Dies the Fire

by S. M. Stirling

  Then he was in past the point, the spear useless. His left hand clamped on the edge of the kite-shaped shield, down below the curve, and he wrenched with all his strength— pushing up and to his right, drawing the man's left arm across his body. In the same fluid motion Havel's right hand punched to the left, and the blade of the puukko snapped out from his fist, shaving-sharp and with all the force of arm and shoulder behind the cut.

  The spearman had been about to shout, mouth wide. Now nothing came out of it but the sound of a loud cough, with a fine spray of blood. Havel threw an arm around him and dragged his body to the wall, taking care to prop him over the crenellations—his throat was sliced through the windpipe, and there was a lot of blood in a human body. He didn't want a huge pool making things slippery, and perhaps dripping through to the guardroom below. Nobody would notice it running down the timbers of the motte tower.

  Probably. Not in time to make any difference.

  For a moment he stood, panting; sweat soaked his clothes despite the night chill, running down his flanks and dripping from his chin mixed with blood. Then he shed his goggles, dragged an arm across his face and let out a long breath. The brief burst of violent effort had taken as much out of him as half a day's marching, and he suppressed a bubble of half-hysterical laughter.

  I threw sixes again and it's got to stop sometime! But not right now, please.

  Instead he wiped the knife on the dead man's sleeve and re-sheathed it, and unslung the targe from his back. The night was quiet; the crackle of the fire was the loudest sound, and underneath it ran the soughing of the wind, and an occasional challenge-and-response from sentries on the walls.

  Christ Jesus but I'd rather be back in my tent, making out. I discover the delights of soon-to-be-married life, and what do I get? Sent back to doing goddamned Black Side ops! And right now I'm remembering very vividly why I didn't reenlist.

  A whistle sounded from the rear left—southwestern— corner of the tower top; a wooden stand there held a section of three-inch pipe, with a cone to listen or speak into—an old-fashioned speaking tube, the sort they'd used on ships before telephones. Havel trotted over, pulled out the rubber cork at the base of the cone and whistled back. A voice floated up, tinny and distorted but understandable enough.

  "Dinkerman, what the fuck are you two lazy SOBs doing up there? Dancing?"

  "We're doing zip, Sergeant Harvey," Havel called back.

  He kept his mouth away from the opening, and blessed the patriotic hooker who'd flatbacked her way into a thorough knowledge of the fort's routine. Men heard what they expected to hear, and saw that way too. If you were sitting on the only way up a tower most of a year after the day the aircraft fell, you didn't expect to have someone drop in from the sky and replace your sentries …

  "Except we're fighting off enemy paratroopers," he went on. "That keeps us awake."

  "Ha fucking ha ha, Dinkerman. You'd fucking better keep awake," the voice warned. "It's seventy-five strokes with the blacksnake if I catch you napping."

  Really vigorous zero-tolerance policy, Havel thought. I was always in favor of discipline, but flogging? This is ridiculous.

  The round target let him signal, by waving it in front of the fire; it would be visible to the others back on the mountainside, and to the men hidden out on the flat prairie behind the creek too. Then he examined the basket that held the fire; it had a solid concave bottom, hinged on one side and with a release catch on the other, presumably for cleaning and removing ash in the daytime.

  One more cheer for you, Ellie Strang, he thought. I'm going to see you get a retirement fund out of this, God damn me if I don't.

  The rest of the tower top was a flat square thirty feet by thirty, bare save for a keg of water, a slop bucket, and racks of javelins and piles of stones just right for throwing down on anyone trying to get up. The only equipment was a little portable crane, probably used for hauling up firewood; that was on the eastern side. The floor felt solid beneath his boots; the intel was that it was two sets of twelve-by-twelve timbers laid at right angles to each other with a couple of inches of asphalt and roofing shingle in between, the whole held together with massive bolts. The trapdoor was in the center, a slab of the same square timbers, strapped with sheet metal on top and bottom.

  There were strong steel bars that slid across it into loops set in the equally massive floor. Havel grinned in the fire-lit night as he pulled them through and dropped in the locking pins. The tower had been designed for defense from the bottom up, each floor a fortress on its own if the one below was taken. Hence the hinges were on this side, and the trapdoor opened upward; or didn't open, with the bars locked home. The story below was only ten feet from floor to ceiling, and its trapdoor wasn't in line with this one.

  Good luck to you trying to batter it open when you twig to what's happened, he thought. You'd have to use drills and cutting tools, it'd take hours.

  The hang glider came apart easily; he bundled it off to one side. Then there was nothing to do but check the layout; so far their informants had been right all down the line. He looked over the outer, eastern side. The tower face was sheer to the ground; its walls were yard-thick interlocking timbers, smoothly covered with quarter-inch sheet metal in ten-by-ten squares spiked to the wood and then welded at the edges to make a homogenous slab.

  Well, Ken was right. Throwing incendiaries at the surface wouldn't work, even if we could get within range. But …

  The mound the tower stood on was narrow and steep, sloping right down into a dry moat filled with barbed wire; a staircase went down the inner side to the bailey. Eastward a raised walkway connected the tower with the fighting platform behind the outer palisade; to the right that ran right to the gatehouse.

  Not too many men on the wall.

  No point; if the Protector's CO here had them well drilled, they could turn out of their barracks and pack it full in far less time than an assault force would need to get going.

  But …

  His ears caught a flutter of cloven air. He turned, back against the crenellations, mouth firmed to a thin line. Signe was scheduled to come in next. She was also supposed to be a better hang glider than he was; that might be true, but he was certain she hadn't had as much time in the air … or experience at judging distances in the dark, with life for a forfeit if you were wrong. He pulled out one more piece of equipment; a Ping-Pong paddle with one side painted luminescent white.

  His heart tried to hammer as he waved it back and forth with the bright side westward, but he seized control by forcing his breath into regularity—slow, steady and deep. Tension unlocked, and he waited with his hands ready, knees bent and weight forward on the balls of his feet. His eyes were dazzled by looking at the fire, and the torches below; the black wing and black-clad flier were invisible until the last moment …

  "Too high!" he barked, throwing out his hands and waving the paddle downward. "Too high, damnit, Christ Jesus, girl, too high!"

  The wing cut across the stars overhead, a wedge of deeper blackness. Signe seemed to realize her mistake at the last moment, and did what Havel had done: flared the nose upright to let the wing brake itself against the air. She'd cut it far too close, though: it was above him—and the eastern edge of the tower—when it jerked to a near-halt against the air and started to slide downward.

  Havel hopped backward, onto the top of one of the crenellations, one foot braced on the arm of the cargo crane. His hand caught something, clamped hard on a guy wire; it would have cut his hand to the bone, like piano wire through a cheese, save for the tough leather of his glove. The weight tried to snatch him forward off the wall, would have if he hadn't had the crane under his foot for leverage. He threw himself backward instead, and it pivoted inward like a weight on the end of a rope. The half-seen length of Signe's body came down half on and half off the wall, with a startled oofff as the edge drove the wind out of her.

  Havel released the wingtip, and she started to slide backward; he leapt and grabbed, a
black blur in the darkness, and his hands slapped down on the control bar. He heaved again, feeling the muscles of his shoulders crackle with the grunting strain, heedless of the way she knocked against the parapet; the alternative was falling sixty feet straight down into a moat full of sharp angle iron and barbed wire.

  "You all right?" he asked.

  "No," she wheezed, one hand on her stomach and the other rubbing her knee. "But I'll do."

  "That you will," he said, grinning relief, and helped her out of her harness, stripping her section of rope loose from the frame.

  By then it was time; after they saw his signal from the tower top the others were supposed to launch at four-minute intervals. He and Signe spread out to the eastern corners of the tower, waving their paddles with the light side westward. This time it was Aylward, and he flared his wing neatly right in the middle of the flat space. He shed his equipment with businesslike speed, then pulled out his longbow and snapped the halves together; the bottom half of the riser was a metal-lined hollow, and the top its mirror image.

  "Next," Havel muttered, as the Englishman strung his weapon.

  That was Pamela; she came in so low that for a heart-stopping instant he thought she was going to ram the tower's western wall.

  "Not quite!" Signe said beside him, with a gasp of relief.

  Instead she skimmed it, so close that a corner of the control bar tapped against the corner of a crenellation; the wing went pinwheeling across the surface of the tower, while she threw her hands in front of her face. Despite that there was a bleeding graze across cheek and nose when she rose.

  Havel gave her a nod as she came to her feet and collapsed the wing, hauling it aside to clear the landing area.

  "One more and we're safe … on top of the tower of an enemy castle," she said.

  "Yeah," he replied dryly.

  He did a quick check; they all had their tools ready, and a bandolier of rope over a shoulder. The speaking-tube whistled again. Havel pulled out the plug.

  "Dinkerman, why the hell have you locked the trapdoor?" Sergeant Harvey barked. "Get it open, now!"

  "Can't do that, sergeant," Havel said regretfully. "The enemy paratroopers are landing more men."

  "You make me look bad in front of the baron and I'll have your fucking balls for this, Dinkerman!" Harvey shrieked. "And that's a goddamned promise!"

  Ooops, Havel thought, replacing the plug in midtirade. Surprise inspection coming. Well, unless I misread the Protector's little toy army completely, Sergeant Harvey is going to do everything he can to get that hatch open before he pushes it up the chain of command—probably afraid of ol' Blacksnake himself.

  He grinned like a shark. That was the problem with a zero-fault policy; people got desperate to cover their asses, rather than get the job done. The Protector was just the type to assume warriors could only be disciplined by terror, too.

  But what, O Protector, do you call men who can be easily controlled by fear? he asked sardonically.

  Signe's shout of alarm brought him wheeling around. Eric's hang glider was coming in …

  "Too high!" someone shouted.

  This time it was really too high; fifteen or twenty feet too high, even with the steep dive he'd started when he realized the mistake.

  "Wave him on!" Havel said.

  They did, with blasphemous additions from Havel and Aylward; the glider was still at least ten feet above the level of the crenellations when it crossed the eastern side of the tower. Havel caught a glimpse of Eric's face, wide-eyed and teeth bared.

  "No, no, just pass on and clear the wall!" Havel shouted, knowing exactly what was going through that adrenaline-saturated teenage-male mind.

  The shout was probably futile and possibly dangerous, if Sergeant Harvey was listening at one of the arrow slits below. Eric tried to bank and turn instead, and for that he was too low. Any turn loose enough not to stall would bring him around below the level of the tower's top; he saw that, and tried to turn more tightly instead—more tightly than the hang glider's speed and lift could take. For a long instant the black shape hung with its left wingpoint down; then it fell off and fluttered groundward like a huge leaf falling in autumn. Then it struck, vanishing in the blackness to the left of the bridge that spanned the motte's protective ditch.

  Signe stifled a scream as she watched her brother fall. Havel nodded respect as she choked it back, and again as Eric augured in silently.

  "That's torn it," he said grimly. "Let's go—get that cable down!"

  A heave and a kick sent the piled firewood toppling; it was mostly pine, and nicely dry. With the tip of his sword he flicked at the release catch on the fire basket, skipping backward as a torrent of ash and embers and burning wood came flooding out.

  Stay warm, Sergeant Harvey, he thought.

  Behind him he could hear a chunk sound, then a whirr as the cable on the crane paid*out and down. As he turned, Aylward had swung the crane out—that put the cable six feet out from the wall—and taken stance beside it, one foot up on a crenellation, an arrow nocked, his quiver over his shoulder with the cap open, and the spare bundle of arrows leaning against the parapet ready to his hand.

  "Go!" Havel said.

  Pam nodded, leaned out, grabbed the cable and went down it with her shins and boots locked around it in good rappelling form—all that rock climbing hadn't gone to waste. He followed, stepping off into space, grabbing the cable and locking it between hands and feet. It was smooth woven wire, three-quarter-inch, capable of bearing a dozen tons and well greased. He clamped hard, felt heat on the insteps of his feet and palms of his hands as friction heated boots and gloves. As he slid-fell through the darkness, there was one wash of light after another. Narrow slivers of light—lanterns coming on behind the firing slits of the tower. Then he let go and fell the last eight feet, landing crouched and drawing his sword with a hiss of metal on leather.

  Pam's sword was already out. The walkway they'd landed on was twelve feet across, and the door into the tower was about the same width and height. It had already swung partly open—outwards—and he squinted against the wash of lantern light from within. Men crowded forward, half-armed, confused.

  The Bearkillers' swordmistress danced. Her targe beat aside a spearhead, and then the backsword flicked out in a blurring thrust. There was a gurgling scream, a moment of whirling chaos as a man staggered with blood spurting from a severed jugular; a louder scream as she pierced a thigh beneath a scale-mail shirt, ripping the point free with a twist. Havel stepped in, swerved aside from a clumsy spear thrust, grabbed the wood behind the metal and jerked forward. The wielder came with the weapon, running face-first into the punching brass guard of Havel's sword with a wet crunch that jarred up his arm and back with a gruesome finality.The impact kicked the man's body back into the arms of his comrades.

  That left three dying men in the entrance, blocking the others with their thrashing and spreading confusion with their screams. Havel and Pamela set their shoulders to the door and ran it closed in stamping unison, like football forwards at a training bar, desperate with haste. Someone would think to get a crossbow eventually …

  Booom, as it rammed home.

  Pamela was already down on one knee, knocking home three wedges with a wooden mallet and then sticking the handle through loops at their rear to give them each six twists—Ken Larsson had designed them to screw open and lock rear-facing tines into the wood, and Springs had a functioning machine-shop running off horse-cranked belts.

  Havel was faintly conscious of boots hitting the walkway behind him, a shout, the clash of steel.

  There were two firing slits on either side of the doorway, and only one of him. He'd just have to be quick …

  His sword went point-down in the wood beneath his feet. The aerosol can came out instead, and his lighter in his left hand. A savage smile, despite the need of the moment: he'd gotten in trouble for doing this at school, too, but it had impressed Shirley to no end.

  This can was much larger and
its contents a lot more volatile.

  The mist sprayed across the flame, and turned to flame itself—a four-foot gout of it, through the slit and into the eyes and face of the crossbowman within, then two more to set the edges aflame. A bolt whipped out from the other slit; he leapt across, repeated the trick, heard a scream within just as the can hissed dry.

  "Eric's alive!" Signe called, as Pamela and he whirled and snatched up their blades.

  Havel spared a glance that way. There was more light— the fire on the tower top was brighter as the timbers of the platform caught, lanterns from the upper stories were being brought to the firing slits, and there was a growing blaze around the ground-level slits he'd torched.

  That made the black shape of the hang glider in the moat clear enough, and the form writhing out from beneath it. Two of the sharp-pointed angle irons that braced the wire filling the moat pierced the cloth, but none had speared into Eric Larsson. The face raised to the light was still a mask of blood; it had gone into the barbed wire at speed with only his arms and hands to shelter it … though the goggles had probably saved his eyes.

  But the wire saved his life, too, Havel knew—the springy mass of it had acted like a pile of mattresses to cushion the impact.

  "Get him out," he said. "Don't get caught up in that stuff!"

  Signe nodded, lifted the coil of rope from her shoulder and hooked the grapnel over the railing of the walkway. Then she went over it backward, rappelling down as they had on the cable.

  "Slight glitch in the plan," Havel said.

  Pamela and he exchanged a glance, then stepped past the grapnel. There was another ten yards of walkway beyond that, then the broad, well-braced fighting platform inside the castle's palisade. Just across from that joining was one of the throwing engines, a metal shape hulking under its tarpaulin; the platform extended into a circle around it, and their intel said it could be quickly traversed three-hundred-sixty degrees.