Dies the Fire (82 page)

The torches outlined a round-shouldered rectangle with Highway 20 running through it from east to west. There were buildings on either side of the roadway, and the circular cone of the motte halfway between the corner and the gatehouse. Obligingly, the Protector's men had a big iron basket full of pinewood burning on top of the tower.

“Everybody satisfied they know where they're going?” Mike said, waiting for the nods.

Aylward's had an edge in it:
We
should
have practiced this more, chum.

Havel's reply:
We should have, but we couldn't. Pray hard.

“There's a nice updraft over the lip of this cliff and we've got better than fifteen hundred feet of height on the target, so there's not going to be any problem with that. Come at the tower from the west, with a bit of height to spare. If you miss, just keep going—we've got people out there in the ground between our lines and the creek. And do not—I say this twice—do
not
launch until I'm down and give the signal.”

He caught Pamela's eye, and Aylward's; they could be counted on to restrain any adolescent foolishness. Eric was grinning, despite all that had happened since the Change . . .

I
told
him he'd be a dangerous man once he got some experience, and Christ Jesus, I was right!
Havel thought.

It wasn't that his brother-in-law had a taste for blood, but he
did
like to fight.

Signe and Pam were ready, both looking tautly calm.
Good. They both know this is serious business.
Aylward's calm was relaxed; for a moment Havel felt a bitter envy of Juniper Mackenzie.
God, I'd give a couple of fingers for someone with his skills
and
no ambition to be numero uno!

It was time.

T
wo of the ranchers brought Michael Havel his wing. They helped him into the special quick-release harness as well; nobody could have made it before the Change, for fear of lawsuits.

Well, the world may have collapsed into death and darkness, but at least we don't have lawyers and nervous Nellies trying to encase us in bubble-wrap,
he thought.
Hurrah, not.

He gave a slight chuckle at the thought, and found them staring at him in awe as he tested his grip on the steering bar of the hang-glider and the bundle of rope lashed to the frame above his head.

It's not courage, boys, just realism,
he thought sardonically.
It's a little late for the ‘Christ Jesus, this is crazy, run away, run away!' reaction.

One of them handed him a pair of goggles, and he slipped them down over his eyes.

Then: “Remember the guide-lights. See y'all soon!”

Four steps forward and
leap
. . .

Wind pouring up the slope caught the black Dacron above him and jerked him skyward; the lights below dwindled, and the air grew yet more chill, making his cheeks burn as his body swung level in the harness. A great exultation flowed through him:
Flying again, by God!

In a way, this was even more fun than piloting light aircraft. Less power, but you were one with the air and its currents, like a fish in water. Pull back on the control bar and tilt yourself to the right; the nose came down, the right wingtip tilted up, and you went swooping across the night like an owl. You weren't operating a machine; you were
flying,
as close to being a bird as a human being could get, barring magic. Once you'd learned how, you didn't have to think of controlling the wing any more than you did of directing your feet.

You just went where you wanted to go, down the mountainside and over the tall pines, out into the valley . . .

The oval of the castle lay eastward, with the great beacon fire atop the tower on the motte. He banked, leaning and pushing leftward, inertia pressing him against the harness as the hang-glider swerved. And beyond it, beyond Echo Creek, six more big fires; set by Ken Larsson, in a line that gave a precise bearing if you kept them strung like beads behind the beacon.

And don't forget altitude,
he told himself, lips peeling back from teeth despite the cold wind in his face.

Too high, and you overshoot and the mission fails. Too low, and you bugsplat on the side of the tower or land right in the middle of the bailey.

Wind cuffed at him, pushing him away from the line of lights. The darkness rushed past . . . he imagined a line through the night, a line drawn straight towards the beacon fire and tried to keep to it; like a landing approach at night, but without instruments.

Suddenly it was
close.
The beacon fire wasn't a flickering point of light in the darkness any more; it was a pool of light, then a mass of flames spitting sparks upward, with the black lines of the basket outlined against the ruddy embers . . . and slightly too low. He was headed for the side of the tower, the rows of narrow arrowslits.

Up.
Push at the bar, bring the nose of the triangular wing up . . . just a little, just a little, feel how she turned speed into height but don't slow down too much, or you'll stall and
drop
. . .

There was a checkerboard of machicolations around the top of the tower, unpleasantly like a gap-toothed grin with square teeth. They loomed up at him as he approached, swelling faster and faster.

Mind empty, he felt for the currents of air. They turned rough and choppy—heat rising from torches and fires and hearths bouncing him up and down as he sliced the air over the castle; it made things a lot harder, since he couldn't judge his angle of attack as well. Fabric cracked and thuttered along the rear edge of the hang-glider.

Nobody looking up,
he thought, with some corner of his consciousness that wasn't in use processing the information that flowed in through balance and the skin on the palms of his hands.
No point in looking up, not anymore . . .

And the moment was
now.

A sentry turned at the last moment; he could see the man's mouth and eyes turn to great O's of horrified surprise. Havel pushed forward on the control bar with all his strength as the edge of the crenellations passed beneath him. Now he
did
want the wing to flare nose-up and stall, turning from a lifting surface into a giant air-brake catching at the wind.

It jerked Havel's body forward with savage force as it stopped in midair, as if he'd run into a solid wall. He let that force pivot him in the harness, booted feet snapping forward as he swung like a trapeze artist. Both heels struck the guard in the face with an impact that knocked Havel's teeth together so hard that he tasted blood despite the tight clench of his jaw. Stars exploded before his eyes; pain lanced through his body at the contact, and then again when he fell to the rough timbers buttocks first and four feet straight down.

The guard flew backward and landed with his head folded back between his shoulders, so freshly dead that his heels drummed on the wood in a series of galvanic twitches. Havel scrabbled at the release of the harness and flipped himself to his feet while he took an instantaneous inventory; bruises, but nothing torn or broken or too badly wrenched, and the joints worked. The wing fell back behind him, tenting up on the central pole that held the bracing wires.

The other guard turned at the sound of boots meeting face and the jangling thump of an armored body falling limp as death. He stood goggling at the black-clad man from nowhere for a crucial three seconds, then brought his shield up and drew his spear back for a thrust.

Havel drew the
puukko
from its sheath in a backhand grip with his thumb on the pommel, the thick reverse of the blade lying along his forearm. By then he was charging in a swift silent rush, and the spearhead jabbed out to meet him. He ducked under it with a motion as precise as a matador's, and the edged steel hissed past his left ear; he felt something cold touch him there, too thin and sharp to be pain, and a hot trickle down his neck.

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.

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.

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.