Dies the Fire (88 page)

The horses' breath puffed out in the chill as they bent to the traces, but the road was smooth and still dry. . . .

At least here,
Havel thought, looking westward at the clouds that hid the mountains.
I hope to hell we don't get any more snow—we've had to shovel more than I like already. And this is definitely the last load until spring!

Signe was walking well now if she was careful, but her left arm was in a sling and immobilizing elastic bandage. Every once in a while she'd reach over and, very very cautiously, scratch. Right now she was obviously counting back nine months, reaching a conclusion that pleased her, and smiling.

“I sort of envy her,” she said wistfully. “So much death . . . it makes you feel better, new lives starting.”

“Well, when you're feeling better—” Mike grinned and dodged as she cuffed at him with her good arm.

“Are you sure it's all right for us to drop in on them?” Signe said. “I'd love to, but—”

“We're just taking the headquarters group,” Havel said. “Bearkillers are still the blue-eyed boys with our allies; they want to give us a feed before we settle in.”

“We're going to be busy this winter,” her father said, only half paying attention to the discussion. “How many did you say were living in the area we've been handed?”

“About two thousand, including the ex-POWs who want to settle on our land,” Havel said. “Which puts our total numbers up by eight times overnight! Mostly it's people who managed to survive hiding out in the hills; families and little groups. Surprising so many came through, so close to Salem . . . but human beings are
tough.
”

He thought for a moment. “A lot of them are at the end of their tethers, wouldn't make it through the winter. How much land would you say it would take to support a family?”

Ken Larsson began to scratch his head, then stopped when he realized he was about to use his steel hook.

“In the Willamette? Well, real intensive gardening style . . . say five acres. It's
good
land and the weather's reliable.”

Havel nodded, feeling things slip into place in his head.

“OK, let's kill a lot of birds with a few stones. Look, we've got a hundred and twenty A-lister fighters to support. An armored lancer takes a lot of supporting; it's not just the gear and horses, though those're no joke. He—”

Pamela stood with her hand on Ken's shoulder; she cleared her throat ostentatiously.

“—or she, in some cases . . . anyway, they need time to practice. So they can't be farming all the time. And we can't have them all camping on the front lawn and hand them a peck of meal and a side of bacon every week, either. Christ Jesus, it's inconvenient, not having any money! Swapping's so damned slow and clumsy. So, we've got a lot of vacant land, a lot of people with no seed, stock or tools, and an army to support—an army we're definitely going to need for the foreseeable future. Let's put 'em together.”

He tapped the back of one hand against the palm of the other. “See, we give each Bearkiller family a square mile, we jigger it so they've got a good mix of plowland, pasture, woods and such.”

“That's a lot of land,” Hutton said. “Even if we get some reapers and horse-drawn gear together.”

“Yeah, but we don't just give them a farm,” Havel said. “We need those A-listers for fighting. They'll be the local Justice of the Peace and they'll train and command the militia, and look after the roads and local school.”

Josh Sanders nodded. “Sort of decentralized. I like it. How do we handle the fightin' side, though?”

“They have to equip and bring . . . oh, say three or four lancers and an apprentice for each when there's a call-up, and we make arrangements to check training and so forth, and muster like the National Guard did back before the Change in peacetime.”

“That'll be a heap of work,” Hutton said. He shrugged his shoulders. “Still, what's life for, if you don't have a job worth doin'? Most of our A-listers, they've got some farmin' background, too. The ones who don't can learn fast.”

Havel nodded. “Some of these people we're taking in, the clueless ones, they can work for the Bearkiller family—help work the farm, get paid in food and clothes, and a house and a big garden, too. The rest, say ten or twelve families, they each get thirty acres and a yoke of oxen and tools we make or trade for, and they help the Bearkiller with his . . . OK, Pam, her . . .
their,
goddamnit . . . farm. More land for troop and squadron commanders, of course, but they'll get more responsibilities, too. We at Larsdalen sort of supervise the whole setup and collect a reasonable tax through the JPs, and keep a chunk of land around the house for ourselves; your original spread, Ken, and a bit more.”

He beamed at the others. Will Hutton was nodding and rubbing thoughtfully at his jaw.

“Sounds sensible enough, Mike,” he said. Brightening: “Even without money, we could arrange the taxes pretty fair—you know, every tenth calf or sheaf or something, or work with their plow teams; the A-listers collect it, and pass on a share. And heck, we'll need our own infantry, too, pikes an' bows for the farmers. Hmmm, and mebbe these apprentices, they could sort of spend some time at Larsdalen, learning?”

“Sounds
good,
” Josh Sanders said. “I was wondering how we were going to keep our edge once we settled down. With farms that size, we could get all the, ah, the renters, to clump together, too. I could help the A-listers run up some sort of berm and so forth, so people could duck in if there's an attack, while we pass the word and mobilize.”

They turned to the others, their smiles fading a little when they saw the raised eyebrows on Ken Larsson and Pamela and Aaron Rothman.

Ken cleared his throat. “You could call the square mile grants
fiefs,
for starters,” he said. “That was the traditional term. “Or a
knight's fee.
And you could call the apprentices
pages
and then
squires
. . . .”

Havel frowned. “Well, so much for my brilliant originality. Someone's come up with this before?” he said. “I was thinking of
strategic hamlet
for the A-lister grants, actually.”

Pamela coughed into her hand, and Rothman giggled. The swordmistress spoke: “Ah . . . yeah, boss. Something a little
like
it has happened before. You might want to make a few modifications. . . .”

“Welcome to Dun Juniper, Lord Bear, you and yours,” Dennis Martin Mackenzie said formally.

He was heading up the ceremonial guard of archers and spearmen, down at the base of the plateau that held the Hall. Juniper could just barely hear him up here on the flat roof of the gatehouse tower; there was a murmur from the crowd waiting inside the gate, and it was a fair distance—they'd run the new approach road up the side of the slope below the palisade, so that you had to come up with your right hand towards the wall and your shield arm uselessly away.

She could see the Bearkillers all look up for a moment, and grinned to herself. The little plateau looked a lot more imposing now that the palisade was all in place; twenty-five feet of steep hillside, and then the thirty-foot rampart of thick logs, sharpened on top. Sunset light sparkled on the spearheads of the guards on the fighting platform behind the parapet, and hearth smoke drifted up in near-perfect pillars; it was a still, chilly early-winter evening. Snow had fallen last night; it wouldn't last long, and things would be dismally muddy when it went, but for now the thick blanket gave field and branch and roof a fairyland splendor.

While they talked with Dennis, she hurried down the interior stairway, arriving in time to be composed and dignified as they walked up the roadway, leading their mounts.

They'd come unarmored; all wore broad-brimmed dark hats with silver medallions on their bands, and they were all dressed alike in what wasn't quite a uniform. Boots, loose dark trousers and lapover jackets secured by sashes and broad leather belts, with a bear's head embroidered in red over the left breast . . .

She felt something of that first shock again, like an echo from distant cliffs. Her body remembered the way he moved, light and quick and easy, with a relaxed alertness. . . .

Mom,
Eilir signed discreetly.
Stop it with the lascivious drooling! You're practically ripping his clothes off with your eyes!

I am not!
she signed, and then thought silently to herself:
Not quite. Still, if this one were a movie star in the old days . . . as the saying goes, there wouldn't have been a dry seat in the house.

The tall young woman beside him . . .
Her
looks were Nordic perfection, in an outdoorsy way, down to the long butter-blond braids that framed her face. Except for a small scar across the bridge of her nose, almost a nick, leaving a slight dent, and a continuation on one cheek; her coat hung loose, and her left arm was in a sling. That didn't seem to dampen her spirits, though; she smiled as she walked, curving in instinctively towards the Bearkiller leader.

Ah, well,
Juniper thought wistfully.
I have my Rudi . . . and the best of the bargain, perhaps. Lord Bear's luck is hard on those close to him, I think.

As the Bearkillers walked up the roadway, Dorothy cut loose with her pipes, pacing formally back and forth along the battlement of the gatehouse. That was three stories of squared logs up, but it was still loud. Juniper and her Advisors—it was becoming a title, somehow—stood to meet the Bearkiller leaders. She was in full fig; jacket, ruffled shirt, kilt, plaid fastened over her shoulder with a brooch, down to the flat Scots bonnet with antlers-and-moon clasp and raven feather and the little sgian dhu knife tucked into her right stocking. Most of the others were in kilts as well, and as much of the rest as could be hastily cobbled up—some of it had served as costumes, at Samhain.

The blond woman leaned closer to Lord Bear. Juniper had a great deal of experience at picking voices out from background noise; it went with being a musician. She fought to keep her lips from quirking upward as she heard:

“Help, Mike! I've fallen into Brigadoon and I can't get out!”

“It's like . . . it's like Edoras, and the Golden Hall of Medusel!” Astrid said, waving an arm through the open gates at the carved and painted wood of the Hall. “Didn't I say so?”

“Oh, great, Hobbiton-in-the-Cascades,” Eric grumbled.

He
had new scars since she'd seen him that spring; long white ones on the backs of his hands, and several the same on his face; he'd also shaved his head, save for a yellow scalp lock on top. It all made him look older and grimmer, and there was a hard light in his eyes now, but his grin was still charming and reminded her of the boy he'd been.

The Bearkiller leader made a slight shushing sound, and his eyes met Juniper's. That gave her a slight jolt; it also made her sure as they narrowed slightly that he knew she'd overheard the remark, and met her suppressed grin with an equally discrete one of his own.

I
like
this man,
she thought, and went on aloud:

“Lord Bear.”

She glanced down the laneway; that was where they'd set their rampant-bear flag with with the polished bear skull on the top of its pole.

“Point taken,” he said, acknowledging the flamboyant standard and his own title. Then he did grin. “My fiancée, Signe Larsson.”

“I'm Juniper Mackenzie, chief of Clan Mackenzie,” Juniper said, shaking hands and smiling. “And a musician before the Change. I'll play at your wedding, I hope!”

He went on with introductions for the rest of his party: “Angelica Hutton; our camp boss and quartermaster. My prospective brother-in-law, you've met. Only since then he's become Taras Bulba.”

Eric snorted as he shook her hand; a strikingly pretty dark-skinned girl stood next to him. “Glad to see you again, Lady Juniper. And Mike has no sense of style. Besides which, I nearly got killed when my hair was caught in some barbed wire. My wife, Luanne. Née Hutton.”

Lord Bear—
Mike Havel, let's not keep the show going
all
the time,
she thought—took up the thread smoothly:

“My father-in-law to be, Kenneth Larsson, engineer.”

He looked to be nearly sixty, though fit: with another small shock Juniper realized he was the oldest person she'd seen in weeks; the first year of the Change hadn't been easy on the elderly. It took an instant before she realized that his left forearm ended at a cup and steel hook where his wrist and hand should be.

The woman beside him was in her thirties, tall and wire-slender, olive-skinned, with a narrow hawk-nosed face and russet-brown hair.