came closer.

“Not telling him exactly what you have planned for that information, are you, Lord Bear? Perhaps a little worried intel might be flowing into the castle as well as out?”

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?” Havel said. He hesitated: “How's your boss, by the way?”

“Lady Juniper?” Aylward said. “Coming along fine, if you mean her condition.”

“More a matter of ‘What's she like.' We only met for three days and a bit; I was impressed on brief acquaintance, but you've been at Dun Juniper for most of the time since the Change.”

Aylward nodded. “She's strange. And lucky, and it rubs off.”

“Rubs off?”

“Well, take me—when she found me, I was trapped in a gully, dying of thirst four feet from water, and like to be eaten alive by coyotes. And that's gospel.”

“That would have been a waste,” Havel said.

He looked at the square tough weathered face; it would indeed, to lose this man of formidable strengths and so many skills.

“Lucky for her you were there,” he said. “But even luckier for you.”

“That's exactly what I mean, mate,” Aylward said. “But it was lucky for
me
because I was in the ruddy ravine
in the first place.
Think about it for a bit. Here's me, traveling about doing as I please, South America, Africa, Canada, and I get an impulse to go fossick about the Cascades in bleedin'
March
—might as well be Wales, that time of year. Then I take the Change for a nuclear war—well, that's not so hard to believe—so I
stay
up in the mountains afterward. Then that fuckin' ravine crumbles in just the right spot, I put me shoulder out an' get me legs caught in a scissors by two saplings, and
she
'appens by, before I'm too far gone.”

He touched the horns-and-moon symbol on his jack. “It's enough to get you thinkin' serious about this Goddess of hers, innit? Not that I'm not grateful to her and hers, mind.” A shake of the head. “She's got the flux. Daft things happen around her.”

“Flux?” Havel asked.

“Chap I knew used the word—when I met him I was in the SAS and he was runnin' a pub called The Treadmill. Did everything in his day, Foreign Legion an' all, right tough old bastard. He thought some people had it, sort of like a magnetic field that pulled in odd happenings. Willie was always on about some bint he'd known in the old days, and if half what he said was true . . . anyway, Lady Juniper has it in great job lots.”

“When I think of the times
I
almost died before the Change and after . . . maybe I do too.”

“Nar, I figure you were just born to hang, mate.”

They both laughed; after a moment the clansman went on: “But she's not
just
lucky. She's fly.” At Havel's raised eyebrow he went on: “Clever at outguessing you.
Dead
fly.”