Dies The Fire

Chapter Twenty-one

M ichael Havel leaned back against his saddle and gnawed a last bite off the rib; he took a quick drink of water afterward, and a mouthful of bread as well. Angelica's homemade BBQ sauce had real authority, as well as lots of garlic.

I can just about handle it now, he thought. After years of pouring Tabasco over MREs to hide the taste. It would have killed me when I was Eric's age.

Most of the people in his neck of the woods clung to Old Country cooking habits, and Finns thought highly seasoned meant putting dill in the sour cream.

The eating part of the Bearkillers' homecoming celebration was about over; mainly variations on meat and bread, but well done; the grateful smell lingered, along with woodsmoke and livestock. It was full dark now, with a bit of a chill in the air and only an enormous darkness around their fires. Somewhere in the distance a song-dog howled at the stars, and he could hear horses shifting their weight and snorting in the corral behind the wagons.

He flipped the bone into the fire, watching as it crackled and hissed and then burned when the marrow caught. Not far away a hound pup followed the arc with wistful eyes, but she was lying on a pile of them already, stomach stretched out like a drum. Havel was thinking of naming her Louhi, after the Old Country sorceress who could eat anything.

And Christ Jesus, it's good to be home.

Will Hutton wailed a note or two on his new harmonica and set it down again.

"You really ready to get back on the road?" he said.

"You haven't been back but half a week, and busy as hell that whole damned time."

Havel nodded. "We've about outstayed our welcome in the Kooskia area if we aren't here for good," he said. "We'll start south tomorrow. Josh and Eric and I were doing fifty, sixty miles a day most of the way back."

A smile. "Tiring him out was the only way to keep Zep-pelt from playing that goddamned accordion. Christ Jesus, if you knew the hours I'd suffered listening to those things as a kid, and watching the old farts lumber around dancing to it! And the kraut version is even worse."

"He 'n' his lady did seem a mite sore when they got in," Hutton grinned. "Fact is, though, he's not bad on that squeeze-box at all."

Havel shrugged; he didn't want to argue a point of musical tastes. "So five or six miles a day with the whole outfit will be a rest-cure."

"That slow?" the Bearkillers' trail boss said.

Havel nodded: "I don't want to travel too fast; Pendleton or the Walla Walla country by July or August-we can hire out to help with the harvest, or just pick some out-of-the-way wheatfields nobody's working on and help ourselves- and Larsdalen in say October, November. By then the sickness ought to be burned out, and until then we don't go near cities."

"Bit late for plantin' surely?"

"Not in the Willamette. You only get occasional winter frosts there; you can put in fall grains right into December, and graze stock outside all year 'round."

Will frowned, turning the mouth organ over in his battered, callused hands. "Don't like what you told about this Protector mofo," he said. "Don't much like it at all."

Havel grinned like a wolf. "The guy seriously torqued me off, yeah, I admit it, but I'm not just looking for a fight. The Willamette's still the best place going, and I don't think Mr. Protector is going to stay satisfied with what's west of the Columbia Gorge, either. From what he said, he already had his eye on the waterways inland, too-and you can sail all the way up to Lewiston, if you hold the locks. That's cheap transport nowadays."

Hutton's lips pursed in thought. "Bit far to reach, things bein' the way they are."

"Not him directly. But remember that deal I told you he offered me? One gets you five that's his boilerplate-and every would-be little warlord within reach of Portland gets the offer. No shortage of them; they're like cockroaches already. Give them some organization and backup, and things will get nasty all over this neck of the woods."

Ken Larsson nodded. He and Pamela Arnstein were sitting close with their hands linked; that had surprised Havel and flabbergasted Eric when he got back, but even Signe and Astrid seemed to be taking it in stride.

Ken spoke slowly, deep in thought: "Not surprising, given what you told me about his academic background. I think he's jumping the gun a little-it's a bit early to try for full-blown feudalism. But it's certainly more workable than trying to keep the old ways going."

"Like, we've got to learn how to crawl before we walk," Havel said; a corner of his mouth turned up. "Get tribes and chiefs right, before we can have barons and emperors."

"More or less."

Hutton had been thinking as well: "Mike," he said after a moment, "Does it strike you as a mite strange that the plague, the Death, got as far as Lewiston so fast?"

"Hmmm. The Columbia-Snake-Clearwater is an easy travel route, and refugees from the coast did get that far: You suggesting Professor Arminger helped it along? Let's not make him the universal boogeyman."

"Could be; or not," Hutton said. "For sure it's helpful to him that way, keeping the interior all messed up while he gets himself set. Anyway, I see what you're drivin' at. Stay here, go there, we're still gonna end up fightin' the man. Unless we move far south or east, and that's damn risky too. Could be worse there and we'd be committed. Only so many months in the year and we need to find somewhere we can put in a crop. The Willamette: "

Havel nodded. "It's best because things are worse; no organized groups to stop us settling: well, not in parts of it, at least. There's that bunch of monks around Mt. Angel, and Juniper Mackenzie and her neighbors, and Corvallis, and a bunch of small holdouts around Eugene, but that chunk around Larsdalen's clear. Most of the central valley is empty."

"Thought you said there were families holdin' out 'round the Larsson spread."

"By hiding. Nothing organized-and if they don't get someone to organize them, none of them will last out this winter. You need some security to farm. I think we could provide it."

Just then Signe came back to their campfire with a basket, followed by Angelica with a bottle and tray of glasses, and Astrid staggering under a collection of wooden struts and a large rectangular object. The basket held little chewy pastries done with honey and nuts; the bottle was part of the town's gratitude, good Kentucky bourbon-priceless now, and usually jealously hoarded. Havel poured himself a finger of it, and splashed in some water.

"What've you got there, kid?" he asked the younger Larsson girl indulgently; she had that epic-seriousness expression on her huge-eyed face.

He'd noticed some smudges on her fingers lately, Magic Marker and paints. Signe had real talent when it came to drawing, but Astrid was better-than-competent herself. Apparently Mary Larsson had thought it was something suitable for her girls to learn.

She gave him a smile, and went to work. The struts turned out to be an artist's tripod and easel; the strange object she put on it was about the size and shape of a painting, or a very large coffee-table book.

"Dad helped me find the paper," she said, one hand on the cloth that wrapped it. "At the Office Max where we got all that stuff, you remember? Art supply section-non-acid-pulp drawing paper. And Will did the covers."

"We weren't doin' anything with that piece of elk hide," Hutton said, a little defensively. "I like to keep my hand in at tooling and tanning leather. It'll be right useful, one day."

"Signe helped with the drawings. And I took notes from everyone about everything!"

Havel felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach; Astrid's pale eyes had taken on that dangerous, joyous glint they had when she came up with something truly horrifying.

She used her new dagger-which she wore every waking moment-to slit the string binding, then whipped off the cloth. Beneath lay a book-leatherbound board covers, rather, with an extensible steel-post clamp at the hinge for holding the paper. Across the front, tooled into the elk hide, was: the CHRONICLES OF LORD BEAR AND HIS FOLK: THE