It was no novelty for the Larssons, of course; they'd been richer than God for three long generations before the Change, and Ken's first wife had been a Boston Brahmin who looked down on them—and the Rockefellers—as parvenus. She'd probably looked on Mike Havel as a monkey from the outback. Even when he was busting his ass trying to get her badly injured self back to a civilization neither of them knew had crashed and sunk like that Piper Chieftain he'd piloted over the Selway-Bitterroot. Though even when dying she'd been too genteel to show it.
OK, gentility not my strong point, he thought. I'll leave that for my descendants. They'll have ancestors. I am an ancestor.
When the nanny had gone he turned his head in the lounger and sighed. "OK, Ken, you're goddamned right. We've got to get that House of Commons thing we talked about going. As soon as this war's over—"
His father-in-law snorted and turned his single bright blue eye on him, across the table with its plate of cookies. He was a big man in his early sixties with a short-cropped white beard, a patch over his left eye and a hook in place of the hand on that side, both the fruit of an encounter between the Bearkillers and a would-be warlord and friend of Arminger's in the first Change Year, out east up the Snake River. The kettle belly he'd had before the Change was gone, and he looked tougher and fitter than he had when he climbed into the Piper Chieftain in Boise, but he'd never pretended to be a fighting man. His mind made him far more valuable; an experienced administrator and engineer had been beyond price a dozen times. Plus he asked disturbing questions …
"When did I hear that tune before?" he said. "There's never going to be a convenient time, Mike. Not unless we make it. There isn't going to be a time when there's no emergency, either."
"OK, I said it, and I mean it. January. The Association's going for us soon, and it'll all be over one way or another by Christmas. I swear to God we'll elect … OK, call it two from every A-lister steading and strategic hamlet. On that Australian ballot thing you're fond of. Christ Jesus, it'll be a relief to have some single group I can go talk to and bargain with and settle things with! Plus it'll help put a leash on some of our A-listers who've got delusions of baron-hood."
"Give the man a cookie!"
He offered one. Havel shook his head. "Nah, don't want to spoil supper. They butchered a nice plump steer a couple-three days ago and Talli down to the kitchens says the steaks look great."
Ken's wife—second wife—Pamela snorted; she had a plate of carrot sticks beside her chair. That wasn't what kept her lean, though; partially genes, and partially the fact that she'd been a hobbyist who studied Renaissance sword techniques before the Change, and the Bearkillers primary blade trainer since. She'd taught him the backsword, and a good many others, and her pupils had passed it on. Quite a stroke of luck to stumble onto her, that day in Idaho when they took in their first recruits, and not just for then-widowed Ken because they'd ended up married.
But then, if I wasn't very lucky, I'd be dead about one hundred and thirty-eight times, he thought. Don't let that make you overconfident, Marine. The dice have no memory.
"And not a word about the first early greens of the year," Pam went on, rolling her eyes and shrugging expressively, then asked rhetorically: "How do you make a Finnish salad?"
Havel grinned. "Yeah, yeah, I know—first you fry sausages in bacon grease. Then you add a dozen potatoes … "
The laugh died as trumpets screamed from the gate-towers. All the adults' heads came up; those three rising notes meant attention! And after that came the signal for urgent courier.
Havel swung erect, his hand automatically picking up the basket-hilted sword that leaned against the recliner, with the belt wound around it. They waited, watching two riders trot up the roadway and draw rein before the veranda, tumbling down out of the saddle while the guards grounded their polearms and took the reins. One of the riders had a black jerkin with Astrid's tree-stars-crown thing on it, a young woman in her late teens with reddish-brown hair plastered to her face by sweat and wind; she raked it free and bowed. The man beside her was a Bearkiller scout wearing a mail vest and a helmet, more practical for quick work than a full hauberk. An A-lister, though, a lieutenant commanding a unit of couriers who doubled as scouts and light cavalry.
His name's Smythe, memory prompted. The A-List wasn't yet so big that he couldn't remember every Brother and Sister. His eyes flicked to the horses. The one the Bearkiller scout rode was breathing hard though not blown, but the Ranger's looked as if it might drop dead any minute: head drooping, panting like a bellows, its neck and forequarters streaked with dried foam.
The Dunedain Ranger was reeling with fatigue too as she scrabbled in her saddlebags and handed him an envelope; he didn't need to ask if it was urgent.
"I had to go far out of the way and dodge Protectorate scouts, Lord Bear," she said. "I'm sorry it delayed me."
She inclined her head towards her horse. Behind him Eric Larsson whistled softly; there was a broken-off stub of arrow standing in the cantle of her saddle. Three inches forward and it would have gone into her pelvis.
"You got it here, which is what counts," Havel said, taking the envelope. "If there's no verbal addition, why don't you get the horse seen to and get something for yourself?"
She stumbled away, leading the horse; its dragging hooves made a counterpoint to her boots. Havel ripped the letter open and read on aloud: "Elvish, Elvish, Elvish—meaning it's me, Astrid; Elvish, Elvish, Elvish—meaning Hi, Mike; Elvish … OK, here's the meat of it: Three columns of Protectorate troops .. ."
He went on to the end. "Right," he said, passing it to Will Hutton.
The black Texan's graying eyebrows shot up as he looked over the map. "Some motherfucker up north has decided it's a beautiful spring day, so let's have a war. Three guesses who.''
The children sensed the adults' tension and fell silent. Mike took an instant to wave them into the house; the older ones shooed the protesting youngest along with them, or dragged them by the wrist. That gave time for the message to be passed around from hand to hand as well, and for him to call up the maps in his head. The river and the ruins of Salem, with the bridges; then open country north and south, the Eola Hills to the west, then more open country with the odd hill, then the Coast Range if you went far enough …
"OK," he said, his voice flat and cold. "This is the opening move. He's investing Mount Angel, pushing through the Waldos to the edge of Mackenzie country, and to back it all up, he's going to try and rush the Salem bridges to cut the opposition in half. If he can hold them, he'll cut us off from each other. Anyone got any ideas on why the ones going south out of Molalla are carrying all that heavy gear and taking labor gangs with them?"
"Going to put up a forward base, if they can punch through to the open country north of Lebanon," Eric Larsson said. "Prefab castle, or maybe more than one, base for a campaign south of the Santiam and protection for their supply route."
"Right, that's what I thought."
He paused, weighing options. Silence lengthened as everyone looked at him.
And it's all up to me, he thought.
When he'd been a Marine in the Gulf it had been just him. Well, a Force Recon corporal had a fire team, but his biggest worry had been what was in the wadi and where to put the SAW. Semper Fi, slip in, find the position, report, maybe do some demolition, GOPLAT, VBBS, playing a deadly game with the ragheads, sometimes down to knives in the dark. Sure, they'd cut your balls off with a blunt knife if they caught you, but that went with the territory, and anyway they were such total half-hards and dipshits it was usually just dangerous enough to let you show your sisu. And let them go to Allah and the seventy-two virgin white raisins.
Fight for the Corps, yeah, fight for your buddies. For the goddamn country, too, show them nobody fucks with the US of A without ending up sorry and sore, all right and proper. But nobody was going to invade Michigan, burn down the Havel home-place and kill my family if I screwed up. Shit, I'm scared. I don't want to fight. I'm thi
rty-eight and a father, not nineteen and a killing-mean dick-on-legs the way I was then. I want to stay home and watch my kids play and enjoy a steak dinner and screw Signe silly tonight and go hunting tomorrow.
He smiled, hard and confident. "Arminger's an armchair general," he said. "He likes to draw pretty lines on maps and think he's Bobbie Lee. Actually it's my guess he's more on the order of John Pope. You know, the guy who said 'my headquarters are in the saddle'?"
"Headquarters in his hindquarters," Ken said, and his laugh boomed out. He'd gotten them all interested in the Civil War over the past decade; it was one of his hobbies, and damned useful.
Grant, though. Grant was always my favorite general. Havel turned his head. "OK, Will. That force they've got up around McMinnville, my guess is that they're a distraction, but they'll raid if we let them. Get over the hills, call up—"
He looked at Signe, who kept track of the intel. She answered without hesitation. "A hundred A-listers ready for duty in the steadings there."
That was the point of having an A-list; they were fully trained and always ready to muster. The militia took longer, and they couldn't be kept away from the fields forever, and the spring planting was underway … Christ Jesus, thank You this isn't harvest time!
"Collect up fifty lances from the A-list, and say two hundred infantry from the strategic hamlets, and screen the area between the Coast Range and the Amity Hills with em, send the rest east to me. Make it obvious you're there, and if you can make them think there are more of you than there really are, all the better."
Damn, that's not much of a force for the job, Havel thought, as the weathered brown face of the ex-cowboy nodded, hard and grim. He fought back the temptation to send more. I've got four drains in this bathtub and only one plug. Gotta remember to keep focused and put the troops at the point of maximum effort.
"You don't think they'll make a serious attack thataway, son?" Hutton asked.
"No. Not if they're trying to do everything else at once. Like I said, armchair general." His grin grew wolfish. "Now, if I had his ten thousand men, you'd bet I'd throw every one of them in, and all on the same front. Finish up one of us, then concentrate on the others. We couldn't move around as freely to match him, bridges or no, we're all defending our homes, but he's trying to do it all at the same time. The result is he's not overwhelmingly strong in any one place."
Ken Larsson nodded. "If you try to be strong everywhere, you are weak everywhere," he quoted. "Frederick the Great."
"I'll snort and paw the ground some up there, like a mean bull out to hook you." Hutton nodded, satisfied. "I'll keep 'em occupied. Maybe raid a bit, get 'em hot and bothered."
Havel nodded back. And I can rely on you to do just that, thank God, and not get a hair up your ass and decide you're going to win the whole damned war, he thought. Which is why your mad Swedish bull of a son-in-law is going to be kept right under my eye. He's a wonder when you can point him right at something that needs smashing, but a bit short on the self-restraint thing.
"Just so you don't try to fight any big engagements," he said. He looked at his mental map again. "Damn, but I wish we could have put a garrison in on those bridges at Salem. It's going to be close even if we leave tonight."
"We didn't have enough troops," Signe said. "Not in the spring planting season."
Havel nodded. Well, shit. Four drains, one plug. That was Arminger's advantage; his troops were full-timers, paid men or landholders with bond-tenants and peons working their fiefs and fiefs-in-sergeantry. The Association's leadership wasn't getting as much out of it as he would have in the Protectors position, but the advantage hadn't gone away, either.
"Right, everything's ready to roll at Rickreall?" he asked his father-in-law.
Ken nodded. "I'll leave right away, and get the stuff started by midnight. We got that whole section of the old Southern Pacific line reconditioned last year when we cleared the bridge piers at Salem. I checked it over a little after Christmas and nothing's washed out since then. Shouldn't be any problem to get to Salem by dawn if we push the horses, and once I get those beauties on the railroad bridge, I defy anything built since the Change to sail past."
"Whoa, Ken. You personally?"
"I bossed the shops that made the damn things, didn't I? For exactly this contingency. Damned if I'm not going to boss them when they're going into action."
Havel pursed his lips. Yeah, he did. And the crews did the work with him. They're not A-listers. They'll do better with him there to steady them. He's not much with a sword and he's too old for a forced march, hut he's got guts to spare and he's smart.
"OK, but Pam, you take ten lances and go with him. Your job is to see he's not distracted by nasty men killing him while he's doing his job. They may try to slip some commando types past us to the bridges."
"Will do, bossman," she said, grinning the way a wolf did at a rabbit.
"Ken, tell your guy Sarducci to get the field artillery here ready to go—"
"It's ready to go on one hour's notice anyway. All we need to do is get the horses and crews together. He's the most punctual Italian I ever met. Glad we got him to move up from Corvallis; he was wasted as a university professor."
"Good; tell him to fall the engines in outside the gate. When you get to Rickreall, commandeer anything you need in the way of horses to pull the trains with the heavy stuff for the bridge, and get the militia mobilizing and following you as fast as they can, Rickreall and Dallas both."
"What about me?" Eric Larsson said plaintively.
"Oh, you and Luanne're going with me," Havel said easily. He leaned over and punched the big man's shoulder. "I'm gonna need someone to take care of the cavalry."
Eric grinned, his eyes lighting dangerously. Beside him Luanne looked dourly determined, like her father.
"We'll take the two Field Force companies of infantry from here at Lars-dalen," Havel went on.
That was everyone fit to march and fight; pretty much everyone who wasn't lactating, pregnant, too old, too young, or not big enough to carry a crossbow or strong enough to work the lever that spanned it. He hated mobilizing that completely, but if he lost this fight then they were all dog-meat anyway. The tests for the militia were simple and set to take in everyone capable of being useful.
"Plus all the A-Listers here, and all the ones we can sweep up on the way. We'll muster by Walker Creek. Lieutenant Smythe!"
The scout had been waiting by the head of his horse; he looked tired, but not knocked out the way the Ranger—oh, hell, if they want to be the Dunedain, they're the Dunedain, and I'll buy 'em their rubber ears—was. He would be just that tired before long, though.
"Turn out your scouts. Sweep every Spring Valley steading and west to the Eola crest. Give them the rally-point and tell everyone to turn out their A-listers and first Field Force company. We'll be moving southeast from there down the Bethal Heights and Brush College roads towards Salem. Rations for three days and basic medical supplies only, keep it light, but plenty of arrows and bolts."
"Lord Bear!" the man said, snapping a salute and vaulting back into the saddle; he reined around and took off in a spurt of gravel.
Havel looked over at Angelica Hutton. She'd been camp boss in the wandering days right after the Change, when they were heading west from Idaho, and still handled the Outfit's logistics. It was a much bigger job, but the middle-aged Tejano woman handled it with matter-of-fact competence. She'd already pulled a pad out of a pocket in her long black skirt.
"Supplies?" he asked.
"We have ample in reserve," she said, her voice warm and husky and soft with the Texas-Hispanic accent; she'd been born in the brush country between the Rio Grande and San Antonio.
Angelica was still a handsome woman, but you only had to close your eyes and listen to that voice to see the fiery young girl who'd eloped with the reckless roughstock-riding rodeo cowboy Will had been back then, with death threats from her father and brothers raining about their ears.
Brisk
ly, she went on: "It is not fancy, but nobody will starve on the beans, cheese, dried fruit and smoked sausage. Remounts, they are sufficient also."
Havel nodded. Will had quit the rodeo when his first child was born, reconciled with Angelica's family, and he'd put his considerable winnings into a little ranch in the Hill Country and a horse-wrangling business. Angelica had been his partner in that, too. Today they ran the Outfit's horse herds, breeding program, and training program for both mounts and riders.
One thing's not so different from the Corps. I've got good people backing me up, folks I'm tight with.
"OK," he said, slapping his palms together. "First things first. Let's eat; we can finalize the operations orders while we do, then we'll get going."
Peter Jones spoke for the first time. "Not me, Mike. I'm going back to Corvallis and see if I can kick enough ass to get them doing something."
"Thanks, Pete," Havel said, leaving silent: For what it's worth.
As they went in under the high fanlights of the front doors, Havel was whistling under his breath. The tune was one he'd learned from a buddy in the Corps, a guy named Thibodeau who'd come from a parish west of New Orleans:
"People still talks about Cajun Joe
Cajun Joe was the Bully of the Bayou—"
Waldo Hills, Willamette Valley, Oregon
March 5th, 2008/Change Year 9
Astrid Larsson hissed slightly between her teeth. This was going to be very tricky …
"Like Faramir and the Rangers of Ithilien, when they ambushed the Haradrim on the way to the Black Gate," Alleyne whispered.
His teeth showed white in the shadow cast by his war cloak's hood, dim through the gauze mask that covered all but his gray-blue eyes. It was a cool gray morning, but last night's rain was over and the clouds were breaking up, letting long beams of sunlight spear through, turning the early spring grass bright green. His visored helm rested on the grass beside him, and as they watched the road he plucked a stem of the candy-sweet new growth and chewed on it meditatively.
Astrid nodded, returning the smile with a brief grin of her own, then turning again to the steep slope before them. It is like that, actually, she thought. Except they don't have any oliphants. Or even elephants.
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