Dies the Fire dtf-1

by S. M. Stirling

  The man facing Havel stumbled backward and threw his spear. The weapon wasn’t designed for it, but surprise nearly made it work; Havel felt the edge sting his skin right above the kidney as he dodged. The spearman fumbled for his sword and got ijt out, staring wide-eyed past a shock of black hair-he’d forgotten or lost his helmet. Havel feinted low to draw shield and attention, then attacked with a running step, backsword flashing in a looping circle.

  “Haakkaa paalle!” he screamed, as foot and arm and blade moved together.

  Underneath it came a sickening crack of cloven bone that jarred back into his arm and shoulder, like the feeling of hitting a post at practice, except that this time the blade went right on in a broad follow-through. The Protector’s trooper stumbled backward with a giant slice taken out of the top and side of his skull; brain and membrane glistened pink-white and bloody in the firelight. Weirdly, the man didn’t fall at once; instead he turned and took three weaving steps, shrieking like a machine in torment with each one, before he went over the side of the walkway and into the barbed wire of the moat.

  Well, shit, Havel thought. Ouch.

  His eyes were darting about. Aylward came sliding down the cable; he’d probably fired off all eighty shafts, and the tower top showed another reason. The fire up there had spread to the bone-dry pine timbers; melted asphalt was probably dripping down into Sergeant Harvey’s ready room… or catching fire and falling as little burning drops. The tower looked like a candle now, with a broad teardrop of fire reaching into the night.

  “You two take the ballista,” Havel snapped. “Move!”

  They ran past him. Havel ran as well, to the spot where Signe’s grapnel stood in the wood of the walkway. When he looked down, she waved up at him; the loop at the other end of the rope was under Eric’s armpits.

  Guts, he thought, as she signaled. She’s been wading in barbed wire; has to feel like a pincushion.

  Havel heard a sullen boom as he braced a foot against the railing and started to haul hand over hand, slow and steady. Someone inside the tower was trying to break down the door out onto the walkway; they should be able to do that eventually, smashing the hinges if nothing else. The growing bellow of the fire over their heads would add motivation; the only other exit was the staircase down into the courtyard of the castle’s bailey.

  And I wouldn’t want to try to run away while the command structure here is intact.

  Ken and Pamela and Aaron Rothman had given him a rundown on various tyrants of history while they discussed Arminger.

  Stalin had put it very succinctly: It takes a brave man not to be a hero in my army.

  Weight came on the rope-Eric weighed in at around two hundred pounds. Havel couldn’t haul quickly; Signe had to free her brother barb by barb as he came clear. She’d already snaggled away hanks of Eric’s longish hair that had caught in the dense tangle of wire. Havel had to keep a steady tension so Eric wouldn’t drop back into the embrace of the barbs.

  After a while Eric could help her, but it still took minutes that stretched like days, and the boom… boom… of the ram beating to free the tower door was like the thudding of some great beast’s heart. Seconds ticked by, counting out the balance of life and death, but you didn’t save time by rushing.

  “Got it,” Havel snarled, as the younger man’s boots cleared the wire.

  “Sorry-” Eric began, as his bloody face came over the railing; blood leaked out from beneath his gloves as well, but he chinned himself and rolled over to the walkway planking.

  “Shut up,” Havel said. “Let’s get her out.”

  Signe waved as Havel came to the edge of the walkway; she’d managed to crawl onto the surface of the wing, but that didn’t help as much as it would have if the hang glider had landed closer to the walkway. They couldn’t just snatch her up; there was too much lateral distance.

  Boom-crack!

  This time a crunching sound ran under the battering; the men in the tower were going to knock the door free soon.

  Havel and Eric couldn’t wait for her to unhook each barb when she hit the wire, either. They’d have to rip her free by main strength and hope that most of what tore was cloth rather than flesh.

  “Get ready!” Havel called, tossing the rope. “We can’t take this slow!”

  Signe rigged the loop under her arms and crouched on the fabric of the hang glider’s wing.

  “Now!”

  She leapt as the rope came taut and pulled up her legs in a tight tuck, and the two men hauled the line in hand over hand as fast as they could.

  The lower half of her body still sagged into the barbs. Both of them heaved at the rope again, pulling her free despite the half-stifled scream as the metal hooks had their way with cloth and flesh. Once more, and she was right beneath the walkway, and from there it was a straight lift. He let Eric take the weight on the rope and leaned down, caught her by the back of her harness and heaved her straight over the railing with six inches to spare.

  “Mike!” Eric cried.

  The rending crash of breaking timber came a second before a flood of lantern light. And from behind him, Aylward’s cry of:

  “Down!”

  Havel launched himself forward with Signe still in one arm, taking her twin behind the knees with the other; neither of the Larsson twins had his conditioned reflexes-they’d seen a lot of fighting these past eight months, but none of it was that sort. All three of them thumped down on the timbers; Eric screamed a curse as his abused flesh struck, and Signe moaned.

  Ahead of them the Protector’s men were in the doorway. Ready this time, conical helmets and mailcoats and big kite-shaped shields up, the first rank had their swords out, and the one behind spears ready, hefted to stab overhand.

  Chance of us surviving more than thirty seconds in contact with them, somewhere between zip and fucking zero…

  Behind the three Bearkillers, something mechanical sounded, a clicking, ratcheting sound. Then:

  Tunnngg.

  The shot from the ballista went overhead in a rush of flame, with a sound like wind whipping through burning pines and a stench of burning fuel; it was a glass fisherman’s float filled with a mixture of gasoline, soap flakes and benzene, and wrapped in gas-soaked cloth.

  Score another one for Ms. Strong, he thought. They can throw weights as well as javelins.

  The missile struck the line of shields hard enough to knock a man over backward, and the one behind him too. It also shattered; gobbets flew, caught fire from the coating of burning cloth, clung and burned. Men screamed as the liquid flame splashed into their faces or ran beneath their armor; their formation broke apart like the glass of the missile.

  Tunnngg.

  Another globe of fire flew overhead. This one went directly into the garrison hall and armory that occupied the bottom story of the tower, shattering on the floor and spattering across bedding, furniture and support timbers.

  “Start crawling!” Havel said, and did so.

  Aylward had the ballista pivoted at right angles to the wall now, and he was lobbing incendiary missiles at the’ main gatehouse.

  And just maybe we can make something out of this cluster-fuck.

  It was then that the crossbowmen in the second level of the tower started firing down at the three black-clad figures crawling away from them along the walkway. A bolt slammed into the thick planks before Havel’s face, the heavy dart quivering for an instant like a malignant wasp stinger. More were shooting from the walkway on either side of the ballista, their shafts going overhead with vicious whickt sounds.

  If you surprised someone and knocked them back on their heels, got them running in circles, you could use their confusion as a force multiplier. The trouble was that when they got their shit together, numbers started counting again. In a plain stand-up fight, they counted for a great deal.

  Another crossbow bolt struck in the wood ahead of him, this time a bare inch from his outstretched fingers.

  “Crawl faster!”

  Thirty-t
wo

  Juniper Mackenzie had lived in the Willamette all her life. Autumn was her favorite season there, and it was a relief to find that the Change at least hadn’t changed that. Winter she liked hardly less, and the two seasons were in balance as she led the war levy of the Mackenzies northward.

  The greens were still more vivid once the rains started, and the leaves still turned bronze and old gold against the darker, unchanging firs, streaking the lower parts of the hills until they flew away like coins, or wishes fading into memory. Fallen leaves still gave their damp musty smell, and the air had a wet coolness that would endure the long months to come, when the gray clouds marched in from the sea and rain would drizzle down day after day.

  Today the sky was bright, dazzling afternoon light slanting through white foaming canyons of cloud, gilding stub-blefields and bringing out the different shades of green in firs and grass, of brown in turned earth and bare-limbed fruit trees.

  Mind you, some things are different, she thought wryly.

  Forty on horseback followed on either side of the road, the yellow yew staves of their longbows slanted over their shoulders, and the baggage wagons and ambulance were on the pavement behind her. Wheels hissed on wet asphalt; hooves clattered or made a duller rumbling crunch on the graveled verges. This stretch had been cleared of dead cars and trucks some time ago, but it was best to keep hoof off hard pavement as much as you could. She waved to a party working the fields as the buggy trotted northeastward towards the beginning of the hills.

  The face of the man behind the handles of the lead plow in the field to her left was calm and intent, with the slight frown of someone concentrating on his work. The plowman jerked in surprise, startled as he broke the focus of his effort and looked up, leaning back to halt his team with the reins knotted around his waist and a long whoa. Two more teams followed him, and the furrows lay neatly parallel, stretching off towards the distant fence and line of trees. The dark brown earth curled up behind the moldboards, moist and soft; the green clover sod went under amid a sweet scent of cut roots.

  The other plows kept going for a moment more, making more acres ready to be planted with wheat.

  Doing a lot better than we managed this spring, she thought, as all of the plowmen halted to shout greetings. And we need to; it’s those fields we’ll harvest by next Lughnassadh. The Wheel of the Year, and the wheel of worries!

  Every day since the Change had reminded her why her ancestors had so celebrated getting a season’s work done successfully.

  “The bicycle corps is half a day ahead of you,” one of them called, and added a little awkwardly-he was still in jeans, not a kilt-“Blessed be! Goddess with you, Lady Juniper!”

  “Blessed be, and She’s with us all!” she called back. “And She is, you know! Merry meet, merry part, merry meet again!”

  Beside the buggy, Eilir and Astrid were deep in conversation:

  “- we’re finishing off late because we sent a lot of teams to get you guys’ land plowed and seeded over at Larsdalen, us and the University Council people-”

  Which had been the essence of the deal; the Bearkillers’ military services, and grain stored over winter in Bend and Madras to be paid next spring, in return for the plowing and planting they’d been too late to do this year themselves.

  “Not to mention we and Corvallis acknowledge that Lord Bear owns a great whacking chunk of the valley west of Salem and rules all those on it,” she murmured to herself, too softly to be heard.

  That sort of conversation could help you organize your thoughts, and it was a habit she’d fallen into through long years mostly alone or with Eilir.

  “Not that Mike isn’t the charming lad”-she smiled reminiscently and laid a hand on her stomach-“and not that we don’t need him to help against the Protector, for he’s a very Lugh of the Long Spear come again in splendor and in terror, but still, the precedent of the thing… “

  “Talking strategy to yourself?” Chuck Barstow said.

  He was riding close by her right hand; looking nervous, too, if you knew him very well.

  “Who better?” she replied. “We’re none of us professionals at it, Chuck.”

  “I wish Sam Aylward were here,” he said, looking to check that the scouts were busy, out on the edge of sight and beyond. “It takes more than nine months to learn all I need to do his job.”

  “Well, the man’s neither a god nor an electron, to be in two places at once,” Juniper said. “And with luck, we’ll but have to look imposing; over the mountains, they have to fight for certain-sure.”

  “You ever play poker, Juney?”

  “No. Bridge, a little… Why?”

  “I do play poker, and I hate bluffing.”

  Juniper’s mouth firmed into a pale line. “But we’re not, Chuck. And that’s the best sort of bluff there is. I’m not going to have that gang of bandits a half day’s travel from my home and kids and clan, or controlling our access over the mountains.”

  He nodded. “That’s why I wish we had Aylward with us.”

  The road wound northeast up into forested hills as the day wore on; occasionally they came in sight of the main Mackenzie war party on their bicycles, but the horses had to rest more often than the humans. About noon they halted for an hour; horses bent their heads over oats and pellets of clover hay, and the Mackenzies ate bread and cheese, smoked sausage and dried fruit. The bread was still soft and crumbly-fresh; tomorrow they’d be down to twice-baked crackerlike waybread-what they’d called hardtack in seafaring days.

  A challenge-and-response came from the sentries up the winding road, and then Dennis, puffing as he pushed his bicycle up to them; it was downhill from here to Sweet-Home. He’d acquired a length of the sausage from someone and was munching on it as he came up. What with kilt, jack, bearded ax and longbow, bicycle and helmet pushed back he looked like…

  Like nothing from the twentieth century or any other! she thought. But it’s good to see him, nonetheless.

  He looked at her as she chomped her way through her share, and grinned. “God, Sally would howl and throw things if she could see us stuffing ourselves like this!”

  Juniper snorted: Sally was about as enormous as she was, but unlike the original Mackenzie, she’d had so-called morning sickness at unpredictable and frequent intervals since her second month. She was also safely back behind the palisade at Dun Juniper, and the Chief of the Mackenzies frankly envied her.

  “What do you know about these mysteries of the Goddess, male one?” she said.

  “As much as you, iron-gutted female one,” Dennis pointed out with irritating calm. “More. I was holding the bucket for her all these months.” Then he sighed.

  “The news isn’t bad, I take it?” Juniper said.

  “No. Met the Corvallis guys outside Lebanon, and the Protector’s men did just what the Bearkillers said they would-bugged out fast.”

  She relaxed with a sigh of her own. “That’s what the Bearkillers hoped they’d do,” she said. “They’re relying on those castles further east on Route 20. Those have Route 22 to link them to Portland. There’s no point trying to hold the towns; besides which, we outnumbered them fifteen to one.”

  Dennis frowned. “Why bother to put men in Lebanon or Sweet Home at all, then?” he said.

  “The Protector’s greedy, and he was expecting us to sit and wait until he was ready,” she said. A deep breath. “Let’s hope it’s an omen.”

  Dennis hesitated. “There are still a couple of hundred civilians there… They’re in pretty bad shape, Juney.”

  But for once we can do something for them without worrying, she thought. With the grain we’ll be getting from the Bearkillers. That was clever of Mike, to realize we could still use the railroads, for a few years at least, until there are too many washouts.

  “Let’s be about the work of the day, then,” she said, and nodded to Chuck. “There’s no point in just chasing the rest back to Portland; we’d just have them back at us again next year.”

>   “Crawl faster!” Mike Havel shouted again.

  Another fireball rippled overhead. Then Signe screamed.

  “Christ Jesus!” Havel hissed.

  The crossbow bolt had hit her high on the left shoulder, slanting right down through the meat and leaving the head sticking out the other side. She screamed again when Eric grabbed her under that arm; Havel took the other, and they ran crouching to the shelter of the catapult. Aylward hit the release toggle one more time, then snatched the arrows out of Signe’s quiver.

  “We’re cutting it too bloody tight,” he said, turning and shooting. “You two take the north approach; we’ll cover the blockhouse.”

  Havel grunted agreement, taking the remaining loops of rope from Eric and Signe and fastening them to the bailey’s outer palisade, dropping the long knotted cords down the wall and into the moat. Pamela bent over Signe, then pulled out a hypodermic, stripped it with her teeth and stabbed it dagger fashion into the back of the younger woman’s thigh. The morphine brought a long hissing sigh, and relaxation.

  “I don’t know how much damage there is inside, but she’s not in immediate danger,” the veterinarian-swordswoman said.

  “Oh, yes she is,” Havel snarled, crouching behind the throwing engine’s cover. “We all are.”

  The ballista was in a horseshoe-shaped embayment in the castle wall, and it was mounted on a turntable about six feet across. There was a sloping steel shield with a slot for the throwing trough; that was pointed towards the burning tower right now. Crossbow bolts were pattering off it at about one a second, each one with a nerve-wracking ptinnng sound and a spark as the points hit the quarter-inch sheet plate and the bolts pinwheeled off into the night.

  It was crowded, too; they had to get right up against the shield because the upper floors of the tower overlooked them and the crossbowmen there could shoot down… at least until the fire got that far. The tower’s own moat and the bellowing fire in the main gateway meant they were cut off from the tower otherwise, though; its garrison could shoot-until the fire drove them out-but they couldn’t come out on foot. The heat of the burning tower was enough to dry the sweat it brought out on Havel’s face.