Dies The Fire

REBELLION AGAINST DUKE IRON ROD!

Underneath it was a logo, a winged skull, human but with long fangs.

"And I suppose the Lord Humungous rules the desert, too," he muttered; it didn't seem like simple banditry. "What the hell is going on here?"

Then he nudged the door open with his toe-it was swinging free, banging occasionally against the frame, and went through with blade ready and shield up.

There was no need for it. He blinked at what he saw on the floor of the living room, glad he hadn't sent Signe in- she'd toughened up amazingly, but he just didn't want this inside the head of someone he liked. He made himself do a quick count as he went through the rooms of the big frame farmhouse; there was no way to be precise, without reassembling everyone. Nothing moved but some rats, although he saw coyote tracks; probably one of the scavengers had gotten in through a window.

"That's where the women and children were," he said grimly as he came out.

Signe swallowed and nodded; she didn't bother to ask what had happened to them.

Havel went on: "I make it at least twelve adults, and quite a few kids. Say six families, give or take."

He looked around at the steading. This had been a large, prosperous mixed farm; probably the owners had called it a ranch, Western-fashion. Judging from the stock corrals and massive equipment that stood forelorn and silent in its sheds, it was something on the order of three square-mile sections or more-six hundred and forty acres each. That was typical for this area, which grew winter wheat and barley and canola and other field crops and ran cattle.

Before the Change, that would have meant one family and occasional hired contract work, but:

"Probably the farmer's family took in a lot of townspeople," Signe observed. "Relatives, and refugees."

They'd seen that pattern elsewhere, once the nature of the Change had sunk in.

"Yesterday?" Signe went on. "Day before?"

"Dawn yesterday," Havel agreed, narrowing it down a little more. "They had food cooking on a wood range and the kids were mostly in PJs."

Signe winced. "The bandits ran off most of the stock, looks like. I suppose we should look for anything useful, but-"

"But I'm not going into the buzzard business, until these folks are buried," Havel said for both of them.

Signe's head came up, looking back the way they'd come. A light blinked from the ridgeline there, angled from a hand mirror. They both read the Morse message. Not for the first time, Havel blessed the fact that Eric had been an Eagle Scout; he'd been full of useful tricks like that. He even knew how to do smoke signals.

Twenty-plus riders bound your way approaching from southeast on section road.

Signe took a mirror out of a pouch on her sword belt and replied, then looked a question at Havel.

"We'll meet them out by the gate," he said. "If they look hostile, we can run-tell Will to have everyone ready. I don't think we'll have to fight; whoever did this wasn't planning on coming back anytime soon, in my opinion."

When they halted at the junction of lane and dirt road, she said quietly: "I hate this kind of thing, Mike. I hate seeing it and I hate smelling it and I hate having to think about it later."

He leaned over in the saddle and gave her mailed shoulders a brief squeeze; like hugging a statue, but as so often with human beings it was the symbolism that counted.

"Me too," he said. "But I hate something else worse- the sort of people who do this shit."

"Yes!"

He glared around. There was no reason why people here had to die. It was far away from the cities and their hopeless hordes, and for the first year or so there would be more food than people could handle-plenty of cattle, more grain than they could harvest by hand from last year's planting. They weren't short of horses, either, and with some thought and effort they'd be able to get in hay and sow a good grain crop come fall; nothing like as much as they usually planted by tractor, but more than enough to feed themselves and a fair number of livestock.

It was security that was the problem: without swift transport, or more than improvised hand weapons, without phones and radios to call for help:

Light winked off metal in the distance where the road came over a rise, revealing movement.

Which is why I had all our gear done in brown or matte green, he thought, with pardonable pride.

He unshipped his binoculars and focused; two dozen, all right, all men and riding as if they knew how. The one in the forefront had a U.S. Army Fritz helmet, and a couple of the others did as well, or crash-helmet types. Several wore swords, Civil War sabers probably out of the same sort of museum that had yielded the three-furrow plow; the others had axes or baseball bats, and two had hunting bows.

Mr. Fritz also had a county sheriff's uniform, and a badge: as they drew closer, he saw that several others had badges as well, probably new-minted deputies. The sheriff was in his thirties, the other men mostly older-no surprise there, either. The average American farmer had been fifty-three before the Change.

"They look righteous," Havel said. "Signe, take your helmet off, but keep alert."

She did, and shook back her long wheat-colored braids; that tended to make people less suspicious, for some reason. He turned his horse's head slightly to the left, and kept his bow down on that side with an arrow on the string, not trying to hide it but not drawing attention to it, either.

"Afternoon," he said, holding up his empty right hand when the riders came near.

The sheriff looked at them, giving their horses and gear and faces a quick, thorough once-over; he was a lean hard man with tired blue eyes and light-brown hair going gray at the temples.

"You're no bikers," he said; his men relaxed a little too.

"Jesus Christ!" one of the riders muttered to a companion. "It's King Arthur and Xena the Warrior Princess."

"Shut the hell up, Burt," the sheriff said. "What's going on here?"

Havel pointed up the laneway, then back over his shoulder.

"Our outfit's passing through. We saw the smoke from that ridge back there, and thought we'd take a look. Someone killed everyone at this farm, burned their grain stores and canola and hay, killed some of their stock and ran off the rest, and I think sprayed Roundup on their standing grain. It's real ugly in there. Signed by Duke Iron Rod, whoever or whatever he is."

Several of the men cursed; one turned aside, hiding tears. The sheriffs long face seemed to acquire some more lines.

"We're too late," he said. "Henry, you go check."

A fist hit the pommel of the sheriffs saddle, making the horse sidestep. "They hit three farms this time, and led us by the nose from one to the other! Now they're headed back."

He shook himself and looked at Havel. "You're passing through? You look a lot better fed and armed than most of the road people we see."

"Thought we might stop and feed our beasts up a bit, if you can spare the grazing. And we can trade," Havel said. "We've got a farrier and smith, a first-class horse man, an engineer, couple of construction experts, a leatherworker, a doctor and a really good vet. Plus some weapons- swords, arrows, shields, armor."

He held up his recurve, twanging the string after he dropped the arrow back in its quiver.

"Plus the ones who made this, and our armor." That raised some eyebrows. "So we won't be begging."

"Say!" one of the posse said, nodding towards the image on their shields. "Aren't you the Bearkillers?"

As Havel nodded, he turned to the sheriff. "Bob Twofeather told me about 'em, remember? They were up on the Nez Perce rez for a bit. They helped with those guys who'd gone crazy and started cutting people up."

Havel nodded. "That was us. We went over to Lewiston, nearly. Once we heard what was happening there we decided to turn back and try crossing into Oregon a little further south."

Everyone flinched a little at that; the Black Death scared even the bravest. Havel took off his own helmet.

"Yeah, you're the Bearkiller jefe," the man said. "They call you Lord Bear, right? Got the scar killing a bear with your knife, was what I heard."

Havel shrugged, mouth twisting a bit in irritation at the fruits of Astrid's imagination. And it was worse than futile to go around correcting every urban legend, like the one about the bear:

It's a rural legend, actually, he thought with mordant humor. Amazing how they spread with no TV. And anyway, it's helpful psyops.

Aloud he went on to the sheriff: "I could bring down some of my people, help you with cleaning up. We don't have the sickness. And you're welcome to share our fire tonight. We should talk."

The sheriff thought for a moment and then nodded decisively. The man he'd sent to the house returned, pale-faced and scrubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Kate Clarke's missing," he said, which brought more curses and clenched fists. "The rest of them are all there."

"Right," their leader said. "Louie, you go get the doc and tell him I need a bunch of people checked over to make sure they're clean."

He turned to Havel as his rider galloped off southwest-ward. "No offense."

"None taken. We're careful too."

"I'm Robert Woburn, county sheriff. Since the Change."

"Mike Havel," he replied. "Boss of the Bearkillers."

They moved their horses shoulder-to-shoulder, and he stripped off his right-hand glove for a quick hard shake. The back of the glove was covered with more ringmail, leaving only the palm and the inner surface of the fingers plain leather.

The sheriff turned to his men: "We'll get these people buried, and then the rest of you can get back to town and tell everyone what's happened. No use in trying to catch them now. I'll stay here and bring these folks in tomorrow; it'll take all day with wagons and a herd. Henry, you tell Martha I'll be late, but I'll have some guests tomorrow. Jump!"