Dies The Fire

Chapter Twenty-eight

"C onfirm: enemy: position," Havel read, binoculars to his eyes.

The Bearkiller column and Woburn's posse were down at the bottom of a swale. That cut visibility to a thousand yards in any direction, but it meant nobody could see them either, except from a height.

A height like that of the hot-air balloon floating over the Bearkiller camp in Craigswood, for example; the three Bearkillers in the basket hanging two thousand feet above ground level had an excellent view. He could make out the semaphore signal quite clearly through the field glasses, and they'd be able to pick up his mirror-flash of light even more easily.

"Damn, I wish I'd thought of that," Woburn muttered awkwardly. "We might not be in this mess, if we'd had a balloon."

"Everyone tends to think engines when they think aircraft," Havel said. "I certainly did; but the Protector over in Portland didn't."

Woburn rubbed his lantern jaw. "Sort of hard to think of Portland having much to do with our problems. These days, it seems a long ways off."

"Believe it," Havel said grimly. "I doubt Iron Rod would have been more than a major nuisance without someone giving him help and ideas. Hell, the Protector gave me ideas, unintentionally."

He looked at the balloon again. It had taken a bit of finding. but there were a surprising number of hot-air balloon enthusiasts in Idaho-had been, before the Change.

It was still an hour before noon, and the sun wouldn't be getting into anyone's eyes for a couple of hours, no matter which way the fight turned.

God, I hope this isn't too expensive when the butcher's bill is totaled up, he thought.

Partly that was the simple desire to keep his people from harm; he'd selected every one, and a lot of them were friends by now, and all of them were his. Partly it was a desire to conserve the Bearkillers' capital assets.

Condottieri, he thought. The word simply meant "contractor" in Renaissance Italian. That's what we've ended up as.

It turned out that Pam and Rothman and Ken all knew a lot of stories about Renaissance Italy, and they were a lot less dull that what he remembered of high school history classes; if Woburn had heard some of them, he might have been more cautious about hiring his fighting done.

Particularly the ones about condottieri leaders deciding they'd rather be Duke of Milan or something of that order. Havel intended to keep scrupulously to the terms, but how could the sheriff know that?

On the other hand, Florence got taken over by a family of bankers, of all things, he thought with a taut grin. Now, there's a real gang of mercenary pirates for you.

At least he had the consolation that he was fighting people who needed killing, on the whole.

He leaned forward and slapped his big bay gelding affectionately on the neck; it tossed its head and snorted, shifting its weight from foot to foot, making its harness jingle and his armor rustle and clank.

"Work to do, Gustav," he said. Then, louder, he turned in the saddle and called to his Bearkillers: "Time to do good, and earn our pay!"

That brought a cheer; Signe grinned at him and tossed her helmeted head. She had an old-style cavalry trumpet slung from her saddlebow, a relic of the last Indian wars a century and more ago, salvaged from a museum up in the Nez Perce reservation.

Damn, but I wish she weren 't here, he thought. Nothing to be done about that, though, except win this fight as quick as we can.

His eyes made one last check of equipment, although he would have been astonished had anything been less than perfect. Also present, through unavoidable political necessity, were twenty of Woburn's posse members, which made him a little less than happy. They were equipped with anything that came to hand, and about half of them were pushing into middle age.

Sixty-odd horsemen took up a lot of room. The strong musky-grassy smell of the horses and their sweat filled the hollow, and the scents of human sweat soaked into leather and cloth, of steel rings wiped down with canola oil, of fear and excitement, and of earth torn open by ironshod hooves.

"Will, you get going on your part of it," Havel said.

The horsemaster nodded and reined his mount around; rather more than half the Bearkillers followed him, and all Woburn's men except the sheriff himself.

"Let's go, Gustav," Havel added to his mount, and gave the big gelding a leg signal; the horse broke into an obedient canter. A file of twenty followed him, and Woburn- but he didn't expect the sheriff to do much fighting. He pulled his bow from the case that slanted back from his left knee under the saddle flap and reached over his shoulder for an arrow, conscious of everyone doing likewise behind him: except Woburn, of course.

"I'm really starting to think we can run this raiding party off," the local man said.

"No!" Havel answered sharply, without looking around. "We are not going to chase them away. We're going to kill every last one of the filth, for starters."

The horses crested the top of the hill without pausing; the land to the south was flatter, rolling so gently it would have seemed level without the wind ruffling waves through the knee-high wheat that covered it and showing the long low swellings. The hooves were a drumroll under the soughing breeze.

"There!" Signe called, pointing southwest.

There was a dark clot against the green, one that swiftly turned into a group of armed men on horseback. Twenty or so of them, all in scale-mail tunics and steel helmets; one of them even had bulls' horns on his, bad-movie-Viking style. With them were half a dozen captives, four women and two men, with their feet lashed into the stirrups of their horses and their hands tied behind their backs, and a biggish herd of cattle and horses being driven along. Many of the horses had bags of plunder thrown over their backs to make rough packsaddles.

He could hear the outlaws' yells and whoops as they caught sight of the Bearkillers; one or two stayed to guard prisoners and plunder, but the rest hammered their heels into their mounts and thundered forward. Havel's eyes narrowed as the distance closed; the Devil Dogs were in no particular order, but they didn't appear to be shy of a fight. Their bellowing cries were full of blood-lust; and worse, of confidence.

Not very good riders, he thought; none better than he'd been at the Change, most worse. Big men mostly, with beards spilling down their chests. Well-armed.

They all had decent body armor, and they all had a crossbow slung like a rifle at their saddlbows. For the rest they carried swords-double-edged swords with long hilts, what they'd called a bastard sword in Europe in the old days-or axes ground down so they were light enough to be used single-handed. And they all carried shields slung over their backs, kite-shaped models bigger than the Bear-killer targe, and heavier too from the looks.

"Let's give them their first surprise!" he shouted over his shoulder. "Signe, Shooting circle and At the gallop."

She put the trumpet to her lips and sounded the calls, the bugle high and sweet in the warm still air. Havel dropped the knotted reins on his saddle horn and leaned forward, signaling his horse up to a gallop. Distance closed with shocking speed; he could see the leader of the Devil Dogs shouting and gesturing frantically to his men.

Havel's lips skinned back from his teeth in a carnivore grin as the Devil Dogs began to pull up and dismount; they weren't going to fight on horseback, and he'd confirmed with Woburn that nobody else around here had tried it more than once or twice.

Not that we're very good at it yet, he thought. But we have trained for it. And they're expecting us to get down to fight too.

He waited until the distance closed further; one pre-Change military skill that still had value was being able to do a quick accurate assessment of how far away something was. The Devil Dogs had all gotten off their horses, and they were bending to span their crossbows-the weapons shot hard and straight at close range. They were expecting to catch his people dismounting and shoot them up before they could reply.

"Yo!" he shouted, and turned his horse with balance and knees-skills Will and Luanne had taught them all.

Gustav pivoted neatly, like a rodeo mount in a barrel race. The dozen riders behind him did likewise, at well-timed intervals; suddenly they were galloping from left to right across the line of the Devil Dogs' formation. Black soil flew up in divots; the horses' heads pounded up and down like pistons, and he felt a sensation of rushing speed no machine could quite match as the great muscles flexed and bunched between his legs.

Havel clamped his thighs to his mount and raised his bow, drawing to the angle of his jaw with the chisel point slanting up at a thirty-five-degree angle. Horn and wood and sinew creaked as the string pulled the recurved stave into a smooth half-circle; he breathed out in a controlled hooosh as he pushed and pulled and twisted his torso to put the muscles of gut and back and shoulders into the effort.

It wasn't just a matter of raw arm strength. You had to know how to apply it.

He waited for the high point of the gallop and let the string fall off the balls of his fingers. Crack-whipppt! as the string lashed his steel-clad forearm and the arrow flicked out, blurring with speed. The bow surged against his left arm with the recoil; his right hand was already reaching back, plucking another shaft out of his quiver: knock, draw, loose He had two in the air before the first one struck-struck and stood in the ground ten yards in front of the nearest Devil Dog.

Congratulations, Genghis! he thought acidly.

The next one banged off the curved surface of a helmet, making the bandit spin and then stagger; he felt a little better after that.

And I'm not aiming at one man. I'm aiming at twenty, and their horses, all nicely bunched up.

Behind him the other Bearkillers were shooting as well. He leaned to the right, and Gustav pivoted, turning. The others followed, and the line became a loose oval like a racetrack. The arrows had come as a complete surprise to the enemy; the problem was that not many of them had hit.

A horse ran plunging across the wheatfields, with an arrow buried half its length in the beast's rump. A bandit was down on the ground, screaming shrill bubbling shrieks as he rolled about and clutched at a shaft that had slanted down through one cheek and out the side of his jaw, slicing his tongue and shattering half a dozen teeth as it went.

Most of the Devil Dogs had dropped their crossbows and swung their shields around, holding them up against the sleet of steel-tipped wood.

He saw two arrows strike one shield, and the man take a step backward as the points punched crack-crack through the sheet-metal covering and buried themselves in the plywood beneath. Then he was curving around again himself, his left side towards the enemy once more. Some of them were shooting; a crossbow belt went by a few feet ahead of Gustav's nose, with an unpleasant vwup! of cloven air. Another struck a horse, and it went down with a scream to lie thrashing; two more riders halted for an instant and bore the rider off to the remount string before they returned to the shooting circle.

None of the bolts had struck a Bearkiller yet, which wasn't surprising, with moving targets that shot back.

Havel smiled an unpleasant smile as he shot again, and again, and again, and then wheeled his horse around once more. The Devil Dog leader was trying to get more of his men out from behind their shields to return fire at the elusive riders, without much success.

He was discovering some very nasty facts about being a stationary target; the ones that had let horse-archers grind infantry armies into dust from China to Poland before gunpowder came along.

More useful hints from Will's books on cavalry.

An arrow struck a Devil Dog, and the shaft sank halfway to its flight-feathers after it knocked a steel scale away spinning and twinkling in the sunlight. The man went down and writhed, clawing at the trampled wheat, trying to shriek as he coughed out bits of lung and gouts of blood.

The fourth time he finished the circuit Havel found his quiver empty. He cased his bow and took the reins in his left hand again, cantering away to where Astrid waited, with Reuben Waters helping. Each was leading packhorses, and a saddled remount string to replace losses.

The youngest Larsson turned and grabbed a bundle of arrows from the racks on the back of a packhorse.

"Thirty-inchers, and when are you going to let me into the line, Lord Bear? I'm a better shot than you are!"

"Thirty-inchers," Havel confirmed, bending so that she could untie the bundle and slide them loose into his quiver.

He reined around: "And you can ride in the line when you can pull a fifty-pound bow twelve times a minute and do the assault course in a full-weight hauberk."

My opposite number must be getting pretty desperate, Havel thought, as he trotted back towards the action.

Once he realizes we can keep this up all day, whittle them down one by one no matter that we're lousy shots. If they scatter, we can bunch up and ride each one down separately. And any time now he's going to look west and see -

A screaming shout went up from the Devil Dogs. A lot of them were pointing west. Several thousand yards in that direction were Will Hutton and the rest of the Bearkillers, with Woburn's men behind them. Neatly blocking the direct route to St. Hilda's and the Devil Dog base; as an added bonus the distance made it impossible to tell who was who, so they'd probably think that all the mounted men there were armored Bearkiller horse-archers.

"Shouldn't get your attention so set on one thing that you forget to look around you," Havel called out to the enemy, grinning like a wolf. Then, louder: "Fall in here, out of crossbow range! Everyone make sure your quivers are full and your mounts sound!"

The Bearkillers did, one of them swearing white-faced at a crossbow bolt standing buried deep in the cantle of his saddle, sunk through layers of leather and wood. Three inches closer, and it would have nailed his thigh to the saddle, or buried itself in his groin.

Havel ignored that, after checking that it hadn't injured the horse. Instead he uncased his binoculars. The Devil Dogs were doing the only thing possible; the man in the pseudo-Viking helmet seemed to be in charge, and he was getting them mounted again, abandoning the prisoners and cattle and heading south of west, to loop around the blocking force and get back to their base. Havel stood in the stirrups and waved to Hutton; the second-in-command waved back, and began to trot his band towards the commander's.

"What's horns-on-head trying to do, Mike?" Signe asked, jerking her head after the departing enemy.

Havel cased the binoculars again and took a sip from his canteen-not too much, since taking a leak while wearing the armor required contortions.

"The one with a crap-brown beard? He's trying to disengage," he said. "He's still not thinking in terms of mounted combat. If he only had Woburn's men to worry about he'd be home free. All they could do was follow him until he got back to St. Hilda's. Mounted infantry can't force each other to fight, because the other side can just trot off. But we can make him fight, because we don't have to stop and get off our horses to shoot."

"Not just a rat, but a stupid rat," Signe said. Her expression was grimmer than his, if anything. "I hope those farmers, the Clarkes, can watch from wherever they are."

"What goes around, comes around," Havel replied, nodding. "Sound: pursuit at the canter. Let's go!"

The Devil Dogs were galloping off, but they couldn't keep that up for long-not without more remounts than they had along. Carrying a heavy man in armor was hard work for a horse, the more so if he rode badly. Havel set a loping pace, letting the enemy draw ahead. Any chase was going to be from behind, here; the land was open and the Devil Dogs had been cutting fences all over the place precisely so they could move without running up against one.

Don't want to catch up to them too soon anyway, he thought. Not until Will rejoins. Let brown-beard-horns-on-head relax in his illusions for a while.

Then the Devil Dogs stopped, milled around, turned further south; they had to, if they wanted to keep from being caught between the two Bearkiller forces. Havel gave Will a high thumbs-up sign, and got a wave in return.

So far, so good. We've cut them off from home. Now for the hard part.

The muffled thunder of hooves seemed to drum inside his head and chest, beating like his heart. Even forty or fifty horsemen gave you a surprising sense of power, of irresistible momentum, as if so many hooves and so many tons of muscle and bone could ride down anything.

This is why so many brave idiots were in the cavalry, he thought.

He looked around carefully-the helmet and neck guard cut down on your peripheral vision-and waved a hand in summons. Woburn turned his horse until he was cantering knee-to-knee with the Bearkiller leader.

"Slick!" he said, grinning. "I dropped off a couple of men to look after the prisoners we got back-and all that stock."

"Thanks," Havel replied-by the terms of the contract, most of it went to his folk.

To himself. Slick? We shot three hundred-odd arrows at them and knocked out three men and one horse!

He went on aloud: "What I'd like you to do, Sheriff, is push them, since most of your people are riding lighter than mine."

Havel waved ahead towards the fleeing enemy. "Don't try to engage them, just get their horses lathered and blown, and stay on their right hands so they've got to keep heading south instead of right for St. Hilda's."

Woburn settled the Bearkiller-style helmet he'd bought. "That we can do," he said.

Whooping, he rode over to his men and shouted to them. They spurred their horses, pulling ahead of the double column of armored fighters, closing rapidly. The Devil Dogs flailed at their own mounts with their heels and the loose ends of their reins, pulling ahead again.

The whole clot of horses and men disappeared over one of the long low swellings; there wasn't much dust, but the rumble sounded loud through the warm air. A canter made enough wind to dry some of the sweat that runneled down his body, but not enough to get through most of the quilted padding under the armor.

Time crept by at a walk-trot-canter rhythm; he started to wonder whether he should step up the pace himself.

No. Remember the horses. They're not Humvees and ours are carrying a lot of weight.

Over the next rise, and a black clump showed in the distance. Down another shallow dip in the prairie, through fields of clover that smelled candy-sweet when crushed underhoof-that required a little discipline, because the horses saw no pressing reason not to stop and eat-and through a shallow creek fringed by pines, and then up another swale. The tracks of the Bearkillers and Woburn's men showed clearly, black against the poplin-green of wheat and the crimson-starred clover. This time they could see both parties; the Devil Dogs had slowed to a jog-trot.

Closer still, and he could see the streaks of foam on the necks and flanks of their horses, hear the wheezing bellows panting. They were tiring quickly; not in as good condition as the Bearkiller mounts to begin with, and badly ridden. Havel slowed, dropping down the column.

"Be careful when we catch up," he repeated over and over. "Remember, we don't want to let them close in too soon. Listen for the signals and keep alert."

"Yes, Mother," Eric muttered.

Havel rang the knuckles of his armored glove off the younger man's helmet.

"Hey!"

"Shut up!" Havel said. The white noise of the hooves would cover the words. "People are going to start dying right about now."

That won't work, he thought. This kid's still eighteen. He's seen people die since the Change but he still doesn't really believe it could be him, not down in the gut.

Inspiration struck: "Luanne there could die."

That got through; he saw Eric flush and then go pale.

"So let's all keep fucking focused, shall we?" he concluded grimly.

Havel tightened his thighs and shifted his balance, bringing Gustav up to a hand gallop. Woburn came alongside when he came back to the head of the line.

"What now?" he asked.

Havel cocked an eye at the sheriffs horse, and those of his posse. Not bad. About as worn down as ours, much less than the bad guys' nags. Woburn's men weren't wearing much armor, and they were a lot easier on their horses than the Devil Dogs.

"Hang back," he said. "You can't help with the next part. Stay in range-get ready to pile in if you have to, or chase 'em for real if they scatter."

"They're going to scatter?" Woburn asked.

"Well, if they don't there won't be any problem," Havel said. "Because then they'll all be dead. It'll take a while, though."

The sheriff peeled off to the loose array of his posse. Havel reached over his shoulder for a shaft and slid it through the arrow-shelf in his bow's riser, thinking hard.

The Devil Dogs weren't riding in any particular order; more like a loose mass that anything resembling his staggered column of twos. Havel waved his right arm and chopped it forward, brought the Bearkillers up level with their opponents and to their right, no more than forty yards away.

A few of the Devil Dogs had loaded their crossbows, and tried to shoot them one-handed like huge pistols; mostly they ended up sinking shafts into the ground at their horses' feet, or in wild arcs up into the air.

That bought a few derisive shouts from the Bearkillers, and elevated-finger salutes. Then they drew their bows. The sound that went up from the Devil Dogs as the first slashing volley of forty arrows arched out towards them was as much frustration as fear, but there was a lot of terror in it too. Two men went down when their horses were struck; the range was much closer this time, and more of the horse-archers were in the firing line.

Havel looked behind. One of the enemy fighters was down under his thrashing horse; the other was crawling on hands and knees, stunned, as Woburn's posse trotted towards him.

Hope he remembers we could use some prisoners, Havel thought. Then he shouted aloud: "Aim at the horses! Dismounting one is as good as killing him!"

Though that had the disadvantage that the horses didn't deserve it and their masters most certainly did-but the world wasn't fair. The Change certainly proved that, if there was any doubt.

The Devil Dog leader in the horned helmet screamed out an order and turned his horse, waving his long sword overhead as he charged. Havel didn't bother to give Signe a verbal command, just jerked a hand in the opposite direction; she put the trumpet to her lips and sounded: Parthian retreat and Form line abreast on the commander.

They all turned their horses right, a unified surge of motion at ninety degrees to their previous course; that gave him a fierce satisfaction. A lot of hard work was paying off. The Devil Dogs rode in a dense clump as they pursued the neatly spaced Bearkiller line; they were roaring again, gaining on their tormentors: . and then the Bearkillers turned in the saddle and began to shoot again, back over the horses' rumps.

Forty bows snapped. This time the range was close. Close enough to see men shout, close enough to see blood fly in sun-bright drops when an arrow punched into flesh. Close enough to hear the high shrill screams of wounded horses, unbearably loud.

Half a dozen Devil Dog mounts went down as if they had run into an invisible wall, throwing riders or rolling over them. Even then, Havel winced inwardly. He hated having to hurt the horses, but there really wasn't any alternative.

And then the enemy broke; one moment attacking, the next spurring off in every direction, like spatters of butter dropping on a hot skillet. For once, panic was making people do the less-bad thing-stop being a big clumped-up target at point-blank range.

"Sound Pursuit by squads, and Rally in one hour," Havel said, and Signe gave the call.

Woburn's men led, whooping with bloodthirsty glee; Havel's followed more sedately. He drew rein himself, turning his head to make sure all the Bearkillers were sticking to their four-fighter squads rather than hairing off individually. Unconsciously he made a slight shrug with his shoulders and a hunff sound as he looked back over the battlefield.

They were the same gestures his father had used back on the Havel homeplace when he shifted a big rock from a field drain, or got a tree down just the way he wanted. Hard dangerous work, done right.

Eric was part of the headquarters squad, along with Lu-anne and Signe.

"Well, that was easier than I expected," he said, flexing his right hand with a creak of leather and rustle of chain mail; pulling a bow to full draw over and over again was hard work.

"It's not over yet," Havel replied. "But yeah, so far. We surprised them badly. That always makes things a lot easier. Get inside someone's decision loop, and he's always reacting to what you do-usually badly-instead of doing something himself and making you react."

Luanne spoke: "Was there anything they could do?"

"Couple of things," Havel said. "Scatter right away; a fair number of them would have escaped. Fort up on a rise until dark-maybe kill their horses for barricades. Once the sun went down, we couldn't find most of them, and it's only about six hours' walk to their base. Or: well, they didn't have the leisure to think about it, and they got spooked when we showed 'em we could hit them without their being able to hit back. Plus I suspect their honcho just wasn't very bright. Anyone stupid enough to put horns on their helmet, where they'd catch a blade: "

"Ooopsie, speak of the devil," Signe said, pointing. "I think that's their command group, and they've stopped."

"No rest for the wicked," Havel said, turning Gustav forward.

They spread out into a loose line abreast. The wind was from Havel's right hand, hot and full of grassy smells.

That also made it possible for Signe to speak to him without the others hearing:

"Are we the wicked, Mike?" she said; he could hear a shiver in her voice below the steady beat of the hooves. "I'm: I couldn't have imagined doing: this: before the Change."

He looked at her with a crooked smile. "Nah, askling, we're not the wicked. We're the people who keep guys like Duke Iron Rod-who really is wicked-away from people like: oh, Jane Waters and her kids."

His smile grew to a grin: "Like Aragorn son of Arathorn, in those books of Astrid's. Or those two guys in the Iliad."

"You read the Iliad?" she said, surprised.

"Some of it, a long while ago. And your dad and I were talking about it, just the other day. There's this bit, where two guys-soldiers-are talking, and one of them says something like: "

He paused to think: "Why is it, my friend, that our people give us the best they have, the vineyard and the good land down by the river, and honor us next to the immortal Gods? Because we put our bodies between our homeland and the war's desolation."

"Speaking of which," he said in his ordinary voice.

Five of the enemy had halted-one because his horse had keeled over, with arrow-feathers showing against its side behind the girth; as they looked it gave a final kick, voided and died.

A horse took a surprising amount of time to bleed out, if you didn't hit something immediately vital.

The rider looked to have come off unexpectedly and hard. Two others were trying to get him up, and nearly succeeding. Another two were riding double, seemingly arguing with each other.

All of them were too busy to keep lookout. When they saw what was approaching, the man on the double-ridden horse struck backward with his head, throwing his partner half-off, then pushing and shoving and beating at him with one fist as the horse swung in circles, rolling its eyes and getting ready to buck.

It did buck once as the second man came loose, and then starfished and crow-hopped sideways across the knee-high wheat; that spooked the mounts of the two trying to lift their fallen commander. They let him drop for a second to snatch for their reins, while the Devil Dog who'd shed his friend hammered at his mount with his heels until it lumbered back into a weary gallop.

Havel snorted. "Hope to God I never have to depend on a buddy like that," he said. "Eric, Luanne, take him. Be careful."

"You said it," Eric said grimly. "Haakkaa paalle! Let's go!"

He drew his backsword; Luanne reached behind and lifted the lance from its tubular scabbard at the right rear of her saddle, hefting it with a toss to grab it by the rawhide-wound grip section. Their horses rocked into a lope after the diminishing dot of the fleeing outlaw.

Havel squinted against the sun, shading his eyes with one hand and considering the three Devil Dogs grouped around the enemy commander. He was on his feet again, if a little shaky, and he'd kept one of the big kite-shaped shields his gang favored, decorated with the winged skull and twin runic thunderbolts. The other two had only their swords; one had lost his helmet.

"How are you doing for arrows?" Havel asked.

"Twelve left," Signe said, reaching over her shoulder to check with her fingers; you couldn't see them, of course.

"I've got eight," Havel said.

He looked around; nobody close-in fact, nobody in sight, except for the balloon. A cavalry battle in open country was a lot like one at sea; distances could open out fast.

"Ummmm: Mike, shouldn't we offer them a chance to surrender?" Signe said, nodding towards the three men a hundred yards away.

"I wish they would surrender," Havel said. "We could get some useful intelligence. But they won't."

"Why not?"

"Woburn, for starters. Remember that gallows he's building, in front of the county courthouse?"

"Yeah," she said, wincing slightly. "You know, before the Change, I was big against capital punishment."

"Well, we've all had to give up luxuries," he chuckled. "And considering these guys' records in the armed robbery, murder, arson and rape department: "

"Yeah," she said, her face hardening. "There is that."

They were two hundred yards away now. Worth a try, Havel thought. It really would be useful to get one for interrogation before we try conclusions with Duke Iron Rod. Is he really going to sit still while we trundle the doorknockers up to his front porch?

"Give up!" he shouted. "Give up, or your ass is grass!"

The reply came back thin across the distance: "Fuck you!" and the three men waved their swords and shook fists.

"You guys called it," Havel said with a shrug, pulling out an arrow. "Geeup, Gustav."

The horse was tired, but not worn out. He could feel it gathering itself as he leg-signaled it; it was getting so he was as comfortable riding with the reins knotted on the saddlebow as with them in his hands. And the Devil Dogs hadn't tried to skewer him with a crossbow bolt, which meant they probably didn't have an intact weapon between the three of them.

The horse went trot-canter-gallop. He went close this time, watching carefully and picking his target. The two shieldless men tried to duck under the cover of the dead horse:

"I don't fucking believe it," Ken Larsson said, staring at the steam engine.

Randy Sacket darted a triumphant glance at his father, who was about Ken's age; the younger man was in his twenties, with dark hair slicked back into a ponytail and tattoos on his forearms. His hands were big and battered as he traced the water and steam lines on the miniature traction engine-it stood about four feet high at the top of its boiler, with a disproportionately large seat.

"You're sure it's not some sort of mechanical failure?" Pete Sacket said.

The older Sacket ran a garage-cum-machine-shop on the edge of Craigswood, or had before the Change-it wasn't far from the spot the Bearkillers had picked to camp. Now he and his son and daughter-in-law cultivated a big truck garden and helped improvise plows and cultivators that could be drawn by horses or newly broken oxen. The steam engine stood in the dirt parking lot behind the sheet-metal buildings, along with a good deal of other abandoned equipment: much of it valuable for the heavy springs it contained.

You could throw things with springs and gears; he'd fired up the steam engine for curiosity's sake, and to keep his mind off the fact that his children were out fighting, and him not there.

Its boiler was hissing merrily, and wisps of steam escaped as more and more fuel oil was fed to the boilers-the machine was meant for tourists, and shoveling in coal would have been more authenticity than most at the county fair wanted.

What's happening is that the goddamned pressure isn't going up like it should, Larsson thought, wiping his hands on an oily rag.

He looked up at the setting sun, feeling a little guilty; there was a working day gone.

"No, it's in perfect working order," he said. "It's just that no matter how much fuel you put through, the pressure doesn't get high enough to do more than-"

He pointed to the flywheel, which spun-very, very slowly-in its mount on the top right of the boiler. Suddenly he threw the rag down and stamped on it, startling both of them; he wasn't a demonstrative man, and they'd both picked up on that even on short acquaintance.

"I told you, Dad," Randy said. "It's something to do with the Change!"

All three of them glared at the big toy. "How the hell could anything make steam engines stop?" the older mechanic said.

"How the hell could anything make radios and gasoline engines stop? All we can do is guess," Larsson said bitterly. "We're like King Arthur trying to make sense of a cell phone. This tears it, though-I'm morally certain it's some intelligent action. Alien Space Bats are stealing our toys. Someone or some-thing's sucking energy out of anything that meets certain parameters. And they're doing it selectively-just on the surface of the earth."

He shook a fist at the sky. "If we ever get a chance at payback, you sick sadistic bastards, you'll regret this!"

"I regret it already," Randy Sacket said mournfully. He pulled a package of cigarettes from the pocket of his denim vest. "These are my last smokes. And man, I miss my Harley real bad."

All three men sighed. Peter Sacket snapped off the feed to the little engine's firebox, and the hissing died. The flywheel took another few turns and stopped, and the pressure gauge dropped down from its pathetic figure towards zero.

"You know," Ken said thoughtfully, "you could build a steam engine to operate at the pressures we got here."

"You could?" both the mechanics said.

"Yeah. Sort of like the first ones ever built, we studied them in our history of engineering courses. The problem is that they'd weigh about half a ton per horsepower with cylinders ten feet long and they'd gobble fuel so fast you could only use them where it was pretty well free-that's why the first ones were used to pump out coal mines. For doing any useful work, and particularly for pushing a locomotive or a boat or a road vehicle. forget it. You'd be better off with an exercise wheel full of gerbils."

He nearly asked for one of the younger man's cigarettes, but restrained himself. Getting readdicted to a drug about to disappear for good from this part of the world would be extremely stupid.

"So much for the Chinese being better off than the rest of us," he said.

"Why should the Chinese be better off?"

"They still use a lot of coal-fired steam locomotives: or did, before the Change. Apparently whoever did this to the human race was quite thorough."

He sighed and turned back to the weapons he and the mechanics had been working on; gas cutting and welding sets still worked, and would as long as the acetylene held out. They'd already done the frames, wheels and parts to his specifications.

"This is the catapult," he said, pointing to the first. One of the Sackets lit a gasoline lantern and hung it on a pole. "It'll shoot great big steel spears. This is going to be the tre-buchet."

"Tree bucket?" Peter Sacket asked.

"Tray-boo-shet. It's just a big lever with a weight on the short end and a throwing sling on the long one," Larsson said. "It'll throw rocks; rocks weighing hundreds of pounds, and throw them half a mile, hard. Then this thing is going to be a covered ram, with a sloping steel roof and a big I-beam for the ram. Last but not least, this'll be a pump with a long nozzle controlled by the gantry I showed you the drawings for."

"Might be useful for firefighting," Sacket said.

Behind him, his son rolled his eyes.

Larsson grinned. "No, what'll be pumping is a mixture of chopped up tires dissolved in gasoline, then thickened further with detergent-soap flakes."

"Napalm!" the older Sacket cried in delight. "Christ, I was an armorer's mate in 'Nam and we loaded that stuff all the time. Those sorry-ass bikers will get out of town fast when that comes calling!"

"Yup," Larsson said. Guess I'd better not mention being an antiwar protester back then. "Then there are these metal shields on wheels, to push up to the wall-"

He stopped. Neither of the other men were listening to him anymore. Both were staring over his shoulder. He wheeled himself:

"That's torn it," Havel said grimly.

"What?" Luanne Hutton looked up; she'd been scrubbing blood from the foot-long steel head of her lance with a handful of grass.

Everyone else was doing the chores; piling up enemy weapons and armor, getting the wounded onto their horse-drawn ambulance and headed back to camp with Astrid and her teenagers; the battle had looped around quite close to Craigswood in the course of pursuit and maneuver; And making sure the enemy dead really were. Piling up the bodies and taking tally, too-the Bearkillers were being paid a per-confirmed-kill bonus.

They had taken a couple of prisoners, both wounded, and Pam was patching those up too. The sun was low in the west now, making Cottonwood Butte a black outline across the rolling prairie.

"Signe!" Havel called, cursing himself behind an impassive face. "Signe!"

The girl was a few yards away, helping with the captured horses and not looking at the gruesome clean-up work.

"Sound Fall in!"

She gave him a startled glance and then scrabbled for the bugle slung across her shoulder. The first try was a startled blat; then it rang out hard and clear. Everyone was tired, but they moved fast; horses were resaddled and everyone ready to go within a few minutes.

"Look yonder," he said grimly, as Signe fell in by his side.

The balloon had been winched down. Now it was rising again, rising high and paying out southward as fast as the cable could come off the windlass. The propane flame lit the white-and-red envelope from within, turning it into a Chinese lantern of improbable beauty with each flare as it rose against the darkening horizon to the east.

Havel rose in the stirrups and raised his voice: "Possibly I'm being too nervous, but I'm going to assume that means an attack on our camp. We're going home-as fast as the horses can carry us. Now."

He pulled Gustav's head around and clapped the spurs home.

"Buttercup," Billy Waters said. The teenager standing guard at the Bearkillers' notional perimeter nodded and replied: "Bluebonnet-advance and be recognized."

There was a sneer in the words as he gave the countersign, and Waters felt his teeth grind at it.

You'll be laughing out of the other side soon, you little fuck, he thought.

The twilight was deepening, but the youth's eyes widened at the sight of the men coming up behind the bowyer. A dozen big hairy shaggy men, carrying wrapped bundles in their hands.

"Hey, you guys aren't locals!" the teenager said. He raised his bow. "You stop right there!"

He raised his voice, a warbling yell with a break right in the middle of it: "Camp boss! We got a problem here!"

One of the Devil Dogs shoved Waters aside with a curse; that saved his life, that and Jeb Smith's hand on his ankle pulling him to the ground.

The Devil Dog swept his war-hammer free of the concealing rags and charged roaring, flourishing the massive weapon overhead. The boy on guard fired by instinct, with the same reflex he would have used if he'd suddenly found a scorpion in his bedroll.

The bowstring went snap against his leather bracer, and the Devil Dog's roar turned into a scream of pain as the arrow sank to its feathers in his thigh; the sweep of the war-hammer buried itself in the hillside turf.

Smith went tsk between his teeth and leveled his crossbow from where he lay. The short weapon gave a tung! and the heavy bolt hammered into the boy's body just below the breastbone, and he dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. Waters stared at the figure that jerked and then lay still:

"Thought you wanted 'em all dead," Smith observed, kneeling to drop the spanning claw over his crossbow's string and hook the crank to the butt.

"Uh. yeah," Waters said, licking his lips. Too late to back out now. Christ, what have I gotten myself into?

"Too late to back out now," Smith said, and Waters started at the words. "Well, get his bow, man. We've got work to do, and you wanted to see to your family, didn't you?"

Waters nodded dumbly and took the weapon and quiver; he already had a sword and knife at his waist, but he'd never pretended to be a blade man. The bow he could use; it had a lighter pull than his regular one, but just as heavy as the models he'd used to hunt deer. Together they ran on through the growing chaos of the camp; he could see fires and hear screams from the darkened town beyond as well.

I'm gonna be a big man here, he told himself. The Duke knows he needs me.

The dark was getting deeper, but only a few of the lanterns had been lit; what light there was came mostly from the hearths and cooking fires, red and glimmering. Figures ran past him amid a rising brabble of voices and the sudden scrap-metal clamor of edged metal striking its kin. Suddenly Smith was cursing beside him; he grabbed the lighter man by the sleeve and yanked him around.

"Jesus!" Smith said. "They're going to see that and Lord fucking Bear's only a couple of miles away. Come on!"

Waters's head jerked around. The balloon was rising again, with a booming roar of propane and a flare of light. He ran in Smith's wake, fumbling out an arrow for the bow.

"We're killing the horses!" Luanne cried.

"We can replace them," Havel snarled over the thunder of hooves.

"Shut up and ride, girl," her father gasped.

The Bearkillers came over the last crest. Craigswood lay below them, T-shaped-one main street, a crossbar and some laneways beyond. There were a couple of houses burning already, and more fires in the Bearkiller camp beyond.

No time to blame yourself, he thought. Just do what you can.

"Will!" he said, dropping back beside him. "We'll punch through Craigswood, and then clear the camp out. When we've finished there, we'll punch back and do the same in town."

"Yeah," the other man said. "How'd you know something was happening when you saw the balloon?"

"It occurred to me that if Duke Iron Rod was smart and had spies in Craigswood, he'd know that sitting and waiting for a siege where we had Ken's doorknockers was a bad idea. Looks like he threw double or nothing. Infiltrated most of his men in small parties, hid them out in ravines or something, and then launched that raid in broad daylight to draw us out."

"I'll take the rear," Hutton said, nodding. "Chance to finish him off, too."

He dropped back along the column of twos, pausing to brief the fighters. Everyone was grimly anxious-they could see their families and moving home under attack in front of them-but nobody broke ranks. Riding fast in the dark was risky enough as it was:

They passed the first house, dark and shuttered; then there were a line of men across the road, barring their way. Light gleamed red on the blades of their swords and axes.

Havel drew his sword, leaning forward with the point advanced and feet planted firmly in the stirrups.

"Haakkaa paalle!" he shouted.

"Haakkaa paalle!" the Bearkillers roared behind him, louder than the thunder of hooves on asphalt.

Waters raised the bow uncertainly.

In and around the balloon wagon were a knot of Bear-killers; a couple of armored fighters, and a tangle of women and children. Not his children, except for Reuben: and then he saw the faces of the others peering over the edge of the balloon's basket; them and half a dozen others and a twelve-year-old to keep them in order, and the weight must be why the rise was so slow. But there were Devil Dogs about, too, and he saw a brief bright glitter from the head of a crossbow bolt as it arched up towards the gondola.

"No!" he shouted.

"Oh, we are so fucked," Smith said conversationally. "I think a move's in order. Portland, maybe."

The other man's head swiveled back and forth; then he shrugged, sheathed his weapons and faded into the darkness. Waters felt an overwhelming urge to follow him: but walked forward instead.

His wife, Jane, was beside Reuben and Angelica Hutton, clutching a spear in an uncertain grip and prodding gingerly at dark figures that dodged about. Astrid Larsson sprang up from behind the massive winch that controlled the balloon and shot, the arrow a flickering streak in the semidarkness; someone shouted in pain amid the scrimmage beyond.

A huge bass voice bellowed: "Out of my way, you pussies!"

Iron Rod's great sword spun in the firelight, a pinwheel of light. The ash-wood of the spear shaft cracked, and the head flew off into the night. Iron Rod bellowed and strode forward, an iron-clad giant, swung again. Jane Waters flew sprawling; the merciful darkness hid what fell. The long sword rose again, over Reuben and Angelica where she stood by the wagon wheel, knife and hatchet in hand, spitting defiance.

Waters shot. The arrow punched into Iron Rod's heavy shield and stood quivering, humming a malignant note under the shrieks and clatter. He dragged his own sword free and ran forward, trying to remember the detested lessons, threw himself forward in a lunge. The point struck something hard and slipped, and he dropped the hilt and pinwheeled his arms as he staggered on the wet ground trying to regain his balance.

Something hit him, and he was lying on the ground. Thunder drummed in the earth beneath his ear, and then faded into a warm darkness. A sharp pain came with it, and then seeped away in weariness.

"Haakkaa paalle! Haakkaa paalle!"

Signe was screeching it as they thundered down the laneways between the tents, sheerly mad.

"Oh, shit!" Mike Havel shouted; he couldn't keep Gus-tav abreast of her-the gelding had been carrying more weight all day.

A huge figure in armor turned, throwing aside his broken shield. Ken Larsson toppled away as he turned; his face was a mask of blood, but he was clutching at his left wrist with his good hand as his sledgehammer dropped.

Havel could see the Devil Dog-surely Iron Rod himself- grin tautly as he poised ready, the bastard sword in a two-handed grip with the point up and back. The big man moved with astonishing grace as the horse thundered down on him, pivoting, the sword lashing out in the same motion. It cut the left foreleg in two just above the cannon bone, with a sound like a giant ax striking home in hardwood.

The horse's scream was enormous even among the clamor of battle. Iron Rod spun with the impact, laughing in his dense mat of beard, and Signe flew from the saddle to land with a bruising impact. Even then she managed to get her shield up, but the targe splintered under the stroke that glanced off it and into the nasal bar of her helmet.

He could hear her scream through the snap of breaking metal.

"Haakkaa paalle!" Havel shouted, as he slugged Gustav back on his haunches.

The big gelding reared, his hooves steelshod clubs flailing in the darkness. Iron Rod skipped backward, but that gave Havel the time to kick his feet free of the stirrups and slide cat-agile to the ground. The horse ran free, wild-eyed; Signe rolled in the dirt, both hands clutched to her face, screaming through her fingers.

Iron Rod roared and charged, his great blade whirling and scattering red drops. Havel landed with his knees bent and shield and blade forward, poised and ready.

The bastard sword swung down from left to right, a blow that would have lopped through a four-inch sapling. Havel moved into the stroke, hilt up and blade angled down behind him.

Iron Rod's sword struck his; there was a long skr-rinnnngg as the steel slanted away, redirected by the angle of impact. Even then, the weight of it nearly tore the hilt from his hand.

"My turn," Havel snarled.

The stepping lunge had taken him past Iron Rod, and the Devil Dog was twisted to his own right, locked for a moment by the momentum of his two-handed blow; not even a man that strong could stop a heavy sword instantly after putting everything he had into a strike.

Havel cut, backhand, the saber whistling with the speed of it. Then there was a heavy wet thunk as it struck behind Iron Rod's right knee below the skirt of his scale hauberk- the hamstring parting like a tense cable as Havel twisted and pivoted.

Iron Rod tried to pivot as well, and the leg buckled under him. He struck the earth with a bellow that was more rage than pain. The Bearkiller leader pounced again, smashing one heel down onto the hand that still gripped the heavy sword. Bones crunched, and Iron Rod shrieked;

Havel lashed out with one foot and the metal-shod tip of his boot struck his foeman's skull.

Iron Rod went limp. Havel sheathed his sword and took three paces before he knelt, holding Signe by the shoulders.

"He cut off my nose!" she cried in a thin shriek.

"No!" Havel said sharply.

She quieted; he forced her hands down and washed away some of the blood with his canteen.

"No, it's just a cut. It'll heal-not even much of a scar. The shield and the nasal bar broke the force." He pulled a bandage from the first-aid pouch at his belt. "Hold this to it."

Then he rose, looking around him; Pam had a tourniquet whipped around Ken Larsson's left forearm, he had his good hand pressed to one eye socket: and there was still fighting in the dark. Most of the attackers wouldn't know their leader was down. They'd have to do it the hard way, hunt them down through the night like the huge cunning sewer rats they were.

"Rally to me, Bearkillers!" he shouted.

To himself: "Let's get this cluster-fuck under control."

Sheriff Woburn nodded. "Let's give him his last wish!" he called up to his men. "He wanted to be hung here, and here he'll swing. Prod the bastard out!"

Michael Havel leaned on the pommel of his saddle as the Duke of the Devil Dogs stepped from the window of St. Hilda's tower; there were spearheads behind him, but he moved before they touched him.

Plus I think Sheriff Woburn has decided that his HQ should be here too. Smart man.

The heavy body fell four feet and jerked to a halt as the noose went tight; Iron Rod kicked for a moment and then hung still, his eyes looking out over the fair land of his duchy.