Dies the Fire

by S. M. Stirling

  Juniper sighed and put her hands to her forehead. The threat of starvation had kept this collection of strong-willed individualists moving in one direction. Now she was going to have to earn her corn.

  She looked around the table and caught several pairs of eyes—Dennis, Sally, Alex and his three friends. Let's see, how many votes … Sam wasn't comfortable enough with them to take much part yet, but she had hopes there, which was for the best.

  Because some weren't going to like what she would suggest they do now that the most of the potatoes were planted, but the will of the Lady and Lord were plain.

  At least to me it is, she thought.

  She reached back and picked up her fiddle and bow from a table beside the couch. The first long strong note brought silence.

  Then she improvised; a pompous boom for Chuck's voice, a piercing commanding shrill for Judy's, short anxious tremulos for Diana and Andy, a querulous rising inflection for Dennis's Californian accent …

  Chuck was the first to snort. After a minute they were all laughing, and she wove the discords into a tune, one they all knew; the rollicking "Stable Boy," and moving on to "Harvest Season" and "Beltane Morning."

  People missed music, with a craving almost as strong as that for food; there just wasn't any, in the Changed world, unless you made it yourself or persuaded someone in the room with you to do it. Soon everyone was singing. Eilir's head poked down through the stairs to the loft; she couldn't hear the tunes, but she loved watching the audience. Smaller heads peeked around hers.

  "Out in the wood

  There's a band of small faeries

  If you walk unwary at night;

  They're laughing and drinking

  And soon you'll be thinking—"

  When she stopped the tension had gone out of the gathering. Everyone was ready to move the furniture aside and unroll their bedding; Andy and Diana were sleeping in the loft with the kids tonight, and they went up the stairs with a candle in its holder.

  And tomorrow I'll tell them about doing some outreach.

  Chapter

  Twelve

  "Spear, spear, where's the goddamned spear!" Havel shouted, setting himself for a last-second dodge.

  There wasn't time to be afraid. He didn't bother to draw his knife—with a bear this size, you might as well try to tickle it to death—or pay attention to the shouts and the wild neighing of the hobbled horses or to Signe dashing away.

  He did when she came back seconds later, tossing the shaft of the spear in his direction. Grabbing it and whirling back to the bear gave him just enough time to set himself, with a fractional second more to be thankful he and Will had spent some time reshafting the blade firmly.

  The animal would have run right over him if it hadn't paused, but bears liked to attack from an upright rear. It towered over him like a wall of cinnamon-black fur as he crouched with the spear poised; it was roaring, clawed paws raised like organic trip-hammers to smash his spine and spatter his brains across the ground.

  He knew how to kill bears. You shot them from a hundred and fifty yards with a scope-sighted rifle firing hollow-point game rounds …

  "Yaaaaaah!" he shouted, lunging.

  The impact was like ramming a pole into an oncoming truck, and it jarred every bone and tendon in his arms and shoulders and back. He shouted again, this time in alarm, as the onrushing weight drove him backward, his heels skidding in the damp grass of the meadow. The foot-long knife blade sank into the bear's middle, and part of the spear shaft after it, and the growling roar of pain and anger that followed it sprayed into his face along with saliva and a fan of blood.

  The butt of the spear slid along the ground until it jammed in a root, carrying him with it like a bundle. Then the bear screamed again as the weapon was driven deeper by its own strength and weight. It twisted frantically, trying to escape the thing that hurt it, and Havel clung with all his strength as the animal pounded him against the ground in its writhing.

  Then his elbow hit ground with a jarring thump that made his hand open by sheer reflex as white agony flowed up the arm and down into his torso. The bear twisted again, and Havel felt himself thrown through the air with no more effort than a child's doll. Long training made him relax as he flew, curling loosely.

  Whump.

  The hard, hard ground still knocked the air out of his lungs and rattled his brain; he fought to breathe and collect his wits.

  "Jesus!" he wheezed, scrambling backward on his butt and pushing himself with his heels.

  The bear was heading for him. More slowly—the spear shaft stuck out of its middle at an angle; he'd seen before with the plump bandit that the shape of the knife blade made it difficult to withdraw once it was deep in a body. Now the long shaft kept catching on the ground and making the animal wince and stumble, and every time that happened the sharp steel was waggled about in the bear's body cavity.

  But it moved, at a hunching, lurching amble, and it was coming straight for him. Blood poured from the wound in its belly, but it didn't spout with the pulsing arterial torrent that would have killed it quickly.

  And he couldn't get up fast enough.

  He tried and fell over backward; his left leg wasn't working properly yet, where he'd landed on it. The bear hunched closer, snarling in a basso growl, spit and blood drooling from its long yellow teeth. Havel fumbled at his belt for his puukko, snarling back at the approaching animal with an expression not much different from its own.

  If I die, you die with me, brother bear—and my people will eat you and wear your hide!

  Then it stopped and reared. Eric was there, shouting and jabbing at its face with his naginata.

  Nothing wrong with that boy's guts, Havel thought. His common sense, yes; guts, no.

  The sharp curved edge of the blade scored along the bear's shoulder. That angered it enough that it ignored everything else and swatted; it also gave Havel time to push himself backward far enough that he could lever himself erect with his hands and good leg. The other one didn't seem broken, or the joints torn; it just hurt like fire to put his weight on it. That didn't mean he wouldn't, but he'd be slowed.

  "No!" he shouted, hobbling forward as he saw Eric coming back for more. "Don't get close! Just back off and let it die!"

  Signe was back again too, gone no longer than it took her to run and fetch the bow. She had an arrow to the string, but her brother was far too close for her to fire. And he was too far gone in a fine fighting rage to listen, as well; he stepped in, chopping at the bear's paw as it flashed at him. Perhaps that was his way of showing the strain of the terrible things he'd seen and done, or maybe it was just teenage-male hormone poisoning turning off his brain's risk-management centers.

  The pole gave the machete blow terrible leverage, and so did the bear's own strength. The scream it gave when the steel split its paw to the wrist was the loudest yet, and the speed of its other paw's sledgehammer blow turned the whole of that forelimb into a blur. It landed on the haft of the naginata rather than the man who held it, and the tough hickory snapped like a straw. That and the glancing touch of the paw was enough to send Eric's two hundred pounds spinning away like a top; he hit the ground ten feet away and bounced. He moved, but he didn't get up; his arms and legs were making vague swimming motions.

  The moment he was clear Signe shot. The flat snap of the compound's bowstring sounded clear, and she was less than twenty feet away; the smack of the arrowhead into flesh was almost simultaneous. The eighty-pound hunting bow sent the arrow almost to its feathers under the bear's armpit. It shuddered, and the sound it made was as much a whimper as a growl, but it kept going—and straight towards Eric's fallen form.

  This time nothing but death was going to stop it. In the abstract, Havel sympathized: it was doing exactly what he'd do in its place, trying to die fighting and take someone with it. In the here and now, it was trying to kill someone Michael Havel had promised to protect.

  One of his people.

  "Christ Jesus save us from
heroes!" he snarled, and limped forward to seize the pole of the spear planted in the bear's gut.

  Several things happened very quickly then. The bear screamed and reared as he grabbed the ash wood and hauled sideways.

  Signe shot, twice, from only a few feet behind him and just to one side; two spots of bright yellow-and-green feathers blossomed against the bear's dark fur, one at the base of its throat and another just above the spear. Her sister was on his other side suddenly, panting—she must have run from as close as she could get her horse to come to the sound and smell of wounded bear. The string of Astrid's lighter bow snapped against her bracer, and an arrow sprouted from the bear's inner thigh.

  Havel twisted desperately at the spear, conscious of how his bruised leg slowed him—and how the spear had sunk deeper in the bear's body, putting him close to it.

  He saw Will Hutton running towards the animal from the rear, legs pounding in desperate haste, the double-bitted felling ax swinging up.

  And the bear's wounded paw flashed towards him. He threw himself backward, releasing the spear, just as the tips of the claws struck.

  * * * *

  When Havel came fully back to himself, he was chiefly conscious of a stabbing pain in his neck. Shortly after that he became aware that blood was pouring down his face, but he ignored that until he checked that he had movement in all his fingers and toes.

  Then, slowly, he put a hand to his face. Light came back when he pushed back a flap of skin that was hanging over his left eye; when he had it in place, he knew there was a bad cut running from the upper peak of his left cheekbone, then beside his eye on that side—close enough to the corner to give him a cold chill—and across his forehead and into his scalp. Like all scalp wounds, it ran blood like a butchered pig hung up to drain, but he scrubbed his other arm across his eyes and the world cleared up.

  The bear lay about seven feet away, very thoroughly dead; only a vet with time to do a dissection could have told what killed it, between the spear and the arrows and the ax that stood up like an italicized exclamation mark from its back, with the heavy blade buried in its spine. Blood still trickled; he couldn't have been out for more than a few seconds.

  Will Hutton knelt on one side of him, Signe on the other. He let his head fall back; which was a mistake, since lights swam across his eyes.

  "Eric?" he croaked.

  "Fine," Hutton said, resting his hand on Havel's and moving it gently away from the younger man's wound. "Banged up. Bump on his head . this of yours goin' to need some stitches, though. Angelica, she kin handle it."

  "Don't forget the aspirin," Havel croaked, and Hutton laughed.

  "You are one tough mother, got to admit it," he said. "Cojones too. Ain't never seen a man move so fast."

  "Ask the bear," Havel said. He rolled his eyes towards Signe. "Good shooting."

  "It was closer than a target and bigger," she said. "Are you all right?"

  "Hell, no," he said honestly. "This hurts like grim death and I'm seeing double and I'd puke if I had the strength. I'll live."

  She blinked at him, frowning, then trotted away. He looked past her at Astrid, who stood beside her father and Hutton's wife and daughter, wringing her hands on her bow as if she were trying to strangle it.

  "Come here," he said to her. "I can't shout—if I try, my head will fall off."

  She obeyed, kneeling close to him. Signe came back on the other side with a bucket of water and a cloth; she had pills with her too, and he took them as Hutton raised his head with one strong hand. Then she began to sponge at the blood on his face. It felt so good he was reluctant to tell her to stop, but there was something to be done first.

  "OK, kid," he said to Astrid, touching Signe's wrist gently for an instant to halt her.

  He found he could move his arms, but only if he concentrated on it and didn't try anything difficult.

  "Did that bear just light out after you, or did you shoot it unprovoked?" he asked the younger girl.

  Astrid blinked, looked away, and then looked back. "I shot it," she whispered.

  "What did I say?"

  "Shoot anything but bears and cougars, Mike."

  "Right." He put out his hand; she didn't resist when he took her bow. "This was a toy, back before things Changed. It isn't anymore. It's a weapon. You don't play with weapons. Understood?"

  She nodded.

  "And that was a dangerous wild animal. You don't play with them either. Understood?"

  "Y-yes, Mike."

  He went on: "Two inches closer and that thing would have ripped my face off. You understand that? And your brother and sister could have been dead too, easy. You understand that?"

  She was crying now, but she nodded again.

  "OK, you don't touch this again until I think you can use it responsibly. You want to be treated like a grown-up, you gotta earn it. A hunter doesn't take stupid chances, or shoot at all unless it's a clean kill."

  He handed the bow to Hutton. "And don't let her on a horse again until I say so, either."

  He let his head fall back. Signe leaned over him, sponging at the blood again; vaguely, he could see Angelica Hut-ton coming up with some sort of kit under her arm. The pills couldn't have been aspirin, either, or the concussion was worse than he'd thought, because he was beginning to drift away.

  "This ain't fucking Middle-earth," he said—or thought he did.

  Blackness.

  * * * *

  Will Hutton looked at the electric grinding wheel, pursing his lips. It was normally bolted to a long plank; he put it on sawhorses and secured it with C-clamps when he had that kind of work to do. The motor was useless, of course, and he'd disassembled it, leaving the wheel and the driveshaft. It might not work, but he didn't have anything better to do right now; they couldn't move until Havel recovered.

  "Needs a flywheel," Ken Larsson said, beating his gloved hands together—the early mornings were still chilly, and his breath showed in white puffs as he squinted at the remains of the machine.

  For a high-and-mighty executive, he makes a pretty good hands-on man, the Texan thought.

  "Right," he said. "Truck wheel, I think. Drill and mount through the hub?"

  "Yup. And the fan belt from your semi would do for the drive—we take the wrecked bicycle—"

  His face went blank for a moment; the bicycle had been ridden by one of the bandits who killed his wife. He swallowed, while Will looked aside to allow him a moment's privacy.

  "—mount it backward—fan belt around the rear wheel once we get the tire off. Then someone pedals, and you got yourself a grinding wheel."

  They both turned and looked at Eric Larsson where he sat throwing stones into the Lochsa. Not far away Astrid and Luanne were working on the bearskin staked out on the ground, scraping the last shreds of fat and flesh off the inside. Eric, on the other hand, had been starting to brood.

  "Boy needs exercise," Ken said.

  * * * *

  When Havel woke again, he felt completely drained; not in much pain—an itching stab along his scalp wound, a throb in his neck, bruises elsewhere—but weak as a kitten. Something smelled wonderful close by, though.

  Gradually the picture came clear. He was lying on a bed of pine boughs, with a canvas cover over him, rigged like a tent to the side of the Huttons' RV. Blankets and the mylar sleeping bag and a low fire in a round bed of stones with a sheet-metal reflector kept things comfortably warm— warmer than he would have been inside the vehicle, with its heaters not working.

  Not far away was a horse with its head down, pawing through the long dead grass for the first of this year's shoots, and then eating the natural hay when it couldn't find any.

  There was a pot over the fire, and the good smell came from there.

  "What's that?" he said—croaked, rather. "Christ Jesus, I'm dry."

  Signe Larsson was not far away, silently practicing knife strokes against a small lodgepole; she wore clean jeans, her high-tops, and a big man's shirt of checked flannel over a T-s
hirt of her own, one with a whale and a circle-slash over it. When she heard his voice she stabbed the knife into the wood with a backhand flick and hurried over to him.

  "About two days, right?" he said, reaching up to touch his forehead.

  The long wound across forehead and scalp had been stitched in a small neat style, but he'd have a spectacular scar.

  Just like Tarzan 's, he thought to himself.

  He'd been a Burroughs freak as a kid, and had spent much of the early eighties pretending the forests of the Upper Peninsula were the ape-man's jungles. He'd enjoyed the Mars books almost as much, although it put him off a bit when he realized that since Dejah Thoris laid eggs, John Carter had essentially been doing the nasty with a giant bug.

  "How did you know it was two days?" Signe said, dipping a cup into a bucket that stood on a table nearby. "You came to a few times before, but you were sort of semiconscious."

  "Don't remember a thing since Mr. Bear turned out to be Not Our Friend," he said, and then a long wordless ahhhhhh! as he drank the cold river water. "Thanks … no, I could tell by the state of your bruises. They're a flattering shade of yellow-green; mine are fresher. What smells so good?"

  A woman was singing in Spanish in the middle distance, a husky soprano, a voice with smoke and musk and heat in it—Angelica Hutton, at a guess. He could hear the words now and then:

  "Mi amor, mi corazon—"

  Signe grinned; she did have a set of colors that would have done a frog proud, though the swellings had gone down, revealing the straight-nosed regularity of her face.

  "It's bear broth," she said. "We're making jerky out of most of it, but the soup's good. Want some? Meal and revenge in one."

  He nodded, too tired to speak much. She brought over a cup and put an arm under his shoulders to lift him so that he could sip. The contact was remarkably pleasant, in an abstract sort of way. The broth itself was delicious, mostly clear, with a little finely minced meat in it and some dried onion. He could feel the rich warmth of it spreading through his middle, and his eyelids grew heavy again.