Dies the Fire

by S. M. Stirling

  Then something hit her across the shoulders, sending her reeling forward into the press. Two Eaters grabbed at her buckler and dragged it down. Another hugged her sword arm, and a third raised a baseball bat in both hands—

  Thock!

  A broad arrowhead stuck out from the Eater's chest, barely to the left of the breastbone. Blood gouted from his mouth, and he had just enough time to took surprised before he collapsed, kicking.

  Behind him was a mounted giant with the head of a bear.

  Juniper had only the blurred glimpse; then she was too busy getting her right arm free from the momentarily slackened grip. She hadn't lost her sword—the sword Dennie's gentle brother had made for show and play and the beauty of it, before the Change.

  It was still the weapon of Rome's legions, the most dreadfully efficient tool of slaughter humankind had invented until Hiram Maxim's time. A short punching stab in the throat sent the Eater backward gobbling and clutching his throat.

  "Let me go!" she shouted, chopping at the other two as if she were jointing a chicken. "Let me go!"

  They did, running in squalling panic, grabbing at terrible slash-wounds, and then there were no more of their kind left within the space marked out with the three cars; none living, at least. Juniper gasped and leaned her fists on her knees as she tried to suck air in through a mouth gone paper-dry.

  All the rest of her people seemed to be on their feet too, with nothing worse than cuts and scrapes and bruises; she squeezed out a brief, heartfelt wordless thanks. Outside the Eaters were running about the graveled parking lot, squealing and screaming. Three mounted men loped their horses after them, shooting methodically at close range with short powerful recurve bows, turning their mounts as nimbly as rodeo cowboys.

  It's a headdress on top of a helmet, not a bear's head, Juniper thought. Gave me a start there!

  Animal-headed god-men were very much a part of her faith, but she hadn't expected to run into one in the light of common day. It was almost as frightening as the prospect he'd rescued her from, of grisly death and dreadful feasting.

  After a moment the cannibals gathered, clustering around a leader—one with a louder voice, at least. The three armored men dismounted, tied their horses to the chain-link fence, drew long swords. The round shields on their left arms bore a uniform mark, the stylized outline of a snarling bear's head, red on dark brown.

  The noon sun blazed on the edged metal of their swords, and the man with the bear helmet shouted: "You in there! The party's not over and the mosh pit is sort of crowded. Pitch in if you can!"

  The shout carried easily across the twenty yards, through the brabble of the Eaters' lunatic malice; a voice trained to carry, but not a musician's like hers—more of a crashing bark. Juniper looked with disgust at the blood on her blade and arm and side.

  "Let's go," she said. "Come on, Mackenzies!"

  The three strangers formed up with their leader as the point of a blunt wedge and charged in a pounding rush with the skirts of their mail hauberks flapping around their knees, armored from shin to helmet. Their great straight-bladed sabers went up in glittering menace.

  "Haakkaa paalle!" they shouted in unison; the words weren't English or any language she knew, but they prompted a flicker of memory. "Haakkaa paalle!"

  Then they struck the loose crowd of their foemen, and the mass seemed to explode in a spray of blood and screams and swords swinging in arcs that slung trails of red droplets yards into the air. Juniper gritted her teeth and made herself move forward with blade and buckler.

  The Eaters stood and fought—mostly, just died—for a brief moment, then spattered screaming across the parking lot and out into the fields around, running for the shelter of the woods. Steve and Vince retrieved their longbows and shot while any targets were still in range; Juniper stood shuddering and blinking as the tall strangers made sure of the enemy dead.

  Then there was no sound except their own panting and a series of quick are you all right queries. And the sickening knowledge that a single minute's delay would have seen them all dead and dismembered.

  "Oh, Goddess gentle and strong, I want to go home," Judy whispered, then straightened. "We ought to check out the buildings. There might be things that … need doing."

  "Damn right," one of the strangers said.

  Juniper looked around. She had been controlling the churning in her stomach by main force of will; the movement distracted her, and she swayed backward against a car, sliding sideways. The world swam, narrowing and graying at the edges, and her mouth filled with spit.

  Judy reached for her, but the stranger was quicker, holding her upright until she recovered a little. His grip was firm but not painful, although she could feel the remorseless strength in it, but she swallowed again at the sight and smell of the blood and matter that clotted the mail on the back of his leather gauntlet.

  "Easy," he said. "Your first sight of combat?"

  He held a water bottle to her lips. She filled her mouth and turned her head to spit, then drank.

  "Not … not quite," she said, looking around at the bodies.

  And every one of these a child of the Goddess and the God. Hard to remember that, but she must. May they find rest and peace in the Summerlands, and come to forgive themselves!

  Aloud she continued: "But nothing before the Change, and nothing since like … like this."

  He nodded and stepped back as he felt her strengthen; his friends came up behind him and followed his lead as he took off his helmet.

  Their eyes met. For an instant that stretched green gaze locked with gray; Juniper felt a sudden shock, like a bucket of cold water and a jolt of electricity and all the chakras— power points—of her body flaring at once. She could see very clearly; clearly enough to notice the sudden widening of his pupils as he stared at her with the same fierce focus.

  Then the moment passed, so quickly she wasn't sure if it had been more than her wooziness; it did blow the horror out of her for a while. Instead she was chiefly conscious of another reaction: My, but he's pretty.

  Almost beautiful, in a hard masculine way: square-chinned, with high cheekbones and short straight nose and slanted gray eyes, the long chiseled line of his jaw emphasized by the close-cropped black beard. Only a scar running across his forehead and up into the bowl-cut raven hair marred it.

  Oh, my, yes, Juniper thought, surprised she could notice at a moment like this; and even then she thought she caught a flicker of kindred interest on his face.

  Then: They're not giants, either.

  She'd had a confused impression that they were all huge men; but on second glance the leader, the one with the bear's head … let's mentally subtract all that gear … was tall but not towering, and not even thick-built; broad-shouldered and long-limbed, rather, narrow in the waist and hips. He moved easily under the weight of cloth and leather and metal, light and graceful as a leopard.

  The youngest was an inch or two over six feet, a fresh-faced freckled blond no more than twenty at the most, already heavy in the shoulders- and thick-armed. The other was about halfway between his two companions in build.

  "No disgrace to feel a bit woozy after something like this," the gray-eyed leader said. "I was, first time. You get used to it."

  "Goddess, I hope not," she said.

  He raised a brow at that—observant of him—and looked at the four Mackenzies, quickly taking note of their gear and the antlers-and-moon blazon on the breast of their jacks.

  "Well, your Goddess must have been looking after you; we've met bunches like this before and decided to pile in and help on general principles. Ah … I'm—"

  The blond boy grinned. "Lord Bear, war chief of the Bearkillers! At least according to my sister, Princess Astrid Legolamb."

  The older man—about my age, give or take a year— grimaced at him, and the other one smiled.

  "I'm Mike Havel." He jerked a thumb at the youngster. "This is Eric Larsson, and his family are all humorists—in their own opinion, if nobody else
's. The sensible one here is named Josh Sanders."

  The other man had brown hair and blue eyes and a narrow planes-and-angles Scots-Irish face that reminded Juniper of her own father; he pulled off a gauntlet and extended his hand.

  "Pleased to meet you, ma'am," he said. "Mike is the bossman of our outfit, right enough."

  Eric went on: "The rest of us are a long ways east of here; we're scouting," and the other two scowled at him.

  She noticed with amusement how Vince and Steve bristled just a little as she made her own introductions; and her trained ears pricked up at the strangers' accents. The mix was odd, and she could usually tag someone within a hundred miles of their birthplace.

  The blond boy, Eric, he's a native Oregonian, she thought. From west of the Cascades, at that, like me, but probably raised in metro Portland rather than the valley. Hmmm . is that just a wee tinge of New England? Mr. Sanders . Midwestern flat vowels for sure; but there's something harsher there too, hill-country Southern; born not far north of the Ohio and on a farm, or some little crossroads town. Our Lord Bear is interesting; Midwestern too, I'd say, but from a lot farther north. And there's just a hint underneath of something else, not English. Singsong, but very faint.

  "Your friend was right," Havel said. "We should check out those buildings—together, and cautiously."

  "You think there might be more Eaters?" she said.

  "Eaters? That's what you call them around here? Possibly, or more likely prisoners, alive so they'd stay fresh. Like I said, we've done this before."

  He looked down at one of the dead; his expression was clinical, and the other two looked matter-of-fact as well; the youngest was a little green around the gills, but only slightly.

  Havel and Sanders were calmer still; not exhilarated or excited either, their breath slowing gradually from the brutal exertion of fighting in armor far heavier than hers, but calm. The bodies seemed to disturb them no more than the blood that clotted on their mail, the way a farmer would ignore muck-covered boots when he shoveled out a stall.

  Hard men, she thought, with a tinge of distaste and then a rush of shame; they'd saved her life and that of her friends at the risk of their own, doing the deeds for nothing but the deeds' own sake.

  Not wicked, I don't think they're bad, but hard. This Havel, he probably was that way before the Change, too.

  She'd always trusted her first impressions of people, and had rarely been disappointed. Havel would make an excellent friend and a very bad enemy; provoke or threaten him or his and you could look for a sudden frightful blow, without warning, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky.

  "A lot of this bunch look sick, too," he said. "I've noticed that before as well."

  Judy spoke: "They were probably undercooking their … food," she said. "You can safely eat fish or even beef rare, most times. Pork you have to cook thoroughly. Human flesh … "

  "Right. Josh, cover us. You two"—he nodded to Vince and Steve—"keep an arrow on the string and an eye out behind us. One of you stay at the entrance when we go in, and watch the horses. Don't want them creeping back to corncob us. Ms. Mackenzie, if you and Ms. Barstow could back me and Eric up directly?"

  They all moved towards the BBQ place; that was where the smoke came from, trickling out of a sheet-metal chimney. The big picture window was unbroken; the lower half was frosted as well. Nobody felt like trapping themselves in the revolving door.

  Havel looked at Eric; they nodded without words, laid their swords down carefully, and picked up a big motorcycle between them; then they pivoted and threw it—six feet and through the glass. The crash and tinkle sounded loud across the corpse-littered parking lot.

  Juniper noted that the two young Mackenzies looked impressed; she snorted slightly to herself.

  A horse is even stronger, but those two don't get that me-am-awestruck-junior-dog look when one hauls a ton of logs out of the woods. Men!

  Havel looked through the shattered glass, blade and shield up. Then he turned his head aside, grimacing slightly.

  "Christ Jesus!" he said, spat, then turned back to whatever was within.

  Judy looked as well, then turned and began vomiting. When Juniper stepped forward in alarm, Judy waved her back as she spat to clear her mouth. Mike Havel held up a palm to stop his own men likewise.

  "No point in letting this inside your heads unless you have to."

  "They were … cooking," Judy said. "They had a—" Another heave took her. "I wish I hadn't seen it."

  Havel nodded, sheathed his sword and drew the long broad-bladed knife he wore across the small of his back.

  "I'll handle this," he said with calm, flat authority.

  He went inside; they could hear wood scraping and crunching, and then his voice, speaking loudly as if to someone deaf or ill:

  "Do … you … want … to … die?"

  A rasping mumble, suddenly cut off; Juniper made the Invoking sign, as did Judy—and to her surprise, so did the two young men. Then Havel called an all-clear, and they stepped cautiously into the big dining area; the stench was stunning, even to hoses grown far less squeamish since the Change. Even with the front window smashed in it was dim, which she was thankful for, and she let her eyes slide a little out of focus as well. Havel had spread some of the filthy crusted tablecloths over … things … lying beside the big fireplace hearth that stood in the center of the room, radiating heat from a bed of coals.

  That had a copper hood, and firewood heaped nearby; the Eaters had been burning bits of planking and broken-up furniture … complete with the varnishes and stains in the wood.

  No wonder they were all mad! From the chemicals, as well as guilt and horror.

  The table beside it was scored with cuts, soaked with old blood and littered with knives, saws and choppers, a moving coat of flies buzzing around them.

  "I … don't think there's anything here," Juniper said, lifting her eyes and focusing on the please wait to be seated sign still standing near the door. "If they're holding prisoners, it'll be out back. We ought to shout and then listen first; it might save poking around."

  They did; in the ringing silence that followed she heard a muffled calling and pounding. She led the way back through the kitchen—empty, save for a few boxes of spices and salt and a severed blackened hand kicked into a corner and lying with its fingers clawed up as if reaching for something.

  She moved on grimly, down a near-lightless corridor, to a metal door that had probably been a cold-store for meats. Even in the dimness she could see long scratches in the paint on the walls, as if someone had tried to cling to the smooth surface while being dragged. Voices and thumping came from behind the metal door, muffled by the insulation.

  "We've come to get you out safe!" she called."Hold on!"

  The voices redoubled, but the door looked strong, and the padlock was a heavy model with a stainless-steel loop as thick as her middle finger. Her heart revolted at the thought of rooting through the clothes of the dead Eaters outside, or among the grotesque filth in the room around the hearth of abominations; both would be dangerous. And the one with the key might have been among those who fled, anyway. She began to look around for a tool.

  "Just a second," Mike Havel spoke, surprising her. "Josh, check the packtrain. I don't think any of those maniacs would stop running that close, but no need to take a chance. And get some torches ready, we'll want to burn the place down when we've checked things over. Ms. Mackenzie, I'll be right back."

  They squeezed past the knot of people in the corridor; Havel was back in a few seconds. Oddly, he was carrying a rifle.

  "Thought I saw this on a rack in the main room," he said. "Over by the cash register."

  "But … that won't work," Juniper said.

  Havel grinned, a flash of white teeth in the darkness. "It won't shoot, but it'll work fine as a pry bar," he said. "An ax or a sledge would be awkward, the way the door jamb is right against the end wall. This is a Schultz & Larsen 68DL hunting rifle, of all unlikely things, always wan
ted one myself. Hell of a thing to do with a fine piece of gunsmith's work … Stand back, please."

  He slid the barrel through the padlock between hasp and body, tested the position once or twice, set his hands on the underside of the stock and put a booted foot against the further wall. That made the skirt of his hauberk and gambeson fall back; he wore copper-riveted Levi's beneath, and the incongruity of it made her blink for a second. Then he took a deep breath, emptied his lungs, filled them again …

  "Issssaaaaa!" he shouted, teeth bared in a rictus of effort.

  The lock parted and flew apart with a sharp ping of steel striking concrete. Havel threw the gun aside too, panting; the barrel had a perceptible kink in it now.

  "Show-off," the blond youth said, but he smiled as he did.

  Juniper ignored them, pulling the latch open and then working the handle of the door; she had to dodge as the heavy portal swung open.

  A woman with matted hair and a face covered in bruises and crusted scabs ran out, bounced off Havel's armored form with a shriek, then stopped and stared at Juniper's face. The dim light in the corridor must seem bright to her; the inside of the cold-storage locker would have been stygian-black. And Juniper's molten-copper hair was hard to miss.

  "Juney?" the prisoner said. "Juney?"

  "You know me—Carmen?" Her eyes went to the other captives. "Muriel? Jack?"

  The slight dark woman threw her arms around the High Priestess of the Coven of the Singing Moon; then the others were around her as well.

  "Juney, they wuh, wuh, were going to—"

  "Shhh, I know. You're safe now. We cast the Circle and made the rite, and She brought us to you."

  Chapter

  Eighteen

  "Oh, ladies bring your flowers fair

  Fresh as the morning dew

  In virgin white and through the night

  I will make sweet love to you;

  Your petals soon grow soft and fall