Dies The Fire

Chapter Sixteen

"W hoa," Michael Havel said, lowering his binoculars. Then: "Someone's been a busy little bee."

The roadway along the south bank of the Columbia Gorge was blocked; cinderblock to chest height, making a retaining wall to hold the dirt and rocks heaped above, with a palisade that looked like it was made of utility poles atop the massive earthwork. Working parties were driving in long angle-iron fence-posts in a checkerboard pattern over the earth berm and fastening barbed wire to them.

Sunlight winked off spearheads along the palisade; in the center was a solid blockhouse-like structure, with a gate whose lower edge ran on truck wheels.

A tall flagpost rose from the blockhouse, and high above it floated a hot air balloon, tethered by a cable that stretched up in an arc like a mathematical diagram. As he watched a bright light flickered from the basket, a Morse-coded heliograph signal.

The rest hadn't changed, not the bones of the earth and its growth. It was hot down here near the Columbia even this early in the year, and a constant gusty wind made the horses stamp and toss their heads. Basalt cliffs reared southward, black or red where stands of pine hadn't hidden the rock with green; and beyond that loomed the cone of Mt. Hood, dreaming blue and white and perfect against heaven.

"Not much like the last time my family drove out the Banfield," Eric Larsson said.

Dry understatement hid an edge of nervousness; probably shock at seeing what the Change had done to something familiar.

"And he picked a pretty spot-most places the south-bank hills hide Mount Hood from the road."

"Most places the south-bank hills would overlook that berm and blockhouse," Havel said.

Closer were thickets of willow tender green with new growth, and the shimmer of black-cottonwood leaves, green above and silver below, trembling in the wind; beneath them were sheets of yellow bells, maroon-colored clusters of prairie stars, grass widows and blue penstemon.

The great river stretched lake-broad to their north, glimmering silver under the noonday sun, mostly empty all the way to the steep northern shore. It was quiet, save for the huge murmur of the water, birdsong, the distant sound of voices, oars and footfalls.

The river's mostly empty, he thought, turning his glasses that way.

There were sailboats on it, and what looked like cut-down yachts with wooden superstructures holding rowers pulling on great sweeps. Some of those were hauling barges, and other barges had been fitted with basic lug-sail rigs.

The older men's silence gnawed Eric's nerves, and he waved towards the wall and burst out: "Fuck, how did anyone get all this done so fast? There aren't any bulldozers or backhoes working! Even if this Protector guy started right away-"

Josh Sanders clicked his tongue against the top of his mouth. "Oh, you could do the berm, no problem. Material from that hill over there. Say a thousand people with hand tools and wheelbarrows; eight cubic yards a day each, that's no big deal; take you about a week, less if you used more labor andworked shifts around the clock. Put it on in layers, ram it down, repeat."

"It's not just a heap of dirt," Havel pointed out. "There's the cinderblock work, and the palisade, and the gate."

Josh nodded: "I couldn't say about the gate, but the retaining wall, that's easy, and the palisade? Just utility poles. Shiftfire, give me the materials, the tools, ten guys who know what they're doing and'a whole big bunch of people to do the gruntwork, and I could have put this up my own self in a couple-three days. You could bring the materials in on the railroad."

Can I pick them, or can I pick them? Havel thought proudly. That was the biggest part of leadership.

Eric was frowning. "But the railroad isn't working," he said.

Keep talking; you're helping me organize my thoughts. And that balloon is a good idea. I should have thought of that. We'll have to get one. Christ Jesus, hang gliders and sailplanes would still fly too, wouldn't they? Maybe I was a little premature, hanging up my wings.

"Sure, the railroad's working," the ex-Seabee said to Eric. "It's the locomotives aren't working, bro. You can pull a hell of a lot more on welded rail than you can on a road, with a horse or with men. Fifteen, twenty times as much. So you get some work gangs out levering the dead locos off to clear the tracks. Use a hand-cranked windlass for that, off a boat, maybe: "

"Even this time of year, you'd have a couple of big lines of grain hopper-cars between here and Portland," Havel put in. "Probably they hauled those in, then got the idea of using the rails long-term."

Josh nodded. "From the look of the dirt, that berm's just finished. Last couple of days. I'd put topsoil on and then turf, to keep it from melting away in the winter rains."

"Yeah," Havel said, then pointed as the wind fluttered a banner out over the gatehouse. It was black. He peered a little closer: black, with a red catpupiled eye in the center.

"That tells us something too," Havel said. "The folks back at Hood River weren't shitting us; this Protector guy really is a maniac. Loopy. He's not for real; he's playing games."

"Why?" Eric asked curiously, shifting in a creak of leather and chime of ringmail. "Astrid's always using stuff out of those books. So, I grant you she's a flake- a big-time, fresh- from- the- flakebox flake- but not a maniac."

"She uses the good-guy stuff, Eric," Havel said. "If I were running Portland and surroundings, I'd be using the Stars and Stripes-no matter how much of a dictator I was, and how much of a lie the flag was. You don't put up a sign that reads 'HEY, I'M EVIL! GEN-U-WINE SADISTIC LOONEY! REALLY, REALLY BAD!' Particularly not if you are evil."

"Why not?" Eric said curiously. "If you're a bad guy, that is."

"'Cause most people don't think that way, even if they are rotten. How many are going to stick with you when things go wrong, if you advertise you're a shit?"

"Hey, it's cool to be baaaad."

"Not the same thing." Havel grinned for an instant. "Hell, I'm bad, in that sense. This jerkoff s coming right out and saying he'll screw you over in a minute; guys like that have a short half-life. Maybe you can run a cocaine cartel that way, but not a country or an army-or if you do, the results are what a lieutenant I knew used to call suboptimal.

Probably the only reason he got any traction at all was that Portland was a complete madhouse right after the Change."

"He's a fruitloop with a lot of troops, right now," Josh said. "That makes me nervous, Mike. You see the heads over the gateway? Those look too fucking real for this ol' boy's taste."

"Well, we are here to find things out. If Mr. Me So Bad has a lock on the Willamette, our people need to know so we can pick another destination. And they did say he didn't usually molest travelers who toed his line. Let's go. And mouths shut, ears open. This isn't risk-free, either."

Havel rode in at an easy fast walk; there wasn't much traffic, mostly improvised wagons drawn by men, or people on foot-thin and frightened-looking and mostly very, very dirty. He wrinkled his nose; the three Bearkillers were fairly ripe in their armor and gambesons, but they tried to keep the bodies underneath as clean as possible.

The guards were another story; all equipped in scale-mail, and all looking reasonably well fed. The heads spiked to the timber of the gate above their spearheads were all fairly fresh too. Above them, some sort of machine moved to cover them behind a slit in a sheet-metal shield; he'd have bet that was some sort of giant crossbow or dart-caster: or possibly a flamethrower.

"Hi," Havel said to their leader. "I'm here to see your Protector."

"Not just nails-twelve-inch spikes!" Alex Barstow crowed from inside the truck. "Crates of nice big bolts. And half-inch cable, by God, a whole hundred-yard spool. Fan-fucking-tastic!"

Outside his brother Chuck quirked a smile. "That's Alex. Do you know, even when we were little kids he could build the most fantastic castles out of matchsticks?"

A deep breath: "Do you really have to do this, Judy?"

"Chuck, I need to know what's going on out there epidemic-wise if I'm going to do my job helping keep this bunch healthy. We've been over this. I love you."

"I love you too," he said; they embraced. "Merry meet, and merry part."

"And merry meet again," Judy said; they both had tears in their eyes. "See you before Beltane."

Juniper had made her good-byes back at the Hall; she looked away, swallowing, as her friends made theirs, letting her fingers busy themselves checking her gear.

Then she waved and put her foot to the bicycle's pedal as Judy broke free. They were well past the Carson place, due west of Mackenzie territory; everyone around here knew them by now, and more to the point was familiar with their wagons and the way they sent them out to scavenge supplies from stranded trucks and abandoned stores.

Plus farms that looked to Sutterdown for guidance tended to shun the Mackenzies-Reverend Dixon's influence, she supposed. The Carsons and a few other cowan friends passed on news from there. Nobody would notice four Mackenzies on bicycles heading out from the wagon.

Steve scooted ahead of her, taking point as Sam Aylward called it; Vince dropped behind, and Judy pedaled beside her. The spring sun beat down on a world of green around them as their wheels scrunched, and on the quiet dirt country lane it might almost have been before the Change: save for the occasional car or tractor they passed, frozen since that evening; save for a farmhouse abandoned, or crowded with refugees.

And save for the ever-present faint acrid tang of smoke from cities burning.

"Keep your eyes open," she told herself.

They were going to loop up north, then cross the river and see what was going on near Corvallis.

"Time to come out of the cocoon and learn."

"You do yourself nicely here," Havel said.

He sipped at the single malt, savoring the smoky, peaty taste as he looked around the big high-ceilinged room and the glowing Oriental rugs on the floor; evidently if you had unlimited labor, it didn't take long to turn a library built in 1903 into a fair approximation of a palace. The wall that cut off this corner of the former Government Documents Room looked like professional work; the faint smell of fresh plaster confirmed it. Shelves had vanished, replaced by hangings and pictures that had the indefinable something that screamed money even to an art-infidel like Havel, or at least hinted at foraging parties with handcarts and sledgehammers backed up by swords and spearheads.

Dinner smells lingered a little too; skillet-roasted mussels in a coconut curry broth, a salad of pickled vegetables, garlic-crusted rack of lamb and fresh bread, finished off with a noble Dutch-style apple pie and cheeses, and accompanied by wines finer than Havel knew he had the palette or experience to appreciate.

Portland might be just getting by, uncounted millions were starving to death around the world, but the Protector and his friends certainly weren't on a ration book. There wasn't any point in not enjoying the dinner, either.

The smell of the kerosene lamps was a little incongruous- but the light was welcome. You missed electricity after dark.

Norman Arminger and his wife lounged on a black-leather sofa; Havel was surprised she was with him. The scantily clad servants had given him the impression of a man with serious harem fantasies. The Protector leaned back with a shot of the whiskey in his hand; his dark-haired wife had a glass of white wine.

Then Arminger spoke; he had a deep voice with an edge of humor to it. He'd been doing most of the talking, at that, but he was never boring.

"Well, it is the City that Works," Arminger said. "I'm doing my best to transform it into the Kingdom that Works. If people are to survive above the level of cannibal bands or isolated farms, there has to be organization, leadership: and it has to be based on realistic principles. Post-industrial democracy was wonderful, but it's not possible now. The foundations of that way of life have been knocked out from beneath us. We have to turn to older models."

"That sounds reasonable," Havel said. "Similar things had occurred to me, actually."

Arminger lifted his glass with a smile. "Meanwhile, I'm impressed with the equipment you had," he said. "Much, much better than the usual improvisations. Did you have any SCA people in your group?"

"No," Havel said. "A lot of people expert around horses, good handymen, some books on cavalry warfare and gear, and someone who was involved with a Renaissance fencing club. HACA, I think it used to be called, or ARMA-not sure which."

"Ah, surprising and very fortunate for you-the Association of Those Who Like Hitting Things with Sharp Pointy Things," Arminger said. "I attended a few of their gatherings. Very focused, very practical-in the sense of recreating effective sword styles, which in those days wasn't of much practical use at all. The Society was deplorably eclectic, although the Pensic War was always entertaining. And a surprising number of its members proved to be excessively sentimental and had to be: removed from the equation."

"Things have Changed," Havel said. "We also found a bowmaker, and we had one very good and one pretty good archer to teach the rest of us. That wasn't so odd; hell, there were a couple million bow-hunting licenses issued last year."

Sandra Arminger snorted. "We prefer crossbows. Easier to make, and easier to learn."

"And in the long run, less problem to armored horsemen," the Protector said. "Wouldn't want the tenants to get too uppity."

"Less useful than a bow from horseback, though," Havel pointed out.

"You're aiming at doing things Mongol-style?" Arminger said, raising his brows. "Ambitious!"

"I always liked that saying of Genghis Khan's that a year after he sacked a city you could gallop a horse across the site without stumbling. Say what you like about Genghis, he got things done," Havel observed.

Arminger grinned, a charming expression. "I think you may be a man after my own heart, Lord Bear."

Christ Jesus, I hope not, Havel thought, with an imperturbable shrug.

"I understand you came through Pendleton," Arminger said. That was a logical deduction; it was the major city of northeastern Oregon. "Have they started their civil war yet?"

"There was some tension between the reservation and the city, but on the whole they seemed to be doing pretty well," Havel said. "They've moved most of their urban population out to the ranches and farms. In fact, they're wondering why they didn't see a lot more refugees from Portland than they got. They've got a lot more wheat than they can harvest with the hands available; it'll all go to waste, since they can't transport it-or plant nearly as much this fall."

"Pendleton only had, what, eighteen thousand people in the city limits?" the Protector observed. " Seattle tried moving people east en masse, and it didn't work very well, even before the final collapse there. Mostly it just overburdened the rural areas close by. I, ah, encouraged the surplus population here to move out southward. Mainly by setting more fires and cutting off the water supply. It's gravity-flow here, and should last for generations with some upkeep. We've had some success with using water-power to run machinery; for stamping out armor scales, for instance."

Havel sipped at his whiskey, keeping his face neutral. "I noticed a lot of damage to the city," he said.

"The big jets coming down hard set most of the area east of the Willamette on fire," the Protector replied. "Giant bombs full of fuel, you see-surprisingly effective. And we did more around the fringes. Nothing essential lost, though."

He snorted. "And in this climate, the ruins will all be overgrown in a single summer-we have to cut back vines on the roads that grow two inches a day! The burned-out areas will be scrub in a year and forest in ten."

He paused, considering. "Why did you decide to come this far west? I've had scouts of my own as far east as Montana and as far upriver as Lewiston, and the situation is a bit less dire out there. So far."

"So far, like you say. I'm just in charge of this scouting party," Havel said. He'd been careful to give that impression here. He wasn't altogether sure how much Arminger had been taken in. "Like when I was back in Force Recon."

Surprising how many educated people think a Marine noncom must be a no-neck dullard. Useful misconception, though.

"The consensus is that the land's better here, and that by the time our whole party reaches the area it'll be near-enough empty, more so than anything good east of the Cascades where the initial die-off isn't so bad. There's a lot of people on the move there, and not just townsfolk; places that depended on pump-irrigation, for instance. The best spots are already held and the farmers and ranchers have most of the labor they need and all they can feed until the harvest. We didn't want to settle for being sharecroppers or hired hands anyway."

"Logical," Arminger said. "I think this generation's sharecroppers and hired hands will be the serfs and slaves of the next. And you're not sentimental; I like that. But by the end of this year, or next at most, I intend to control the Willamette. It's the natural core for a : kingdom, state, whatever: ruling the Northwest; nearly ten thousand square miles of the best rain-fed farmland in the world. You: Bear-killers: would be well-advised not to try to fight me for it."

Now we get down to it, Havel thought.

"We didn't intend on making a bid for the whole thing. You'd prefer we go somewhere else?"

"Oh, on the contrary. I can always use a group of: sensible fighting men. Centralized government isn't possible anymore, without powered machinery or fast communications. Or without cannon for that matter. I would grant you lands, and authority over those living on them-provide you with labor, if necessary, farm tools, seed, livestock. In return, you acknowledge me as ultimate overlord, furnish armed men when I call for them, plus labor for public works like roads, and give me a reasonable share of the yearly profits from your : demesne, shall we call it. In return, you get the help of the whole Portland Protective Association when you need it."

The word demesne tickled Havel 's memory, a vague recollection of something Ken Larsson and Pamela had mentioned in one of their campfire conversations. So did the whole setup Arminger was outlining.

"Exactly what period of history were you a professor of, Lord Protector?"

Arminger looked at him with narrowed eyes; the expression on Sandra's face was identical. Havel cursed himself behind an impassive mask.

You should be consistent when you try and get someone to underestimate you. Bad Lord Bear. No biscuit for you!

"Ninth through twelfth centuries," the Protector said. "Early feudal Europe, specializing in Normandy and the Norman principalitiesEngland, Wales, Ireland, Sicily."

" Sicily?" Havel said, trying to sound idly curious.

"Indeed, Sicily and southern Italy; conquered by Norman religious pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. They went to do good, and in fact did very well. rather as I plan to do."

Havel raised a brow and smiled crookedly. He didn't want Arminger to think he was a patsy, either.

"But you don't, as of now, control the Willamette? Sir."

"No," the Protector said. "Right now, it's Portland, and part of the lower Columbia. Our current southern and western border is roughly a semicircle from Oregon City to Tualtin. Does that mean your group won't consider my offer?"

"No, sir. We will most definitely consider it-when and if we get here."

Leaving you to assume that here means Portland, and that we'll come up I-84. Assume makes an ass of you and me.

Aloud he went on: "And depending on our appreciation of the situation then in the light of our own interests. I'll certainly recommend that we take your offer under advisement and send further scouts later in the year, when we're closer. The Pendleton committee offered us land; it just wasn't very good land when you don't have modern equipment to work it. Plus the politics there look unstable, as you said."

Slowly, Arminger nodded; then he made a gesture of dismissal, with grudging respect in it.

"You can start on your way back tomorrow then. Ask the steward for anything you need in the way of amusements tonight, or supplies tomorrow."

"Thank you kindly, sir."

Havel stood, nodded his head in an almost-bow, and led his companions out the carved-teak door, moving easily, but conscious of the sweat that trickled down his flanks despite the coolness of the air. They were billeted in a yellow-brick apartment building half a block away, and he'd be very glad to get there.

"Mike!" Eric hissed, after they passed the guards with their halberds and crossbows. "What the hell were you-"

He gave a muffled oofff! as Josh took his arm and elbowed him in the ribs as he did it. Havel draped a comradely arm around his shoulders for an instant, and said loudly: "Yeah, sounded like a pretty reasonable proposition."

Josh nodded. "Certainly the best offer we've had so far."

Eric missed a step and then nodded vigorously; he was young and still had a bit of the sense of entitlement produced by being brought up rich, but he wasn't stupid. They passed through the corridor, then into a vast open area where the reconstruction work was still under way. From the looks of it, this was going to be a barracks or ready-room.

Havel stopped, looked around, and went on: "Thank God we don't have to worry about electronic bugs anymore: anyway, didn't it occur to you that he has a vigorous zero-fault tolerance program for those who tell him 'no' to his face? Like, nailing their heads up over the door?"

Eric nodded. Havel thought for a moment: "You ever do any of that role-playing stuff?"

"D and D? A little. I wouldn't have figured you for the type, Mike."

Havel gave a rare grin. Eric wore a lot better now than he had when they'd first met; he suspected it was mostly a matter of having real work and real responsibilities.

When you're in it, you grow up fast. Aloud he went on: "I wasn't into D and D; working on my Harley and deer hunting and track and field were more my style, when I could duck out of chores at home. I even read the odd book."

Eric mimed staggering in surprise, and Havel gave him a playful punch on the shoulder.

"But there was this girl I knew in high school in 'eighty-seven who was a fanatic about it; Shirley, real cute, and by rumor a demented mink in the sack-"

"-and you thought you could make a saving-roll into her pants?"

"Hey, I was a teenager, all dick and no brains, like some people around here right now. Thing is, she liked the Chaotic Evil types and I couldn't compete." Seriously: "The Protector and the way he operates remind me of the guy she dumped me for-dressed in black a lot, had this little scraggly peach-fuzz goatee like a landing strip on his chin, lot of attitude, thought he was seriously bad. And he was smart, but not as smart as he thought he was-for example, he thought all those little needling jabs were going right over my thick jock head. And he thought he could fight 'cause he'd pranced around a dojo a little, in a black gi, of course."

A reminiscent smile, and he rubbed the knuckles of his right fist into his left palm. "About the time I finally gave up on Shirley, I broke the little pissant's nose out behind the school gym-caught hell from the principal, but it was worth it, and I planned on enlisting anyway."

Soberly: "Anyway, give you odds the Protector was his clone when he was a kid and always played a, what the hell was the name: yeah, a dwerg or a draug or a Dark Elf or magical assassin or something."

"Now he's trying to do it for real?"

"Yeah, and it won't work in the end, I'd bet. We may have had a change in the laws of nature, but I don't think even the Change could make the world that much like a D and D game. Plus I think he's got this thing about the history he used to study, the feudalism thing, and that won't work either, at least not right away, although it's a better bet long-term than the Evil Overlord stuff. We may have had all our toys taken away, but the people he's dealing with weren't born back then."

"I don't know, Mike," Eric said. "He has taken over around here, and he looks like he's getting things organized. People will put up with a lot, for that and for food."

"Yeah," Josh said. "And he's also operating on a pretty big scale. What was that Russian saying Eric's dad quoted?"

"Quantity has a quality all its own," Havel said. "Yup. I'm not saying the Protector would be a pushover. Even if he goes down, he could do a lot of damage first; in fact, he certainly will do a lot of damage whether he wins or loses."

A glance over his shoulder, and he continued meditatively: "If he weren't such a looney-tooner, I'd actually give that proposition of his serious consideration. Even though he is: "

Eric made a disgusted noise. Havel went on: "I said if, kid. The other problem is that he's got big eyes. I think it's going to be a join-him-or-fight-him thing everywhere in the Columbia basin, eventually. Damn."

Eric nodded. "We're still not committed," he pointed out. "I mean, we could head southeast, try the Snake River country, or even get out across the Rockies over the summer. Try the High Plains, or find somewhere to winter and then a chunk of good farming country we could claim."

Josh tapped the fingers of his left hand on his sword hilt; the brass strips of the guard rang a little.

"Problem with that is, first, good country isn't going to be all that easy to find without we drive off someone else. And second, we could walk straight into something just as bad as this Protector guy. I got this ugly feelin' ambitious men are going to be right common for a good long while now."

"We'll see," Havel said. A grin: "I mean, hell, I'm ambitious. And tomorrow, we ride out of here-south. He admitted he doesn't control the Willamette. I'd like to see if anyone does, and what the prospects are, before we go back and start making decisions."

Kenneth Larsson wept with the jerking sobs of a man unaccustomed to tears.

"Shhh," Pamela said, holding his head against her shoulder in the cool canvas-smelling dimness of the tent. "Shhh. It's all right, Ken."

The tears subsided. "I'm so fucking useless, " he said. "I'm sorry, Pam."

"For what?" she said. "Hey, Ken, I've been having a fine old time tonight. Young men don't make love to a woman; they use the woman to make love to Mr. Dickie. Give it time."

He relaxed, probably amazed she didn't want to kick him out of her bedroll and never see him again. Pamela's lips quirked in the darkness.

I meant what I said, she thought. And besides, Ken – we can't walk out on each other, not anymore. We're all stuck with each other unless we want to leave the outfit.

Ken took a shuddering breath. "I haven't been much use to any woman, since Mary: died. I couldn't protect her or my daughtersyeeeeow!"

Pamela poised her fingers to give his chest hair another painful tweak.

"What was that for?" he gasped.

"For being stupid, is what. It isn't like you. Will Hutton couldn't protect his family, and he's as tough as anyone in the outfit. And Mike couldn't have alone, either-what's the old saying, even Hercules can't fight two?"

"He rescued us."

"With Eric and Will helping! We protect each other. You didn't protect your family before the Change, either: the law did, and the police did, and the military did, and the State of Oregon did, and the U-S of A did. Now the outfit does. And you're our engineer, and you know a hell of a lot of history. You're at least as useful to everyone as I am, or Will is."

Softly: "I played at Renaissance fencing because it was fun, Ken; I'm a middle-class Jewish veterinarian from southern California! I never thought I'd have to kill with it. Hold me, will you?"

A few minutes later: "Yeeeow! What was that for!"

"To drive the lesson home." Her hand strayed.

"Thanks, but-"

"Hey, I'm doing that 'cause I like it, buddy! Doesn't feel bad, does it?"

"No, but-"

"There's no prize for making the finish line here," she said. "Just two codgers having fun: "

A moment later: "Well, well!" She rolled over and straddled him. "That does feel nice!"