Dies the Fire

by S. M. Stirling

  "Oh. Shit."

  The buzzards were circling, but as they watched one slanted downward.

  "I think the killing's been taken care of," Havel said. "I also don't think the locals were looking very hard for the reason people were disappearing. Or maybe whoever did it was rushed this time. Slow and careful, people. If I was one of this bunch, I'd leave an ambush on my back trail. I don't expect them to, but it could happen."

  He dropped the knotted reins on the saddle horn and slipped an arrow through the cutout in the riser of his bow—Waters's first really successful model. The horse picked its way obediently upslope with rocks clattering under its hooves; he kept balance without much thought, his gaze on the great bare slopes about them.

  What they sought was in a narrow ravine that dead-ended not far ahead. The carrion birds hopped about, a flapping squawking carpet over flesh roughly covered with' piled rocks. The long skinny necks struck downward through the gaps, and there were shreds on their beaks as they came upright to look at the intruders. Then they exploded skyward in a storm of black wings as the humans came near.

  Havel grimaced, and murmured words from an old song he'd heard once:

  "Loud and cruel were the ravens' cries

  As they feasted on the field."

  If anyone was watching who really knew what they were doing, the buzzards and crows taking to the air would be a giveaway; he'd just have to hope they didn't know. The pedicab lay on its side, a wheel smashed into a bent tangle; getting it over these slopes had taken a lot of effort. A few meagre bundles of clothing and possessions lay opened and scattered about, looters' leavings.

  Then: "There's things we'd better check. Let's get them uncovered."

  The corpses hadn't had time to stink much, but the work was grim as they tumbled rocks aside. Eric made a retching sound; for real, this time.

  "Butchered" was a term you heard a lot in talk about killing people; he'd seen casualties from shellfire who really looked that way, back in the Corps.

  This was the first time it had been literally true. There were four bodies in the ravine; they'd all been gutted, and had the major cuts—thighs, upper arms, ribs—roughly hacked free and removed. He forced himself to note details; whoever did it hadn't dressed out many carcasses.

  "Yeah," Havel said, feeling a little queasy himself. "I think we can see why people would be disappearing."

  "Why?" Eric burst out. "This is ranching country— there's food!"

  Havel shook his head. "Not right around here this time of year. Not if you don't know how to find it; I'd have a tough time living off the country within easy walking distance of the road, and someone from a town, someone who thinks half a mile is too far to walk … "

  Pamela nodded. "I'd have problems living off the land here myself, and I do—did—a lot of wilderness hiking."

  "So the only animal that's big and easy to catch right after the Change would be … guess what? Once you'd started, you wouldn't want to be found."

  Eric was piling the rocks back on. "Because people would kill you," he said fiercely.

  Havel nodded, face and voice calm: "Which is exactly what we're going to do," he said. "This bunch have read themselves out of the human race. There are things you're just not entitled to do, even to survive."

  Eric reached for his reins. Havel put out a hand to stop him.

  "This area's too steep and rocky for horses. They'd make us slow, and give us away, and pin us down if we got into a fight. I hate leaving them, but the A-list can pick them up— we'll be leaving plenty of sign."

  The horses were nervous at the smell of blood, snorting and stamping; they ran a rope between two rocks for a picket line, and spilled the oats and alfalfa pellets from their saddlebags on the ground. Then Havel did a slow three-sixty scan of their surroundings, ending with his finger pointing northwest.

  "Everyone take a long drink of water before we start," he said. "They're heading that way, and it's not misdirection; that's their base."

  He suited action to words and then slung his quiver over his back, stooping to make the first of a series of arrow-signs with small rocks to show their direction.

  "Eric, you're point." Because you rustle and clank less than either of us. It's not stealth armor. "Follow the blood trail. Remember what I told you."

  "Yeah, look ahead at the tracks, not at your toes," Eric said, with a flicker of a smile. "Look up and around every three paces. Careful where you put your feet."

  "And take it slow; remember, we're watching for your signal. Pam, cover my left. I think they're"—he pointed again—"somewhere under that rimrock on the edge of the higher ground. They have to have water, and that's where it would be; and not more than a mile or two away, I think. Let's go."

  Eric went ahead, moving surprisingly lightly over the broken ground for a young man over six feet tall and currently carrying forty pounds of gear and weapons. Havel let him get twenty feet forward and then followed, placing his feet with care on the slope of dry sparse grass, low prickly bushes and scattered gravel, careful also not to let the skirts of the armor brush stone. The metallic chinking sound of that carried annoyingly well.

  The sun baked down; once they were past the dead-meat smell of the ravine, all he could smell was warm rock, sage, and his own sweat. That flowed until he felt everything inside the armor was oozing lukewarm diluted tallow, and his eyes stung fiercely as driblets squeezed out of the lining of his helmet; all the tighter spots chafed. It all seemed distant, beneath the crystalline awareness of the hunt … a hunt where both sides were prey as well.

  Eric flung up a hand, fist clenched. They all froze, and sank quietly to the ground; they were on the upslope of a steep ridge running northwest, and the sun was low enough to be a nuisance.

  Havel scanned the terrain and then made a hand signal to his left—follow me once I'm there.

  He pulled the scabbarded sword from the sling on his belt and ran it through loops beside his quiver, leaving the hilt above his left shoulder; that was less awkward when you were doing the creep-crawl-and-run thing.

  Then he went forward himself, from one cover to the next, and at the last mostly crawling, holding his bow across the crook of his elbows—it was a lot lighter than an assault rifle, but more cumbersome, and the string was delicate. More sweat ran into his face, and sharp rocks clawed at his elbows and knees. He had to move a lot more slowly, because there was no other way to make chain mail reasonably quiet.

  Well, there's one good thing about this damned iron shirt, he thought. Stuff doesn't gouge into you as hard while you're wearing it.

  He leopard-crawled into the slight depression where Eric lay and followed his eyes. There was a sentry on the ridgeline ahead of them. A useless sentry, standing right on the ridge out in plain sight of God and radar and leaning on a spear; that was reassuring, since it proved that the killers they sought really were amateurs.

  Unless they've got another one decently concealed, and that fool is maskirovka, Havel thought, unshipping his binoculars. After a moment: Nope. Unless I'm missing it completely, that's their one and only.

  Smoke drifted up, carrying the scent of roasting meat from the cannibals' camp. Havel spat to clear his mouth of a rush of cold gummy saliva, and made himself study the ground between the Bearkillers and the sentry. It was nearly a hundred yards …

  A faint scream came from beyond the ridge, then a series of them, shrill—a woman, or an adolescent, he thought. And the sentry was looking back over his shoulder at his own camp more than down at the approaches to it.

  "I'll take him," Havel whispered, handing Pamela the binoculars. "When he goes down, both of you join me pronto."

  Eric looked as if he wanted to volunteer, and Pamela looked at the younger Larsson with the wondering gaze you gave the insane; neither of them said anything aloud as Havel slipped out of the hollow and began to crawl upward.

  I'll do it because I'm the only one who's hunted men, he added silently to himself. It's not quite like being in a
fight. Killing in cold blood's a lot harder on the nerves.

  There was a secret to stalking, arid wasn't much different with deer or humans: Don't move when they're looking at you. Deer were harder, since their noses and ears were a lot keener, although they were a lot less likely to kill you.

  Back before the Change in a situation like this, back when he was in Force Recon, he'd have gotten close and used a sound-suppressed pistol, or even closer and used a knife and his hands. Now there was an alternative, if he could pull it off.

  Closer. Move and freeze, move and freeze—gently, gently, nothing abrupt.

  Don't stare. People can feel that. Use your peripheral vision. Think rock, think grass, think sage.

  He moved again, a swift steady crawl, completely controlled; his mind was a diamond point of concentration, but open also to every quiver of breeze and rustle of noise, as if he was the land he moved over. It wasn't really something you learned; you learned to stop not doing it. He'd gotten that in the woods from his father, and from Grandma's brothers and nephews, and from his own heart, without putting it into words until he went into the Corps and got his final polish from experts.

  All you had to do was stop the part of your mind that was always telling itself stories. Humans had been predators for a very long time, after all, long before language. Just be.

  The wind was from the target towards him; the nauseatingly good smell of meat roasting got strong, and then there was a strong whiff of sweat and human waste. It was too rank to be from one man; the campsite must be very bad to smell like this so far away, even compared to the squalor they'd often met after the Change.

  Closer, a hundred feet, and he was behind a boulder half buried in the thinly grassed rocky soil. The sun was lower, and he had to squint as he checked slowly around the edge of the lump of basalt.

  There.

  The cannibal sentry was still standing upright, silhouetted against the evening sun as clearly as a cardboard cutout. Havel flexed his fingers before taking up the bow again. A deep breath, and a quick trained effort of will to empty his mind as he exhaled.

  Now.

  Havel rose, feet stamping down into the archer's T. The powerful recurved bow came up, stave creaking as he drew to the ear—ninety pounds draw, horn and sinew and wood of the bois d'arc tree. The triangle-shaped arrowhead touched the outer edge of the riser, and he lowered his left hand until the head met the black outline a hundred feet above him. Instinct spoke and the string rolled off his fingers …

  Snap.

  The string slapped against his arm guard, and the arrow blurred out in a flickering shallow curve, the razor edges of the broadhead glinting as the slight curve in the fletching made the shaft twirl like a rifle bullet. Almost instantly came the flat heavy smack of steel striking flesh, a thick wet sound.

  Havel was moving as the shaft left the string; he could feel that the shot was a hit. He covered the hundred feet uphill in a near-silent panther rush, already close enough to see the sentry pivoting, eyes wide in a filthy, hairy sun-scorched face, blood coughing out between his bearded lips in a bright fan of arterial red. The gray goose-feather fletching danced behind his left shoulder blade, and the point and eighteen inches of the shaft dripped red from his chest.

  Havel dropped his bow and grabbed the man by the beard with his right hand, burying his left in the tangled hair at the base of his skull. A single wrenching twist, a sound like a green branch snapping, and the body jerked and went limp. He snatched up the spear—it was a sharpened shovel head on a pole—and lowered the body to the ground. Then he drew the arrow free with a single strong pull—he might need it—and hastily pushed the filthy carcass downslope behind him, wiping his gloved hands on the dirt.

  The lice and fleas would be looking for a new home, and he didn't feel hospitable.

  Eric and Pamela dodged the rolling body as they followed him and flattened themselves below the ridgeline. Havel stood in the sentry's place, leaning on the spear and studying the enemy camp. It wasn't far away; a little nook with a spring trickling down an almost-cliff and some cottonwoods—most cut down for firewood now. There weren't any tents, just arrangements of plastic sheeting and blankets propped on crudely tied branches, and some car seats and improvised bedrolls. A fair-sized fire was popping and flaring beneath pieces of meat on a grill that looked as if it came from a barbecue.

  Even from here the stink was enough to make him gag, and he could see the swarm of flies on bits of bodies and casual heaps of human shit—one of the cannibals was squatting as he watched.

  Nearby was the source of the screams. It was a half-bowshot away, but he could see that the woman—girl— was in her teens. An older man with shaggy mouse-colored hair and beard was trying to make her eat something, grabbing at her hair and pushing it towards her face; she fought with dreadful concentrated intensity, screaming when she broke free.

  That never took her far, because her ankles were tied with a cord that gave her only about a foot of movement, like a horse-hobble. Several of the watchers were crowing laughter, but the man shouted angrily as she managed to rake his face with her nails. He hit her seriously then, and turned to pull an ax out of a stump as she slumped to the ground.

  "Oh, I hate it when I have to be a hero," Havel said, tossing the spear aside. "And I'd have just as much chance of hitting her as him if I tried a shot at this distance. Here goes."

  He cupped his hands to his mouth. "Hey! You down there! Yes, you, asshole! The Bearkillers are here—here to kill you all!"

  The camp below froze like a tableau behind glass. Waxwork figures in some unimaginable future museum …

  Evolution of the post-Change cannibal band, he thought crazily.

  … then burst into activity like maggots writhing in dung.

  "Oooops," Havel said in a normal conversational tone as more and more of them appeared, crawling from their nests of cloth or from under the crude sunshades. "Guess they were more numerous than I thought."

  They milled about, blinking, scratching. The bushy-haired man finished pulling the ax out of the cottonwood stump and pointed up the slope with it.

  "Food!" he shouted. "More food—he came to us!"

  The others took it up in a second, a confused brabble of voices rising into a shrilling scream. They surged forward up the slope towards him, waving axes and tire irons and clubs and knives and a couple of improvised spears like the one he'd been holding.

  "Let them get fairly close," he went on, looking down at the white faces of his companions. "I don't see any distance weapons at all, but we can't afford to waste arrows. We're none of us what you'd call crack shots with these things yet."

  He picked up his bow and reached over his shoulder for a shaft.

  "And I really hope Will gets the rest of the A-list here quickly," he said.

  * * * *

  "Haakkaa paalle!"

  Havel shouted the ancient battle cry as he rose and lunged. The cannibal grinned with yellow teeth, throwing himself backward and rolling downhill in a ball with the haft of his ax held across his stomach.

  As he went, half a dozen others popped up from behind boulders or bushes and threw a barrage of rocks. Havel ducked down and lifted his shield, swearing, keeping his sword hilt and sword hand behind the targe as the fist-sized missiles banged and rattled painfully off his mail and shield and helmet. If he lost the use of his right arm they'd overrun the Bearkillers in minutes.

  "Yuk-hei-saa-saa!" Eric shouted behind him, from where he sat—a bone-bruise on the right leg left him unable to stand. "Ho la, Odhinn!"

  Gasping, Havel spared a second to grin at him. "Well, we've all got our traditions," he said. "Keep an eye out for—"

  The younger man's bow sounded, a flat snap through the clatter and shouting. A cannibal dropped her knife and fell, trying to drag herself off with the shaft through a thigh. The rest of the band ignored her in their hurry to dive for cover, which at least made it harder for them to throw rocks accurately. A hissing shout brought his h
ead around completely; just in time to see the tip of Pamela's backsword nick through the tip of a nose as three tried to rush her.

  That brought a squeal like a pig in a slaughter chute and panicked flight. The other cannibal attacking her dodged away with a shriek of terror as she repositioned in a spurt of dust and gravel, moving with terrifying speed and grace. The third ran into her targe and fell backward as if he'd rammed a brick wall; she killed him with a neat economical downward stab.

  "Watch your own side, goddamnit!" she shouted as she moved.

  It was good advice. A lump of stone glanced off Havel's helmet with a dull bongggg sound, and he whipped his gaze back to his section, shaking his head against the jarring impact. Cannibals were bobbing up from cover to throw and then down again, and the little party had—

  "How many arrows left?" he asked.

  "Six," Eric said.

  Couldn't tell he's hurting from the voice, Havel thought with approval. He really is shaping up good.

  "Make 'em count," he said. "There are a lot more of them than I thought."

  The rocks picked up again; the two mail-clad Bearkillers huddled back, protecting the more lightly armored Lars-son, moving their shields to catch as many of the heavy stones as they could. After a moment Eric shot; a miss this time, but a close one, and the enemy grew cautious.

  "Four left," Eric said.

  "I'm surprised they haven't run," Pamela said. "We must have killed or crippled more than a third of them."

  "Nowhere to go," Havel replied, keeping his eyes busy. "Wolves don't eat members of their pack who're injured. Men do, men and dogs, and I think literally here. Also that spring down there is probably the only water they know about."

  The rocks slowed for a moment. "And they're probably more than half mad by now," Pamela panted, ducking low. She took a quick sip of water and carefully recorked her canteen. "Wanting to die on some level."

  "Then they could obligingly try to slug it out toe-to-toe," Havel said, knocking a jagged four-pound lump of basalt out of the air with his shield, and feeling the weight all the way down his back. "We'd have killed them all if they'd kept on doing that."