The Desert and the Blade

by S. M. Stirling

“Hey, I like the way the grip’s shaped to the hand. And this shelf right through is for the arrow, right? What’s the wood for the limbs?”

  “Yew, mountain-grown; heartwood on the belly, sapwood on the back. Separate riser of black walnut root, with the limbs pegged and glued in, the which means you can use shorter lengths of yew, and you can replace them too,” Karl agreed.

  “Cool. It would be sorta long for the brush you get around here, though.”

  His own bow was about chin-high on him.

  “I think it’s heavier than mine, but let me give it a try—”

  The Topangan drew the way a lot of cowan did, dead upright with his feet at right angles and his whole left side pointed at the imaginary target. After a moment his right arm began to shake with the string a little over halfway to his ear and the muscle bunched hard under his skin.

  Karl’s weapon would have overbowed him even if he was a Mackenzie, but he was probably strong enough to have drawn it—just—if he’d known how, despite Karl having thirty pounds of solid muscle on him. You had to be strong, yes, but no amount of putting brute to the bow could make up for lack of skill.

  “Christ!” the Topangan said respectfully. “What’s the draw on this monster?”

  “A hundred weight a score and seven . . . a hundred and twenty-seven pounds. With a clothyard shaft at full draw.”

  He’d noticed that Conan drew to the ear, also common outside the dúthchas. Mackenzies drew past the angle of the jaw, an extra couple of inches. Karl added:

  “We say you should take a tenth of an archer’s naked weight, count that times seven or seven and a bit, and you’ve got the right draw for their war-bow when they’re full-grown. Less for huntin’, of course.”

  He grinned at the Topangan and slapped his brigandine-covered chest. “Seeing as the deer don’t wear steel, d’ye see. Or even tigers.”

  “Christ!” Conan said. “You can really hold that for a real draw? And more than once a day?”

  “Oh, I manage. And we think twelve shots within a count of sixty reasonable. Perhaps we’ll shoot at rounders some day, or hunt while we’re here if there’s time.”

  Conan clapped him on the shoulder. “Dude, totally!” He waved over the watching youngsters. “This is my friend Billy—”

  • • •

  “Let me get this straight, then,” Órlaith said.

  One of the houses in the not-quite-town on the shore was evidently a combination of the informal headman’s—headwoman’s, rather—family home, workshop, warehouse, fish-drying shed, stable and a tavern or inn or eating-house for sailors and inland Topangans who came down to deal with them or swap for the coast’s cured fish and salt.

  It had a pleasant courtyard enclosed by rubble walls overgrown by bougainvillea in a mound of crimson blossom, rather badly set flagstones, and tables oddly constructed of slabs of what looked like polished granite fitted together, held up by more of the same rectangular shapes turned upright. She thought she’d seen countertops like this in ruins; the poles that held up the woven-straw umbrellas over them were aluminum, and so were the frames of the chairs, whose seats and backs were modern rawhide. The headwoman, who was leathery and fiftyish and had hook-and-line scars on her fingers, had set out rough brown bread and olive oil and brine-cured olives and toasted chickpeas and carafes of a truly vile red wine, flat and harsh and very strong. She’d welcomed the silver coins of Montival, but a gift of a dozen cans of tinned pork-loaf and a crate of ship’s biscuit from the stores they’d brought had lit her eyes even more when they said they’d be staying for a bit.

  Fortunately there was water to cut the wine with, because Órlaith felt she had to drink some for form’s sake. None of the local leaders seemed to think there was anything wrong with it, which told a story.

  Less bound by diplomacy, Reiko had taken a single sip, winced, and put the glass down. Heuradys had simply sampled the scent of hers and poured it back, and John’s smile had become rather mechanical as he made himself drink one glass of half-and-half. Oddly to northern eyes there were also jugs of orange juice, an exotic luxury for wealthy merchants and nobles in Corvallis or Portland, and Órlaith switched to that once her courtesy glass of diluted desecrated grape-juice was down.

  “You’ve a long-standing quarrel with the folk over the mountains in the valley northward, the . . . Chatsworth Lancers?” Órlaith went on.

  Kwame nodded. He’d exchanged a single look with Egawa, and given another long appraising one at Droyn and the men-at-arms in plate and crossbowmen in half-armor, another at the samurai, and a half-incredulous one at Diarmuid and his tattooed McClintocks. Droyn was here with his visored sallet and gauntlets resting on the table, but the rest of the party was setting up camp in a vacant lot. Save for the mounted part of her followers, the Dúnedain cousins and Susan Mika and Thora Garwood, who were exercising their horses up and down the beach. From the sounds outside the folk of the two Clans were following her orders and making friends with the younger locals.

  “Yeah, ah, your Highness. There were horse-ranches there at the northern end of the Valley at the Change.”

  His blunt finger moved to show the locations he meant. There were two maps on the table, one of Topanga Canyon and its immediate neighbors, the other of what had been Los Angeles and environs. Both were pyrographed with hot needles onto soft-tanned bleached hide, probably from yearling does, work done with patient sure-handed skill; she wasn’t surprised that Curtis understood that good maps were a weapon and a deadly one at that. The lay of the land was obviously taken from maps of the ancient world, which was standard practice, but the names and political boundaries were modern.

  “Up here the Valley wasn’t quite built up completely in ’ninety-eight—hobby farms for rich people who liked to keep horses, mostly.”

  Órlaith nodded, ruffling Macmac’s head where it rested in her lap. She loved horses herself, but the thought of them as a hobby was very strange. They were the way you traveled fast, or the way you avoided doing work with just your own muscle when you couldn’t apply wind or water power. Still, hobbies like that had been important in a number of places, preserving breeds that were crucially important today. One such had given the sires of most of the draught breeds that hauled rail-cars and heavy loads all over the High Kingdom.

  “And they had their own wells and water tanks and stored food and fodder. Some of ’em got together and forted up in those big houses and barricaded themselves and their nags, some pulled up into the hills until most of the people were gone. The Great Dieoff—”

  She could hear the capitals.

  “—only took a couple of weeks.”

  He and Jared looked very grim for a moment; Connor sighed slightly, as at an oft-told tale.

  “Then they used their horses to take over what was left of the Valley, with this family named Delgado running the show. We had a showdown with Bruce Delgado, the first one, about seventeen years ago—”

  Órlaith nodded admiringly at the explanation of how they’d foiled an invasion of their steep and rocky home; so did Egawa, as his sovereign translated quietly.

  “Now that was somewhat clever,” Órlaith said. “But unless they’re too stupid to walk and fart at once you’ll not get them to advance heedlessly up a narrow road below a cliff full of waiting boulders again,” she observed. “With heavy horse all bunched together to catch the rocks with their teeth, at that!”

  Curtis shrugged. “Delgado was clever, but he was an amateur. It’s a good thing he died, though; he could learn from his mistakes.”

  “Sure, and that’s the problem with relying on clever tricks and cunning ploys against an enemy who outweighs you. It’s easier for them to get smarter than for you to get bigger.”

  Jared frowned and then nodded. Kwame gave her a long look. “That’s . . . ah, no offense, but that’s rather strategic thinking for . . . ummm . . .”

 
; Órlaith grinned amiably. “For someone so young, Captain Curtis? Ah, that’s my parents and teachers you’re hearing. For that my father and mother commanded great armies in a long hard war when they were not much older than I am now, and I not yet weaned, and I was reared among . . . reared by, really . . . its veterans. No disrespect to those who’ve fought for their homes here, but we’ve had more wars and bigger ones in the north since the Change, alas, and learned accordingly.”

  She noticed something, a tattoo on his left forearm; an anchor crossing a globe, topped with an eagle. Her brows went up:

  “You were in the . . . Marine Corps, it was called, Captain?”

  “Yes,” he said. “The Marines were—”

  Órlaith smiled. “I did study history. And my father’s father was a Marine. Mike Havel, you may have heard of him; hence I recognize their sigil. And he was a warrior in a thousand accordin’ to the Histories and to those who knew him, with his own hands and as a commander both. And a fine ruler of the Bearkillers who they revere to this day, and his son is Bear Lord the now, Mike Havel Jr. A credit to your Corps.”

  “He was a Marine?” Curtis said. “I have heard a little about him, but not that he was a Gyrene . . . that’s another word for Marine.”

  “He was . . . Force Recon, I think they were called. Scout-sniper. He fought in the Iraq War far across the eastern sea in the desert lands; 1991, in the Christian calendar.”

  “Damn,” Kwame Curtis said, looking at her searchingly. “So did I. We may even have crossed paths. I take it you didn’t get the interesting accent from him?”

  “No,” Órlaith chuckled. “That was from my maternal grandmother, Lady Juniper Mackenzie, first Chief of the Clan Mackenzie. Her mother was Erin-born, Lady Juniper is still very much alive. My other grandmother Sandra Arminger died only eight years ago, but Mike Havel passed the Western Gate when my father was ten. And there were . . . family complications, so to speak, so I didn’t know either of my grandfathers personally.”

  In fact they’d killed each other in a single combat neither had survived. This Curtis struck her as shrewd beyond doubt and probably intelligent as well, so he probably knew that perfectly well. It was certainly famous enough that any number of sailors would have told the tale here, probably at one of these very tables. There was no need for her to get explicit about it.

  “To business, though. You were speaking of the leaders of Chatsworth? The House of Delgado?”

  Kwame cleared his throat. “So after Bruce Delgado was killed, his younger brother Mark more or less took over the Chatsworth Lancers, after some fighting. Bruce kept him in the background while he was alive; suspicious of the vicious little rat, I think, and with good reasons. Bruce was about eight years older.”

  “Mark’s wife is the brains of that team,” Jared observed.

  Kwame nodded. “He’s not stupid, but yeah, Winnie’s a weasel in human form, it’s not just a nickname.”

  Droyn smiled. “There’s precedent—Robert Guiscard, the Norman warrior who became Duke of Sicily by craft and arms. Robert the Weasel, in the modern tongue. Famous for his, ah, cunning.”

  “That pair are cunning enough. But it took him years to get back all the parts of the Valley that had broken away from Chatsworth; by then there were more people than right after the Change and things had settled down. He only really finished it this spring. Since then he’s been pushing at us like his brother did. Ummm . . . the problem is that someone, just lately, has been supplying him with equipment. Stuff we’ve never seen before. He used it to mop up the last holdouts, ones who had forts.”

  Órlaith’s brows went up. “Equipment? Of what type, precisely?”

  “Wheeled catapults pulled by a four-horse team, like a God-damned Civil War field gun and just about as effective. They’ve got at least a couple of different types, or they can be altered real easy to shoot different types of ammunition.”

  “’Tis the latter, if they’re anything like ours. Do you have any close observations?”

  “Connor Tillman here led a scouting party and saw it in action in the fighting when Mark’s bullyboys squashed the last groups fighting him in the western Valley. Who, frankly, we were helping on the quiet, which royally pissed him off when it didn’t work out as well as we’d hoped.”

  Jared stirred. “Worth trying,” he said. “It delayed things, at least.”

  “Yeah, and it convinced him Southern California isn’t big enough for both of us,” Kwame replied, evidently an old argument.

  “You’re sure this gear is not of their own making?” Órlaith asked slowly.

  A tiny alarm was ringing at the back of her mind.

  “They’re just about up to making horseshoes and lance-heads and repairing a plow. We’ve got better smiths and we couldn’t have done it,” Jared said, and Kwame nodded.

  His son Connor nodded too, and went to the entryway to the courtyard. “Hey, Conan! Get your mind off that girl and your ass in here!”

  “My son was with me, mmm, Highness,” he said to Órlaith. “He’s damned good at sneaking around without being seen.”

  The young man came in just in time to catch that, frowning fit to make a storm, and did an almost comical double-take to hear himself praised. His father scowled at him in turn.

  “He’s good for something, at least, besides playing up to his name.”

  Somewhat to Órlaith’s surprise, Conan Tillman made a clumsy but reasonably correct knee to her and bowed his head. She rose and extended her hand for the kiss of homage, and he not only did it but drew his shortsword—not noticing the slight shift from Heuradys d’Ath as she stood behind her liege and the fingers of her right hand flexed—and offered the weapon hilt-first over his left forearm in proper form. He must have been taking some quick lessons from her people outside. She touched the hilt and the steel and said:

  “Arise, and know that your homage is accepted, Conan Tillman of Topanga. Let this sword be bound to the High Queen’s peace, and drawn only in its defense, and hers.”

  Connor seemed to be flushed with irritation, and his father amused and alarmed at the same time, and Conan at least a bit exalted. Kwame had watched Heuradys instead, narrowly considering her stance and movements. He nodded to himself as if confirming a thought; probably that when Conan had put his hand to his hilt he’d been three-quarters of a second from falling backward with a narrow longsword-profiled hole six inches deep through one eye and into his brain.

  Which was completely true.

  “Conan helped with these,” Connor said, notably not entitling her. “He’s the one who got closest.”

  He pulled a rolled sheet of paper from a haversack he’d been wearing that had held the maps; it was tough modern rag-pulp paper, and he weighed down the corners with cups and bottles. The Montivallan commanders leaned forward. It showed a field catapult, one with a shield and split trail and two spoked wheels. The drawing was fairly detailed, and someone had done a color-wash afterwards to add more realism; there were four views, frontal, to either side, and from above. The outline of a man with a long spear or short pike was drawn beside it for an easy reference on size.

  “That’s not one of ours,” Feldman said, and the Montivallan nobles all nodded agreement. “I know all the designs manufactured in the High Kingdom, as far east as Boise and New Deseret. From those cranks, it has a geared mechanical cocking mechanism, not hydraulics, and a straight spring recoil absorber. How accurate is this, Connor? Conan?”

  “I was behind some brush about fifteen feet away for a couple of hours while the crew pulled maintenance on it,” the youth with the ancient king’s name said. “I saw them take parts off and put them back on. There was a guy in odd armor giving them directions, like, showing them how.”

  “Odd?” Órlaith said.

  “Yeah. Little plates linked together with chain mail, and a big curved sword—sort of heavy towards the
tip—and a helmet with flaps on the sides and a spike on top and a leather guard with metal studs down his neck. He had a bow across his back, sorta like the ones some of you folks carry—like the Dúnedain ones, only skinnier.”

  Recurve, Órlaith thought. And that armor . . . the clash where Da died . . .

  Reiko made a sharp gesture with her fan, and Egawa and Ishikawa grunted expressively.

  “Bakachon,” she said.

  Then she gestured to the plan. “That is very similar to ours, because they copied our designs. A shipboard weapon, but intended to be easily dismounted and put on a field carriage.”

  Órlaith closed her eyes for an instant. The little warning was growing shrill and loud now.

  “Baka-chon?” Jared said questioningly.

  Kwame had given the Japanese a swift, not overly friendly look.

  “I think the . . . ah, the Majesty . . . means Koreans. I was stationed there and on Okinawa for a little while before I got shipped out to Iraq in ’ninety-one.”

  His right hand touched the missing fingers, and his eyes looked back over a stretch of decades before he went on:

  “Bakachon would mean something like, ah . . . dumb gook.”

  Órlaith smiled grimly. She’d decided not to bring up the matter of contentions among the Powers just yet, or the sorcerer-kings who ruled the Korean peninsula in modern times. Even in terms of the politics of human-kind, things were plain enough, and Topanga seemed to be a bit old-fashioned that way.

  “Since they killed my father the High King only a few months ago, Captain Curtis, I’m not going to rage at a smidgen of disrespect, so. For their rulers, at least, and what they’ve made of the place; no doubt the common folk are no worse than others with the same teaching would be. The same dynasty misruled part of Korea before the Change, I understand.”

  Jared blinked. “Wait a minute, Kim Jong-il survived the Change?”

  “That was his name, yes,” Reiko said. “His grandson rules them now, as sorcerer and priest of the dark powers and God-King, claiming a right to command all mankind.”