Dies the Fire (34 page)

“They never do! Listen to the voice of experience. That's a major reason I ended up divorced lo these many years ago. I wanted to talk about why the relationship wasn't working. As far as
he
was concerned, if he had to talk about it . . . well, that meant it wasn't working. I insisted. He walked.”

“Weird.”

“Men
are
weird. Very nice in a way, sometimes, but weird. Mike . . . might actually be smart enough to play hard to get. Or he may think you're just too young for him. A strange man in some ways, very private.”

“That doesn't make me very happy,” Signe said, quirking a smile. “I most definitely want
him.
”

“I don't think Mike's personal energy field is calibrated for
happy.
Being around him will never be dull, and it could be a lot of fun, but simple happiness isn't in the contract. Be warned.” She hesitated. “Besides . . . it hasn't been very long since, ah, the incident. Are you sure you want to, mmm, get involved with anyone quite yet?”

Signe flushed. “I wasn't raped!” she snapped bluntly.

“Your call. Just a warning—if you
do
start radiating make-a-move signals and Mike does
try something,
it's not going to be a cuddle and kiss on the cheek he has in mind, you know. Not that he wouldn't take no for an answer, but he might be
really
pissed off if you got cold feet.”

They both looked up at a sudden sound; Pamela blew out her cheeks in relief at the interruption. Astrid was on watch a hundred yards from the road, where a little rise gave her a view of the ground falling away to northward, mounted and with an arrow on the string of her bow. She reached down and pulled a brass bugle from her saddlebow and did her best to make it sing; what she got was a flat, sourly off-key blatting hoot instead, but it carried.

Everyone around the little caravan stopped what they were doing and grabbed for a weapon—spear, bow, ax, sword, long knife.

Then they relaxed when she repeated the call twice, paused and blew twice again, and spurred in towards the wagons.

“The all-clear,” Pamela said. She slid her working sword back into the scabbard hanging from the wagon, and picked up the practice weapon she'd dropped.

“Looks like Josh's got a message from the boss,” Signe replied, putting up a hand to shade her eyes.

 

 

 

“Good afternoon,” Michael Havel said as his party drew up to the locals.

“Howdy,” a squat weathered man in a billed tractor cap said.

The young Indian in buckskins beside him had a bar of white paint across his face at eye level and carried a short lance with a row of feathers on the shaft; he looked along the line of the Bearkillers and pursed his lips. “Did we interrupt a meeting of your diversity committee?” he said. “Everything except Indians, hey?”

“Unless you count me,” Havel said equably.

The Nez Perce gave him a shrewd look. “Yeah, you might have some 'skin in you.”

“One Anishinabe grandma, but that doesn't make me an Indian. Anyway, we're just passing through—heading for Lewiston, and then points further west.”

Several of the locals glanced at each other.
Aha,
Havel thought.
Something they're not telling me about between here and Lewiston, or
in
Lewiston. Or both. Have to find out about that.
Aloud he went on: “Who's in charge here?”

Both the farmer in the cap and the Indian in paint started to speak. There was a pause, and the older man spoke carefully: “Sort of a committee. I'm Howard Reines, mayor around here, sort of; this is Eddie Running Horse from the reservation council. That's the highest level of government around here still working.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Havel said, shaking hands with both. “Mike Havel. We're—”

“The Bearkillers!” Astrid said proudly.

Hope they didn't see me wince,
Havel thought.

Eddie Running Horse seemed impressed, though, and nobody else actually laughed.

Astrid had managed to accumulate a small library of fantasies with lurid covers, scavenged from small-town libraries and abandoned road-stop book racks. They were full of pretentious pseudobarbarian and pseudomedieval names and titles with which she played an unceasing game of pin-the-absurd-name-on-the-donkey.

Some of the books even had useful hints about how to do things, as well as quests for the Magic Identity Bracelet of the Apocalypse, and a lot of the outfit came to hear Astrid read aloud from them evenings around the fires. He had himself, now and then; there really wasn't much else to do after dark but sleep and sharpen your blades or make the night hideous with attempts at song.

He went on aloud: “Yeah, the Bearkillers . . . long story. I'm boss of the outfit, pretty well.”

Reines nodded, face neutral. “How long do you folks plan on staying? We've already moved a lot of our townsfolk and some refugees from Lewiston out to the farms and ranches west of us and they're about full up—”

Running Horse cut in: “Frankly, we just don't have much to spare for road people, after taking care of our own.”

Havel's eyes narrowed; neither leader had sounded very enthusiastic in his welcome, but Running Horse's vibes were downright hostile.

“Good thing we aren't planning on staying, then,” Havel said aloud. “We would like to trade a bit for supplies. Food, useful tools, livestock—but we're not asking for a handout.”

He didn't put a hand to his sword hilt, but he
did
let the metal chape at the end of the scabbard clank against his stirrup iron.

The locals cast careful looks at the Bearkillers. Apart from Will's chain-mail armor, they all wore the steerhide jackets, and they all had bows, shields and helmets; everyone except Astrid had a sword.

That put them a substantial step up on the group facing them, and
they
probably had the best the Kooskia area could offer. Bowie knives, hunting knives, a machete, hatchets, two bows, improvised spears, ordinary chopping axes lightened for one-handed use by grinding down the pell at the rear of the blade. A few had plywood shields. Nobody had any body armor to speak of unless you counted a leather jacket with some lengths of fine chain sewn to it, and they almost certainly hadn't had the concentrated training his group had—which showed.

They're probably figuring—rightly—that it wouldn't pay to let such well-armed people get too hungry,
Havel thought cynically.
Another couple of months, and they'd be begging us to stay to help get in the harvest and plant for next year. Probably vagrancy laws will follow after that in short order and any wanderers who don't look too formidable will end up hoeing beans whether they like it or not. Right now, looking formidable will put them in a mood to dicker.

Aloud he went on: “We've got trade goods. Some of you might be interested in taking a look. Also we've got some skilled people—a really good vet, some horse trainers.”

The welcoming committee fell in with them and rode back to the caravan; some of them looked slightly apprehensive, despite their advantage in numbers—Pamela had everyone armed as they went about their chores, and the dozen A-list fighters in camp standing ready. Not obtrusively, threateningly ready, but she wasn't trying to hide it, either.

Havel made polite introductions; everyone dismounted, and politely declined refreshments—that
was
polite these days. Food wasn't something to take for granted. Since getting out of the woods and into farming country they'd managed to keep themselves in tortillas and beef, especially since Ken Larsson rigged up a portable horse-powered flour mill, but he was glad they'd also managed to find a crateful of multivitamin pills; scurvy might have been a problem otherwise.

It would be a while before anyone had much in the way of fresh vegetables, and canned ones were jealously guarded. Deficiency diseases snuck up on you, and they also weakened resistance to infection.

One of the wagons held their handicraft projects on the move, and some of the products. Havel led the two leaders over to it and showed them what was on offer: lance- and spearheads, arrowheads and arrows, shields, fighting-knives and swords. Those included the first ones Will had run up; with Pamela's help he'd refined the second model considerably, adding a subtle curve to the grip and a forefinger-hold, and making the blades lighter and better balanced. The originals were still superior to anything the locals had, from the way they handled them and throttled exclamations.

“Now,
these
we can really use,” Reines said, eagerly fingering a little pamphlet Pamela had done up on basic sword work, with illustrations by Signe and Astrid. “We do have a fair amount of livestock we could spare, seeing's how we aren't shipping the yearlings out and we can't cut as much hay—”

“Wait a minute, Howie,” Running Horse said. “The council's got first say on disposing of assets like cattle and horses for the duration of the emergency. Everyone agreed on that.”

“We need weapons, and this stuff looks a hell of a lot better than anything we've been able to cobble up. When we weren't busy staying alive,” Reines said. “We especially need weapons with the folks disappearing on the road up past Kamiah.”

“Drifters,” Running Horse said, making a dismissive gesture. “Road people. Who keeps track?”

Well, that's fucking tactful of you,
Havel thought, keeping silent and watching the argument.

“The Smiths disappeared out of their goddamned
house,
” Reines snapped. “
And
we've had stock rustled.”

“Whoa,” Havel said softly, raising a hand. “You folks probably don't want to quarrel in front of outsiders.”

That shut both of them up, but Reines cast him a look before going on smoothly, the anger leached out of his voice: “That's true. And why don't you folks move in closer? After we have the doc check you over, but you look cleaner than most folks around here, come to that. You could come to dinner at my place. . . .”

Havel and Reines nodded imperceptibly at each other. Running Horse scowled.

 

 

 

Michael Havel looked into the fire, lost in thought—though also conscious of a vague longing for a cup of coffee. They'd camped in an empty space on the outskirts of town for the past week rather than take the offer of vacant houses; it was bad for morale to scatter too much and unsafe, too. In fact, he'd had more than one inquiry about joining up, after the Bearkillers had put on a bit of a dance and BBQ and a fencing display, to repay the do Reines had gotten the town to lay on—once Mr. Running Horse was out of sight. Evidently life in post-Change Kooskia was pretty dull.

Seen that before, too,
he thought.
Withdrawal symptoms—no TV, no radio, no Internet, no movies, no nothing except the same faces and voices. Even small-town folks were used to being part of a bigger world than you can reach in a day's walk. The way we keep moving makes it a little easier to take. Although I do admire the way Reines has kept things together.

He must have murmured that aloud. Ken nodded from the log he sat on over on the other side of the campfire, stirring the embers with a stick.

“He wasn't mayor before the Change—some sort of real-estate man with a sideline in cattle. Everyone was rather vague on how exactly he'd acquired the office, did you notice?”

Havel shrugged. “He seemed popular enough. And he's doing a good job.”

“Uh-huh. We've seen how important a good leader is. The places that just went to pieces, it was where there wasn't anyone to get people moving together in a hurry.”

“Some places it just seems to happen on its own, sort of,” Havel observed.

Ken snorted: “Yeah, we've seen places like that—all one of them. A committee is the only form of mammalian life with more than four legs and no brain.”

“Interesting what he had to say,” Havel said. “We could use that livestock and gear; we'd have somewhere near enough horses, and enough stock we'd be independent for meat. The problem is, how do we smoke out his problem? Whoever it is, they've obviously got the smarts to hide when a posse comes looking.”

Ken shrugged. “Well, from Reines's point of view, that's the beauty of the deal. We don't get paid unless we get results, he doesn't risk any of his own people, they don't have to neglect vital work, and if it turns out OK he not only gets a solved problem and some powerful political mojo, but he gives Running Horse and
his
backers a thumb in the eye. I sort of suspect that they've been blocking any real effort to track down the perpetrators just so he
won't
get any of that.”

“You're a cynic,” Havel said.

“I've been on the fringes of politics for a long time,” Ken said. “You have to be, if you're in business on the scale I am . . . was. I prefer to think of myself as a realist. On the whole, I'd put my money on Howie Reines—he's got a lot more experience than Running Horse. Of course, there may be a lot more brainpower on the tribal council. I suspect that our young friend in the feather bonnet is convinced that the Great Spirit's struck down the white-eyes' technology so the tribes can make a comeback. Which I admit is about as logical an explanation for the Change as any—though I'm sticking to the Alien Space Bats.”