The Fire Duke

by Joel Rosenberg

  While Ian was rising, Maggie was already on her feet and had taken his hand. “I’m Maggie,” she said.

  “Hosea Lincoln,” he said, taking a limping step forward.

  “Ian Silverstein,” Ian said, taking his hand. Hosea’s fingers were long and slender, like those one would expect on a classical pianist, and his grip was light without any sensation of being weak. His left hand, down by his side, was cupped son of funny.

  Slurred voice without drink; hand down by the side—it had taken Ian a while to figure it out: Hosea had, at some point, suffered from some sort of damage to the right side of his brain that had left his left side partially paralyzed.

  “Shalom, Ian,” Hosea said, his accent thick and pure, “Nairn meod; ma shlom-cha?”

  Of all the things Ian might have expected, to be greeted in perfectly accented Hebrew wasn’t high on the list. He stuttered for a moment before pulling a stock phrase out of an old memory: “Ani lo midaber ivrit tov.” Which was true; he didn’t speak much Hebrew.

  Torrie was grinning. “Hebrew, too?”

  “Hebrew, too.” The tall man’s smile was barely visible as he turned back to Ian.

  “I am pleased to meet you,” Hosea said, the words sounding nonetheless sincere for the careful pronunciation and clear formality.

  Karin was at the sink, letting the water run for a moment before pulling down a long tumbler and filling it. She set it down on the table in front of Hosea, who took a careful sip, then another, then carefully drained half the glass before setting it back down. There was something strange about the hand that gripped the glass, but Ian couldn’t quite figure out what it was, and Hosea had folded his hands into his lap in a gesture that looked perfectly normal for him before Ian could figure it out.

  “The stalls are clean, and the horses are well, although I would venture to guess that Jessie is not being ridden quite enough of late,” Hosea said, the ends of his mouth barely turning upward.

  Karin’s face grew stern, although her eyes were shining. “I guess you’re just going to have to ride her some, Torrie, and if you have to make your friends help, well, then, that’s the price you’ll have to pay.”

  Torrie laughed. “We’ll live with it. I haven’t seen her yet.” He stood. “What say we look around the barn, and then around town—”

  “Dinner at six.”

  “—and we can meet Jeff at the Dine-a-mite later on, after supper.”

  She frowned at that. “It’s kind of a long walk.”

  “It’s not that bad, but we’ll drive.”

  “And ask Ole to drive you home when the bar closes?”

  “Don’t need to. Ian doesn’t drink, remember?”

  Ian raised his cup. “Sure I do. Gallons and gallons of coffee.”

  “Just like a real Norski.”

  Ian smiled, and nodded a silent thank-you when she offered him another cup of the weak brew.

  Then it hit him. The palms of Hosea’s hands weren’t pinkish, or even lighter than the coffee-dark brown of his face and the rest of his skin. He was, as far as Ian could tell, uniformly brown all over.

  Nothing wrong with that, but it was strange. The whole family was strange, from the mother who invested in stocks two thousand miles from Wall Street, to the master fencer father who seemed to have plenty of time to investigate wolf predations, to the tall, skinny, black so-called uncle.

  Don’t be such an asshole, he told himself. You’re just not used to a family that works.

  Chapter Three

  Wolves

  Jeff Bjerke sat at a table in the corner and sipped his beer—even the Law could allow itself a beer, if nursed long enough, as long as he didn’t do it often enough to start gossip—while over at the bar, under the Miller sign with the missing second I, the talk was about wolves, as it always was, these days.

  The Dine-a-mite hadn’t changed a bit since he was a kid and came in here for a pop after school: the tables in the battered booths up against one wall were still covered with the same patterned linoleum; the tiny window of the single swinging door into the kitchen was so dirty he couldn’t tell if a light was on inside.

  Shit, even the two men at the bar and the one standing behind it hadn’t changed. Sure, Arnie was balder than he had been, and both Orphie’s middle and glasses were thicker, and behind the bar, tall, skinny Ole Honistead didn’t move as fast as he used to; but Jeff could have come in here a thousand times over the past twenty or so years and had the same tableau set out in front of him: The Three Graces, Arguing To Pass the Time.

  “Now, Gunnar says that they got ten of his cows,” Arnie Selmo said, tilting his feed cap back so he could tilt his beer back, then replacing the feed cap with the same movement, as though it really hid the bald spot on his head. “Doesn’t sound like no lone wolf to me.”

  Jeff muffled a smile. Everybody had their secrets, and it rarely was his job to expose them—and never his pleasure. That was one of the things that old John Honistead had left him, along with the job: the responsibility. The badge, the car, the office and tiny holding cell in the basement of Town Hall—they were just tools, not the core of it.

  Jeff was more of a department of justice than a town policeman. Cops worried about rules; justice had its own concerns.

  Like: live and let live.

  Not everybody felt that way. But most did. Enough did. Just as well. About ten years ago, a skinny little twelve-year-old girl who wouldn’t give her name other than Kathy, running away from a stepfather of almost unbelievable cruelty, had stumbled into town, and been taken in by the Aarsteds—back then, the attitude on the farm was that there was always room for another mouth.

  The story told around town was that she was a distant cousin of Bob’s who had come to live with them, but she didn’t look like an Aarsted, and probably nobody believed that, although almost nobody said anything. It wasn’t the first time that a runaway had found sanctuary here, and it wasn’t the last time—you just had to trust the likes of, say, a Bob Aarsted or Doc Sherve or Minnie Hansen or Michael Bjerke to do what was right.

  There had been some talk by some of the more chatty housewives, but Aarsted had brought Kathy in for an exam and a quiet talk with Doc Sherve, and then Doc Sherve had had a quiet talk with the chatty, and it had shut off like a switch. Nobody messed with Doc Sherve any more than they did with Bob Aarsted.

  Jeff didn’t always like Bob Aarsted, but, then again, you didn’t always have to like your father-in-law.

  Orphie Selmo—a distant cousin of Arnie’s, but it was hard to keep straight just what sort; there were almost as many Selmos as there were Olsens in the thin local phone book—grunted, and hooked his left hand in his suspenders, as though that could stop the tremor.

  “Sure it’s ten,” he said. “Gunnar wouldn’t think of using the wolves as an excuse to slaughter a bunch and sell them for cash to that Swede in Grand Forks, of course he wouldn’t.”

  Arnie leaned over and grabbed a handful of peanuts. “Why bother? Gunnar hasn’t turned a profit in five years. What you don’t make, nobody can tax away from you.” He jerked his head toward the window, and Selmo’s Drugs across the street. “Take my word for it.”

  Orphie just sniffed. “Well, if you’re too blind to figure it out for yourself, I won’t show you.”

  Mixed metaphor, Jeff didn’t say. It was hard enough being a college boy in a small farming town; no sense in making life more difficult for himself.

  Arnie chuckled to himself. “Lot of things about wolves of late. Saw a book down in the drugstore, you wouldn’t believe.”

  “About wolves?”

  “Well, maybe, but I don’t think so.” He shook his head. “Cover of it had a lady in a leather outfit kneeling in front of a wolf, and the wolf was standing on his hind legs, like, she was getting ready to, well …”

  “Like, well, what?”

  “Like, well, something I can fondly recall paying a toothless whore in some village in Uijongbu to do every time I got into town, but I cou
ld never quite persuade Ephie wasn’t sinful.” He sighed, and sipped at his beer. “Though I do miss the old girl from time to time.”

  Jeff made a mental note to have a word with Neil Petersen. He didn’t really care what books Petersen sold at the pharmacy, and knew that there was a thriving, if small, under-the-counter trade in titles that Reverend Oppegaard would preach a sermon on if he found out about, but it was supposed to be under-the-counter.

  Arnie raised his glass. “To Dog Troop, 7th Regiment, First Cavalry (Dismounted).”

  “Here we go again with Korea stories,” Orphie said, with another sniff.

  Behind the bar, Ole polished a glass with a towel, like a child rubbing a security blanket against his face. “Oh, Orphie, we’ve heard about Bastogne half a million times—”

  “ ‘—And I’ll have you know I was in the third goddamn tank behind Creighton Abrams himself—’ ” Arnie said, mimicking Orphie’s heavier accent.

  “—and when young Dave’s in, we’ll listen to talk of what happened when it all fell in at Dac To. And we’ll listen politely to how it was in Korea, too.” He jerked his pointed chin at Orphie’s glass. “You ready for another?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  The bar went silent for a few moments, and Jeff glanced at his watch and thought about giving up waiting for Torrie and his friends, then decided to give them another fifteen minutes. Kathy was probably still over at the Aarsteds, and he hated coming home to a silent house. Time to start a kid or two, if only he could talk Kathy into it.

  Ah, to hell with—

  The door swung open, and Torrie and his two friends walked in. They seemed nice. This Maggie of his was cute, in a kind of skinny East Coast way. The tall dope-smoking Jew even had a pleasant smile, if a bit of an ugly one. Son of looked like a young Abe Lincoln, before the beard really came in, maybe. Probably ought to grow a mustache.

  “Two, er, root beers and a 7-Up,” Torrie said, sliding into the booth next to Maggie, while the tall—while Ian sat down next to Jeff.

  “7-Up?” Ole’s brow furrowed.

  “And two root beers.”

  Ole winked broadly. “Coming up.” Orphie was so busy retelling the relief of Bastogne that he didn’t notice that Ole poured the “root beer” out of the Grain Belt spigot.

  It had been too long since Torrie was home, and he was developing city ways; it took him a moment to go and get the tray.

  They sipped at their beers for a few minutes, while Jeff caught Torrie up on some of the latest gossip—the public parts. The Grand Forks bank had finally foreclosed on Johanson, and the auction would be next Saturday, and Doc Sherve had finally brought in a young doctor as a partner, and was talking retirement again. Florida, he said.

  Finally, the discussion among the Three Graces worked its way around to the wolves again.

  “I’ve got that new Kraut glass on my old Model 70.”

  “Yeah. Pre-64 Model 70 Winchester. We know, Arnie; it’s a good gun.”

  “Yeah. And protected or not, I’ve half a mind to go chase them some night myself,” Arnie said. “It’s nothing—”

  “Hah.” Orphie said, punctuating it with a sniff. “What you’ve got is half a mind. Varmint hunting is one thing—”

  Maggie leaned toward Torrie. “Varmint hunting?” she whispered. “As in, ‘reach for yore iron, varmint’?“

  She laughed. A pretty, easy, light laugh. Jeff envied Torrie that. That was something Kathy never did.

  “Pest hunting,” Torrie said. “Usually prairie dogs, but around here, it’s woodchucks. A chuck can do a lot of damage to your fields, so farmers go to some trouble to get rid of them. A .22 shooting Stingers will drop them real well, but some people, like old Arnie, make it a hobby—they get rifles that shoot really well at long distances, and put expensive scopes on them.”

  “Sounds kind of bloodthirsty to me.”

  Torrie shrugged. “I’ve seen you stomp on a cockroach, and it wasn’t going to take more than a nibble.”

  Ian licked his index finger and stroked the air in front of him. “Point Torrie. Maggie to serve.”

  Orphie was still holding forth. “—you going to shoot a wolf with one of them teenie-leetle .22-250 rounds? Sure enough, they’ll plop a groundhog in his tracks, but they’re too small for deer—and I wouldn’t want to go after a wolf with anything that wouldn’t knock a deer head over heels.”

  “So I’ll borrow me a .30-06.”

  “So you’ll borrow yourself a lot of trouble,” Ole said, shaking his head. “What if you run into somebody else with the same idea?”

  “You think I look like a wolf?”

  “I don’t think that heifer you bagged down South last season looked like a deer, either,” Jeff said, loudly.

  The tips of Arnie’s ears grew red. “It was godawful misty, and I swear—”

  Jeff held up a hand, and Ole copied him, silencing Arnie. “I know. It was an accident, and it could have happened to anyone. But that sort of thing can happen,” Jeff said, “and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to see anybody get hurt. Forgetting that it’s illegal. You just let it be, Arnie,” he said, turning to look pointedly at Torrie, “and see what happens.”

  Torrie gave a slight nod before he returned to his beer. “Sure. A lone wolf will probably just move on.”

  Orphie sniffed.

  Jeff smiled.

  Torrie nodded, again.

  Thorian del Thorian awoke at the light touch, reaching for—

  No. There was no danger. The dark shape leaning over the bed in the dark of his bedroom was only Orfindel. There was no need for the 9 mm Taurus pistol in the nightstand—after all these years, firearms had become second nature to him—or the almost impossibly sharp silver-inlaid blade behind the headboard. It was only Orfindel.

  Just Orfindel, he thought, with a silent inner laugh. Merely, Orfindel; trivially, an Old One, perhaps a Very Old One, had come into his room to awaken him, as though Orfindel was some peasant servitor to wait upon his pleasure.

  Karin’s body lay warm next to him, comforting in its warmth and presence. This woman of his could light up a dark room, and send night demons fleeing from his dreams. He touched two fingers to his lips, then gently, gently to the swell of her hip under the sheet.

  “Yes?” he whispered. “What is it?”

  “Young Thorian has just returned with his friends,” Orfindel said, his voice low enough not to wake Karin. “He asks for a word with you.”

  “Very well, Hosea. Thank you; I’ll join you in a moment.” It was necessary, it had been agreed many years before, that Thorian would treat Orfindel as though he were a subordinate, and that he call him by the name the Old One had assumed, but he had made no bargain with or about his thoughts, and while most of his honor had long been driven away, leaving behind a need to overcompensate for it, Thorian del Thorian could still keep a bargain without paying any extra.

  He dressed quickly, then gave his sleeping wife a quick kiss before exiting into the hallway; she barely stirred. Among Karin’s many virtues was that she was a heavy sleeper.

  Torrie and his two friends were downstairs in the den. They seemed acceptable, although perhaps a bit effete and citified. Thorian repressed a smile. In the twenty-odd years since he and Orfindel had made their escape through the Hidden Ways and out into the Next World, Thorian had become a proper peasant. At least eighteen generations of his family had lived in the Middle Dominion, and none of them had ever set a shod foot on plowed ground, much less a bare one.

  But that was a long time ago, and far away.

  Torrie had his serious face on, and Thorian could have guessed what it was all about. The wolves.

  He looked over at Orfindel. They were just wolves, weren’t they?

  Orfindel couldn’t really read minds, but sometimes it didn’t matter. He nodded, but with some reservation in the cant of his shoulders, as though to say, Not quite certainly, but as close as it is possible to be.

  “I was talking to Jeff Bjerke
tonight,” Torrie said. “He’s been concerned about the wolf problem.”

  Thorian nodded. “He’s hardly the only one. Sven was laying for one last night, and actually got a shot off. He showed me the prints today.”

  They went off to the south, which was probably just a coincidence.

  It was like what Doc Sherve said, when talking about medical diagnosis: “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.” Farmers everywhere had trouble with wolves. A whole chain of unlikely events would have had to have happened before it would even be possible that the source of the trouble was Sons of Fenris.

  “Yes, but…” Torrie didn’t want to come out with it.

  Which was silly, if understandable.

  Thorian smiled. “If you trust your friends enough to say this much in front of them, say the rest. He wants Hosea and me to go after them, yes?”

  Torrie nodded. “Yes. He didn’t want to come right out and say it, but…”

  Orfindel smiled. “He wouldn’t want to forswear himself, Torrie. If Jeff is asked, in court or elsewhere, if he gave us leave to kill a protected animal, he can answer honestly that he didn’t.” Orfindel was already shrugging into a thick down jacket. “And if we are not caught, then it never will have happened.”

  Might as well do it now as later. The moon was full, and Orfindel could follow a track through all but the blackest night—that ability hadn’t left the Old One—although Thorian’s eyes were merely human. As were his son’s, and his son’s guest’s.

  Thorian thought about raiding the emergency kits for nightgoggles, but decided against that. He really should buy another pair for everyday use, but he had never really wanted a set before.

  Still, Thorian could see through a scope in the dark, and that should be enough.

  Should he invite the guest? Local custom wasn’t clear on this point, but what Thorian’s upbringing would have compelled wasn’t forbidden. “Thorian, Ian—would you like to come along?”

  Torrie nodded. “Yes, sir.”