A Meeting At Corvallis

by S. M. Stirling

  Without Arminger and his re-creationist cronies and hangers-on the roughnecks and gangbangers who made up the rest of his following would have gradually invented an ethos justifying their rule and stories telling why they were the bee's knees. But the Society had provided a ready-made mythos to feed the younger generation. God alone knew what the third generation would be like … probably they'd wait at crossroads to joust all comers with a lady's glove tucked under their helmets, or make goofy vows to liberate the Holy Sepulcher and set sail for the walls of Jerusalem with Crusader crosses on their surcoats.

  From what Pam and Ken had told him the whole thing wasn't more than loosely connected to real medieval chivalry; say, about the way Treasure Island was to real pirates. Mostly it was drawn from stories and make-believe, starting with the ones Cervantes had laughed his compatriots out of by mocking them in Don Quixote, and going on from there to Ivanhoe and The Cid and finishing with Braveheart and Disney's Magic Kingdom. But it worked as a morale booster just as well for all that. Which was mostly a plus for the people running the Portland Protective Association, but the downside was that they had to play along with it themselves, including things like letting this valiant young idiot play at knight-errantry with real blood and real bones at stake.

  Although … he thought, as he turned the big gelding and reached back to lift the bottom four feet of his eleven-foot lance out of the tubular scabbard, at what point does make-believe become real? When it's the way you live every day of your life? When you're prepared to die for it?

  He reached down and ran his arm through the loops of his shield, lifting it off the hook on his bow-case as he let his knotted reins fall on the saddlebow. Doll-tiny, the figure of Sir Jeff dipped his lance in acknowledgment. Havel did the same with his own, then couched it loosely. Ten feet of tapering ashwood, thick as his wrist at the steel-capped butt, just wide enough to be gripped comfortably in the hand at the balance-point a third of the way up from there, a little over thumb-thick where the socket of the narrow twelve-inch knife head was heat-shrunk onto the wood. The two men's armor differed only in detail, except for the Bearkiller's shield; that was a convex circle about two feet in diameter, rimmed and bossed with metal, and made of a layer of thick leather over stout plywood.

  The Protectorate knight's was of similar construction, but much larger, a curved top a yard across tapering to a rounded point four feet below. It covered most of his body now as he brought it up under his eyes and crouched forward, his feet braced in the stirrups.

  "Let's go, Gustav," Havel said to his horse, and shifted his weight.

  The big gelding tossed his head again and paced forward, building to a trot and then a canter and then a controlled hand gallop; he knew this game as well as his master. Havel kept the lance loose in his gauntleted hand, trained across the horse's head so that it jutted over the spike in the middle of the chamfron's forehead. The figure of the knight grew with sudden, startling speed; he could see the divots flying from under his mount's hooves and the unwavering spike of the lancehead aimed at his throat, the skillfully sloped shield, the high metal-shod saddlebow …

  Havel's knees clamped home on Gustav's barrel, bringing the last plunging bit of speed out of the great muscles flexing beneath him. His hand clamped as well on the shaft of the lance as he trained it over the horse's head, and his body tensed …

  And the very last instant his left arm whipped up the shield, sweeping it out. The lighter, more mobile, round Bearkiller shield that could be used as easily as a sword, not a twenty-pound kite-shaped weight that stayed in one place.

  Crack-crack!

  The curved surface and the artful sideways blow flung the knight's lancehead out of line; the impact was brutal and rammed Havel back against the high can-tie of his war-saddle, but not nearly so much so as the strike of his own lance. That punched the gaudily painted kite-shaped shield neatly at its midpoint, and the lancehead pierced the facing and gouged deep into the tough alder-plywood, driven by the huge momentum of a pair of armored horses and armored men. For one stomach-clenching instant Havel thought it would lever him into the air like a fly on the end of a fishing line, but then the ashwood broke across with a gunshot snap.

  Sir Jeff slammed back into the cantle of his own saddle and over it, turning a complete somersault in the air and landing flat on his face as Havel galloped by and his own horse went off like a shooting star. The Bearkiller lord reined in as quickly as he could—you couldn't stop a ton of man and horse and metal on a dime—and looked around.

  Wereton's conical helmet had burst free from the straps that held it and rolled away, and the mail coif beneath had come off too; the shield-strap looped diagonally across his back still held, hindering him as he rolled over faceup. Mouth and nose and ears dribbled blood and he twitched like a pithed frog, but Havel judged he'd probably recover—though not in time for the rest of this campaigning season. Not with a squashed nose, concussion, whiplash, head-to-toe bruises and probably half a dozen sprung ribs. His body would probably heal faster than his bruised ego, at that.

  "Thought so," he panted, spitting to clear his mouth of thick saliva mixed with blood where the shock had cut the inside against his own teeth. "Never jousted with anyone who wasn't using Association gear before, did you, sonny-boy?"

  He gestured with the stump of his lance for Sir Jeff's friends or attendants to come and get him; a boy in his early teens galloped out with an older man in servant's clothing, and between them they caught the fallen knight's destrier, levered him over it and headed back for the shelter of the Protectorate army's lines. As the defeated champion returned draped across his saddle a long, low, disconsolate muttering came from there, plus curses and shaken fists. The Bear-killer force roared Havel's name as he cantered down the line, tossing the six-foot stave that was all that remained of his lance in good-natured mockery of the knight's flamboyant gesture before the fight. When he drew in before the A-lister cavalry the cheers grew even louder, and the horses neighed and snorted in protest.

  Eric Larsson spoke: Havel couldn't hear it under the pulsing beat of the sound, but he was pretty sure it was you selfish glory-hound son of a bitch! shouted in tones of deepest sea green envy.

  Havel grinned at his brother-in-law and tossed him the stump of the lance. Eric caught it, then reached behind, pulled his own free of the scabbard and tossed it to his commander in a casual display of strength—it took a lot of muscle to treat one of these barge poles as if it was a garden rake. Havel caught it neatly, hiding the grunt of effort under the smack of leather on wood, and slid it into the tubular socket.

  Beside Eric, Luanne rolled her eyes and made a remark of her own; probably You idiot! Or Men! Why does everything have to be a pissing match?

  "Because in this life everything, absolutely everything, is either a challenge or a reward," he said to himself, and turned his horse and cantered back to the Outfit's banner.

  "Don't say it," he said, as he reined in and most of the staff crowded around to pound him on the back.

  One handed him a canteen of water cut with a little wine that was more like vinegar; he took a mouthful, swilled it around his mouth and winced as it hit the cuts, then drank down a dozen long swallows. Sweat was running down his face in rivulets, and the padding of his mail collar was already chafing a little under his chin, despite the coolness of the day and the silk neckerchief tucked inside it.

  "Why shouldn't I say it, when we both know it's true?" Signe snapped. Dammit, Mike, this business is dangerous enough without—"

  "That wasn't showing off," he said, and at her glare added: "All right, it wasn't just showing off. I knew whoever it was, it was probably some dick-with-legs first-timer type I could take without breaking a sweat."

  "And if it had been Stavarov sending out his best lancer to mousetrap you?" she hissed, when they were close enough for the remark to be less than totally public. "You know, I'd like my children to have a living father—and not grow up hiding from the Protector in a cave in Ca
lifornia, either!"

  I'd have beaten his best lancer, too, Mike didn't say aloud. Instead he went on reasonably: "But he didn't. It was like stealing candy from a baby. We won some time, our troops' peck—ah, tails are up, and the enemy's men are feeling half beaten already. Stavarov must be chewing on the rim of his shield. I wouldn't like to be Sir Jeff when the lord baron gets around to him!"

  Signe snorted, but changed the subject. "I wonder how Dad's doing over at the bridges?" she said. "At least he's old enough not to try the Achilles-before-the-walls-of-Troy stuff."

  "That's geek to me," Havel replied, grinning like a wolf.

  And yeah, I am feeling pretty pleased with myself, he add silently. So it's atavistic. Whoopee-shit.

  Then he looked south again, and worry returned with a rush, like cold water trickling up his spine. That was the problem with losing yourself in action; like booze, the oblivion was temporary and the troubles came right back, often worse than before.

  And where are the rest of my troops, goddammit? He tried not to wonder if they'd be enough when they did get here.

  * * * *

  Snap. Snap. Snap.

  Ken Larsson ducked involuntarily as the metal bolts from the war-boat flicked towards him, mere blurred streaks at better than four hundred feet a second. They struck the row of heavy sheet-metal-and-timber shields his crew had rigged along the northern edge of the railway bridge. The sloping surface shed the impact with a tooth-gritting sound halfway between a bang and a squeal; the bolts flickered and tumbled upward, still moving so quickly they were barely visible, leaving an elongated, dimpled dent in the quarter-inch steel.

  Ouch, Larsson thought. Glad I thought of the shields and didn't just rely on the ones on the engines themselves.

  The nearest of the turtle boats was well under a thousand yards away now; they were coming on in a blunt wedge, slowly, no more than walking pace— probably because they'd diverted the power of the pedals to the weapons rather than the propellers. The open hatch snapped down again as he watched, and he turned to one of the engines mounted on the railway cars.

  "They're probably too far away for our bolts to penetrate yet," he said. "Let's see how good their sealing is. Number Three, let 'em have it."

  The catapult crew nodded, and two of them used a scissorslike clamp to raise a big ceramic sphere into the metal throwing cup. Its coarse clay surface had an oily, glistening sheen to it, and the sharp petroleum stink of the gooey stuff oozing through the thick pottery was pungent enough to carry several yards. Firebombs of this size were kept empty, and filled from steel barrels only a few minutes before action. Ken repressed an impulse to step back; there were fifteen gallons of the stuff in there, and sometimes—not often, but every once in a while—the container shattered when the machine cut loose, with very nasty consequences. If you made the pottery thick enough that that never happened, you cut down on the payload too much and sometimes it didn't break at all when it struck at the other end, if it hit a soft target like dirt or brush.

  The aimer sat in a chair behind the sloping shield of the war-engine, peering through a telescopic sight and working traverse and elevation wheels with her hands. The aimer's chair and the throwing-groove and arms rose and turned smoothly, with a sound of oiled metal moving on metal.

  "Range five hundred," she said crisply. "Ready—"

  One of the crew lit a wad of tow on the end of a stick and touched it to the napalm bomb. Blue-and-yellow flames licked over the surface of the porous clay, and wisps of black smoke began to rise. The rest jumped down, and a hose team stood by.

  "Ready!"

  "Shoot!"

  The aimer squeezed a trigger. The machine's throwing arms snapped forward with a hard, flat brack! sound and thudded into the rubber-padded stop plates. The clay globe snapped out, trailing more smoke as the wind of its passage fanned the flames. Ken leveled his binoculars eagerly; the shot had the indefinable sweet feeling of a mechanism working perfectly …

  Crack!

  The sound came sharp and clear despite the distance; a gout of flame enveloped the turtle-boat, the tulip-shaped orange blossom rising from its curved steel deck. A cheer went up from the crews on the railroad bridge. It died to a grumbling, cursing mutter as the war-boat slid forward through the smoke, the fire running down its sloping carapace to burn on the surface of the water, hurried along by water gushing from a valve near the view-slits of the bridge.

  Ken tried again to imagine what it had been like inside, in the dim hot sweat-and-oil stench of the interior, the slamming impact making the frame groan, the sudden roaring through the thin plates, the heat and the sharp acrid stink sucked in through the ventilators—and all the while having nothing to see but the back of the man ahead of you, knowing you could burn and drown at the same time at any instant.

  Serves 'em right, he thought grimly. If they want to be safe, let them stay home.

  Which wasn't quite fair—probably most of them had no say in the matter, unless they wanted to face the Lord Protector's men who wore black hoods, or provide the tiger-and-bear-feeding halftime spectacle at the next tournament.

  * * * *

  On the other hand, I'm not feeling like being fair right now. Aloud: "Three, Five, Seven—rapid fire, and concentrate on the lead boat! Fry the fascist sons of bitches!"

  As a student rebel in the sixties, he'd made Molotov cocktails.

  "OK, now we get serious," Havel said, as the Protectorate's host began its advance.

  Lessee. Spearmen on the far west wing, call it three hundred of 'em, opposite our A-listers, then crossbows, more spears, more crossbows, and so forth, until they end up with spearmen again on the far east end next the river. The heavy horse behind the center, but not far enough behind. They'll overlap us on the west unless we do something. So …

  "Signal, artillery open fire, priority target enemy cavalry," Havel said. It was long range, but when you hit someone, you hit them where it hurt.

  The trumpets called. Seconds later a ripple of tunngg … tunnggg … tunnggg repeated four times over sounded from his left as the batteries fired. The basic principles were those of Roman or Greek ballistae, but the throwing arms of the catapults were carefully shaped steel forgings rather than wood, and the power was provided by the suspensions of eighteen-wheeler trucks, not twisted skeins of ox sinew. The javelin-sized arrows they threw were visible, but only just—they traveled at half the speed of a musket ball. The six-pound spheres of cast iron that followed were almost as swift.

  Havel tracked them with his field glasses. One ball struck short, bounced and slammed rolling into a file of spearmen. The first three went down in a whiplash tangle as the high-velocity iron snapped their legs out from beneath them; then it bounced high again and came down on an upraised shield. He couldn't hear the shield's frame and the arm beneath it crack, but he could imagine it. The screaming mouths were just open circles through the binoculars, but he could imagine that as well. Two more struck at waist height; a broken spear flipped fifteen feet into the air, pinwheeling and flashing sunlight as the edges twirled.

  The big darts lofted entirely over the block of infantry—heads twisted to follow them as they flashed by about ten feet up. The cavalry formation behind them exploded outward as four of the heavy javelins came slanting in, punching through armor as if it were cloth, pinning men to horses and horses to the ground.

  "Good work, Sarducci!" Havel called, and waved at the man. At the enemy he muttered the names of the engines as they fired:

  "Hi there, you bastards! Knock-knock, guess who! you sons of bitches! Eat this! motherfuckers! And Many Happy Returns, Alexi!" he said, pounding his right fist into the palm of his left hand with every greeting.

  He got a thumbs up from Sarducci; seconds later the tunnngg … tunnngg … began again. The teams behind the fieldpieces were pumping like madmen, sending water through the armored hoses to the cylinders under the firing grooves—compressed gases didn't work the way they had before the Change, but hydraulics s
till functioned the way the textbooks said they should. Water filled the cylinders and pushed out the pistons; the piston rods rammed at the steel cables that linked the throwing arms, bending them back against the ton-weights of resistance in the springs until they engaged the trigger mechanisms. The crew chiefs snapped their lanyards to the release levers, and the aimers on seats on the left trail spun the elevation and traverse wheels, while the loaders slapped fresh darts and roundshot home, ready for launching.

  Havel turned the field glasses back to the enemy lancers. They were trotting back out of range, some of them shaking their fists at him as they went. He laughed aloud, and Signe gave him a quizzical look.

  "I can tell what they're saying," he said. "Something like no fair throwing things! And then why don't you fight like a gentleman, you peasant!"

  His laughter grew louder, and her corn-colored eyebrows rose further over the sky blue eyes as the troops took it up and it spread down the line, a torrent of jeering mockery directed at the backs of the Protectorate's lancers. He shook his head and went on: "What's really funny is that some of them actually mean it!"

  After a moment she chuckled as well. Then: "Oh-oh," she said. "Here comes their artillery."

  Havel nodded. "Yup, right on schedule. That's heavy stuff for mobile field use—looks like light siege pieces, really. Six horse teams; six, eight, ten of them all up. Tsk—they should have more and it should be as easy to move as ours. They've certainly got the engineers and the materials. Arminger's a … what did the Society people call guys who had a hair up their ass about getting historical details just right instead of mixing and matching?"

  "Period Nazi," Signe supplied.

  "Yeah, his fixations are getting the better of him again. William the Conqueror of Normandy didn't use field artillery, so Norman the Magnifolent of Portland doesn't like doing it either. Signaler—cavalry engage enemy engines with firing circle."