The Protector's War (45 page)

Near Amity, Willamette Valley, Oregon

May 12th, 2007 AD—Change Year Nine

“S
t. George for England!”

The bandit in front of Havel started to turn, jolted by the unfamiliar cry from behind him. He jerked his head back with a scream of panic as he realized what he'd done by dropping his guard, then looked down incredulously at the yard of steel through his stomach.

Havel wrenched the sword back. Muscles tried to clamp on it, but the knifesharp blade severed them as they did; the sensation was hideously like carving a pork roast. The man doubled over with an oooff, like someone who'd been punched in the gut—except that he wouldn't be getting up. Havel turned the motion of withdrawal into a loop, ending in a short economical overarm chop at the man behind the one who collapsed hugging his gut. The sword smacked into bone, and when the bandit clutched at his left arm with his other hand the limb came off in it. He stared at it for an instant and then turned, shrieking like a machine grinding through rock, spraying blood into the faces of his fellows.

“Hakkaa paalle!” Havel shrieked, sword and shield working together in a blur of speed.

A spray of red drops flew through the air as he cut backhand; the frame of a shield cracked like a gunshot, and the arm bone beneath it. He smashed the edge of his own shield into the man's face as he dropped his guard, then thrust over the falling body; the point went home in the meat of an upper arm, and he twisted it like a coring knife…

“Oh, shit, Bearkillers!” one of the outlaws screamed.

“Hakkaa paalle!”

Signe screeched the war cry and killed the man in front of her with a stepping thrust to the neck that snapped out and back in a blurred glitter of steel. Then the bandits broke, backing up fast, crowding each other in the doorway and then turning and running. Havel followed. The sunlight outside made him blink for an instant, shield and blade up. Nobody struck at him; they were too busy running away.

And dying. Another horse stood nearby; the rider had dismounted, a big man plying a longbow with wicked skill.

It was the two mounted men close by who were
really
startling. As he watched, one pulled his lance out of the back of a fleeing bandit—running away from a lancer on foot was an exercise in futility—and swung the long shaft into an upright position. His companion sloped his red-running sword over one shoulder; both used their bridle hands to push up their visors as their horses turned back towards the ruined video store and away from the dozen or so outlaws flogging their horses east across the tall grass of the fallow field.

Visors,
Havel thought, mentally gibbering.
Yikes!

The two horsemen were in full plate armor, cap-a-pie, head to foot, the sort of thing people before the Change would have thought of as a King Arthur knight-in-armor outfit. It was enameled in green, and he blinked and squinted to see the details.

Sallet helms. Milanese style,
he thought.
Fifteenth century. Agincourt armor, Henry V, Wars of the Roses, once more unto the breach, St. Crispin's Day, Joan of Arc and all that good shit.

The Larsdale library had a book on it, part of a series on the history of arms and armor with illustrations and diagrams. He'd gone through it when they'd considered making some like it; the plate harness was good equipment, not much heavier than a mail hauberk, nearly as flexible, and better protection against arrows or crushing weapons. In the end they'd decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Plate had to be shaped to the individual the way a tailor hand-cut a good formal suit, and the level of time and trouble required was a whole order of magnitude greater than with the mostly chain armor they were using.

“Good day,” the first armored horseman said; both bore a blazon of five red roses on their shields. “Saw you were in a spot of trouble with these bandit chappies and mixed it in. Hope that's all right, eh? Had to clear the way, in any event.”

The accent was English, in a rather old-fashioned plummy Eton-Oxford-Guards way Havel had heard only in movies before the Change. Mild eyes regarded him from beneath the raised visor, blue and a little watery; a fair mustache shot with silver confirmed his estimate for the man's age, a bit north of fifty. He rode a big yellow horse as if he'd been born there; the saddle was a high-cantled war model, and the stirrup leathers were long, leaving his legs nearly straight. The man beside him was bigger and younger, a lock of yellow hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, eyes blue-and worried.

“Many thanks,” Havel said, containing a burst of questions; he hadn't seen anyone from farther away than Montana for years, and now…

“Quite welcome. We'll be moving along then, we're actually in a bit of a hurry, you see—”

“Mike, Unc' Will's arrived!” Signe called.

Do not succumb to information overload,
Havel thought, his head swiveling west. A trumpet sounded from there.
About time,
he thought, and threw up a hand as Will Hutton reined in with a spurt of gravel, his lancers dusty and foam on the necks of their horses. He pointed northward with one gauntlet and spoke. “Bossman, Arminger's men are comin' down the road. Troop strength at least. More off to westward, that's why we were late—had to get around 'em. Looks like they're beatin' the bushes for someone, and they want him
bad
.”

Havel bared his teeth as he looked around once more; there wasn't much time, but going off half-cocked wasn't the answer.

“I presume you're no friend of the Protector's?” he asked the older man in the plate armor.

“Rather! The rotter's after our heads, I'm afraid.” A calm smile. “Name's Loring. Sir Nigel Loring. Late of the Blues and Royals, and the Special Air Service regiment. My son, Alleyne, and the big fellow there is Little John Hordle.”

Havel blinked in shock.
All right, information overload has arrived.
Then he nodded coolly—it didn't really
matter
. There wasn't time to gibber and rave and run around waving his arms.

“Believe it or not, I've met a friend of yours, Sir Nigel, and he's told me about you…later, later! Will, get Kendricks patched up and out of here.”

“Ambulance wagon's about a quarter-mile back,” Hutton said, and made a motion to his signaler. The young man put the trumpet to his lips and blew a complex pattern.

Havel went on: “Then throw out a screen and tell Arminger's men to get the hell out. If they come at you, skirmish and fall back. Eric, Luanne, you come with us.
Move.
”

He turned to Nigel Loring. “My name's Mike Havel. Aka
Lord Bear
around here. Also no friend of the Protector, as you've probably heard. I knew there were some Australians or Englishmen in Portland, but…later! I was doing some bandit-ambushing when you showed up—”

…and nearly got me killed by delaying Will…

“—but I'd rather not restart my war with the Protectorate just now. I do offer sanctuary; we don't extradite fugitives from that bunch. My men'll keep Arminger's busy, and sure you're still running directly south. You come with me; we'll finish up my chore, and then head home. Where I'll be
very
interested to hear your story.”

Loring looked at him steadily for an instant, then nodded with a brisk decisive gesture.

“Sanctuary…will be very welcome. Lead on, Lord Bear.”

He was evidently making a snap judgment on Havel's character as well. His followers had all been waiting for that small gesture; the big longbowman grabbed the bridle of a horse whose bandit owner would never need it again and swung into the saddle. The knight and his son fell in behind Havel, and the Bearkiller leader waved.

“They went thataway,” he said, pointing to the clump of woods a bowshot distant to the northeast. “Follow me!”

 

Will Hutton stood in his stirrups and chopped a hand forward. The Bearkiller troop rode northward, swinging out to make a single line across the road and the fields on either side. That kept their pace down to a canter, which was just as well; the Protectorate force ahead was coming on at a round trot, in column of fours, a massive rumble of hooves and rustling clatter of equipment and bristle of lances, with a few mounted crossbowmen out in front. Those turned back when they saw the Bearkiller, and the column of men-at-arms writhed for a moment and began to shake out into a two-deep line about two-thirds the width of his. There were more than thirty of them, all well mounted; he stood in the stirrups and used his binoculars. The big kite-shaped shields were matte-black with the Lidless Eye, not quartered with a baron's blazon—the Protector's household troops, then. Beyond them the ground dipped a little, but he could see sunlight breaking on edged metal there, too; probably infantry coming up at the double, but quite a bit behind.

“Halt!” Hutton said, swinging his fist up. Then: “Wings forward! Extend to the west!”

The formation shifted, each end thrown north, the one to his left stretching further and a pair of the riders from the right trotting over to join it. The shorter wing to his right was anchored on Palmer Creek; a steep bare bank running down to a broad marshy channel—the Protector's men could get around there, but they'd have to take quite a while at it. One thing Hutton had learned long ago was that hooves didn't go well with soft footing, particularly when they were carrying two hundred pounds plus of armored rider and gear, so he didn't have to worry about
that
flank.

The Protector's horsemen were coming towards him in a line centered on the road, but it was a line that rode deeper into an unequal-armed V every moment.

They're getting uneasy about it, too,
he thought, grinning whitely.
Good. I do purely hate that man and all his crew.

The enemy formation slowed an instant or two before their commander signaled a halt about two hundred and fifty yards away, the limit of practical archery. He rode forward a little with his trumpeter at his side; Hutton tightened his thighs to move his mount out from his own formation. At that signal of mutual intent to talk they both trotted forward to meet midway between the two war bands.

The Protector's man halted his mount without needing to use the reins; Hutton nodded slightly in acknowledgment, and glanced approvingly at the big glossy black animal. They both removed their helmets and propped them on their saddlebows, another bit of the etiquette that had grown up over such matters in the last few years. Arminger's commander was in his late twenties, around six feet tall and broad-shouldered, with the hard muscular look anyone got if they trained every day in armor. His face was harder still, high-cheeked and snub-nosed; his corn-colored hair was cropped closer than a crew cut over the area behind his ears, and a few inches longer forward of that. That was the fashion among the Protectorate's military elite; it looked deeply silly as far as Hutton was concerned, but it helped prompt his memory.

Alexi Stavarov's boy,
he thought silently. Then: “Lord Piotr.”

Alexi had been one of Arminger's original backers in Portland just after the Change, according to Signe's research; if he wasn't second-in-command it was because the Protector was careful to keep the power structure of his realm at the level just below himself full of bickering rivals competing for his favor, without any clear chain of command. What the arrangement lacked in efficiency, it more than made up for in security. At least from the Protector's point of view, and Hutton thoroughly approved from his own.

The odds are long enough, without them gettin' their shit together,
he thought, waiting with raised brows.
Take your time, Russkie-boy, take your time. Time is my friend.

“Lord William,” Stavarov replied, equally polite. “Might I ask why you're blocking the road?”

“Might be I could ask what you're
doing
on this road, Piotr Alexandrovitch?” Hutton said. “Wouldn't be thinkin' of crossing our border, would you?”

Piotr Stavarov flushed; he was fair enough that it showed despite an outdoorsman's weathered tan. “This is Protectorate territory,” he snapped. “It's a long walk to your border. We're patrolling. You are trespassing.”

“Don't see any of your people on the ground hereabouts,” Hutton pointed out. “And we're here because we're hunting bandits. So you
don't
patrol it, or not enough to keep road agents down. Seems to me your claim is sort of mostly talk.”

“We're pursuing dangerous criminals ourselves,” Stavarov replied. “Are you assisting them deliberately? Because standing in our way makes it more likely that they will escape.”

Which was brass, if you liked, since his father had been a smuggler, drug runner, extortionist and loan shark before the Change and a mass murderer after it. For that matter, he'd been a KGB agent back before the Berlin Wall fell. Back when what happened on other continents mattered…