The Protector's War (57 page)

Aylward, Eilir and Astrid drew their bows to the ear and loosed within a half second of each other. A man spun back with a shaft in his shoulder; another pitched forward, turning and turning with his mouth open in a great O until he struck not far away and bounced—once. The third threw himself flat and rolled away from the edge, probably to light the alarm fire near the center.

But also towards the hole where the ladder comes up,
Eilir thought grimly.

She knew pretty much what he'd be seeing there; Sanjay's face coming through the trapdoor, grinning in the dark around the dirk clenched in his teeth. After climbing all that way expecting to see a crossbow aimed down at him, he wasn't going to be in any mood for half measures, either. Seconds after the thought two more men in the Protector's gear soared out from the edge of the platform, one limp, one falling windmilling and head-down until he landed not far from his comrade; the skull broke open on the rock and spattered.

Ouch,
Eilir thought. An instant later Sanjay and Aoife and Daniel waved from the spot he'd fallen and then faded backward.

The three on the ground turned at once, going to the earth and crawling away. More and more figures were spilling into the trail between the buildings. Time to sow a little confusion.

Eilir rose, crouching, and ghosted forward to the corner of the building, waited until a door opened on the other side, drew and shot…

 

Juniper ran panting towards the gate, but the mass of the Clan's war band surged past her on either side—all but her standard-bearer and the three told off to accompany her. The kilted mass struck the arrow-studded wood of the heavy fence and scarcely paused. One with a raven painted on his face in black and gold hit the low stone wall running and leapt clear over the points of the uprights with a banshee howl, chopping with his sword even as he landed on the other side. Others were less flamboyant but nearly as quick; one in each three would brace his back against the wood with knees bent and fingers linked into a stirrup, and toss the other two up as they jumped and planted a boot in his hands. Then hands would come down and haul them up to drop down on the other side of the fence.

Getting too old for that!
she told herself, following in Rowan's wake with the banner bearer at her side. The green-and-silver flag flapped in the wind of their passage, the crescent moon cradled between antlers.

The gate was of iron bars, welded into a diagonal lattice with openings palm-broad; the bars themselves were twisted from lengths of rebar heated and hammered together. A crossbow bolt flashed out and a clan warrior fell with a shriek of pain, but an instant later a Mackenzie arrow fired from behind him struck the crossbowman in the small of the back. He dropped; boots trampled across him in the darkness, and bones broke. Then the foremost Mackenzie rank was up to the iron, a murderous scrimmage with swords and short-gripped spears and dirks used at close range through the openings. The gate heaved and rattled against the bar that held it against the weight of many strong bodies, but it held.

“Room! Give me room!”
bellowed the man who was a blacksmith in peacetime.

They did, and the hammer side of his ax struck once, twice, and again. Sparks blasted out where it hit on the outside of the rightward edge, over the hinges. One blow and it sagged; another, and the upper corner came free. A dozen Mackenzies launched themselves at it then, some recklessly feetfirst. The iron grille fell inward, taking men down with it and beneath it.

Screaming, the warriors of the clan surged across it and into the narrow lantern-lit space beyond. There had been two dozen of Baron Molalla's foresters here, and as many ordinary soldiers. She had watched her folk do well against odds; with surprise and numbers on their sides, they were terrifying. The Protector's men tried again and again to form in ordered lines as they'd been taught, but the Mackenzies were all around them, fighting three on two or two on one, each a leaping, dodging blur of stabs and chops and smashing blows with the buckler. Everyone was too close-packed for distance weapons, and the sound was like a dozen loads of scrap metal falling on a stone smithy floor, with the white-noise surf of human voices thrown in.

Then the men-at-arms came out of the commandant's house; it took time to put on that gear. There were only four of them, but they were armored from neck to ankle, their kite-shaped shields broad and heavy and strapped with metal, held up face-high until nothing showed but the glaring eyes on either side of the helmet's nasal bar. They formed up in a blunt wedge and trotted forward in a jingle of steel and pounding of boots. An eddy of combat erupted around them and the Mackenzies drew back, one clutching a slashed arm, two dragging another more seriously wounded. Protectorate survivors elsewhere fought their way towards them, and a knot of civilians followed, including babes in arms. It would be difficult to shoot them down without injuring the noncombatants, but they couldn't let them escape either—and swarming them under would cost gruesomely.

And behind them, a glimmer of flames through the windows of the house; they must have set a blaze before they left.
We've got to get that fire out!
she thought.

She opened her mouth to make a call for their surrender. Rowan forestalled her, loping forward with his teeth showing in a fixed rictus of bloodlust amid the gorgon menace of his painted face, helmet gone and flaxen hair blowing wildly, a beacon in the dimness that drew clansfolk after him. And fighting, he shrieked, an ululating wail like fingernails on slate.

“Haro!”
the knight shouted, sloped his shield and cut downward with the Norman longsword.

Rowan's headlong rush had been a trick. His ax met the other's blade in midair and steel crashed on steel, sparks and clamor; sheer battering and mass swept the lighter weapon aside and nearly out of his opponent's hand, and the armored man staggered. His wrist and arm must have been numb with the impact, robbed of strength for a moment. The ax looped up overhead in a deceptively graceful motion, held at end and middle, and then Rowan's hands slid together at the end of the shaft as it slammed down again with all his better than two hundred pounds of muscle and bone behind it. The edge bit through the good riveted mail, through flesh and bone, and the knight dropped to the ground with a metallic crash, thrashing and bleeding from an arm half-severed at the shoulder.

Cynthia had been holding the man on her brother's unshielded left in play with her battle spear, using it like a bladed quarterstaff, the head and butt cap like streaks of light in the darkness, booming on the shield, sweeping towards his face, stabbing down at a foot. The baron's trooper was so fixed on it he never noticed the hammer side of Rowan's ax until it crashed into his neck below the flare of his helmet. Bone snapped, and the others were falling…

“Scathach!”
Rowan shrieked in terrible exultation, whirling the weapon up again.

Then Juniper was moving, faster than she thought was in her, leaping before him. She spread her arms wide and met his eyes; there was an almost palpable shock as green met blue—although the pupils of his had expanded to almost swallow the iris, like windows into night.

“No!”
she said, driving her will forward like a spearpoint of her own. “These aren't fighters, Rowan!”

For a moment she thought that dreadful ax would come down on her, and then humanity flooded back into the younger Mackenzie. He staggered, mouth loose and slack; well she knew that weakness which flooded in when you returned from beyond the world of common day.

“Get the fire out,” she snapped.
An order will help him come to himself.
“Quickly, before it shows at a distance.”

The fight was over—nothing left but pursuit and killing amid the shadows, and the long scream of a man who'd chosen the cliff over the red blades and painted grinning faces running behind him. Juniper grimaced as she slid her own unmarked sword back into its sheath.

Then, very softly, she murmured to herself: “What is it we've brought back, to run wild once more on the ridge of the world?”

 

Sixteen hours later and twenty miles to the west, the Mackenzies turned to watch stars appearing over the Cascades as night came towards them like a moving wall of shadows. They were encamped on an island of firm ground in a new swamp; the smells of evening were abroad, woodsmoke, cooking, horses and cut grass over by the picket line. Other stars appeared against the mountains now—great fire beacons burning in the gloaming, distance-shrunk to trembling candle flames dancing against encroaching night; first one north of Table Rock, then more to either side, and racing past them to the northward, heading west.

Juniper shivered as she looked at them.
Like the old days,
she thought. Very old days, along the frontier between England and Scotland; half her ballads came from there, from the ancient tales of her father's people—the folk who'd given the words
blood feud
and
unhallowed hand
and
black mail
to the English language.

There had been nights like this there, when the balefires burned from hilltop to hilltop, from the North Sea to the Irish Channel. Warning laird and crofter that the great reiver clans were out, swarming from Liddersdale and Teviotdale and a dozen other nests, riding a thousand lances strong to break the Border.

And now the Mackenzies are out,
she thought mordantly.
Granted we're on foot and carrying longbows, but the principle of the thing…

“They've twigged,” Sam Aylward said, coming to stand beside her with a piece of sausage in his hand, his prosaic matter-of-fact tone doubly welcome. “Probably those prisoners got loose—well, we knew they'd not stay tied up forever. Everything gets harder now.”

Juniper nodded. “But
they're
reacting to what
we
do,” she pointed out. “Now we have to move faster, and always be doing something new before they can deal with what we've done. It's only thirty miles to cross the Valley; a day's travel, maybe two.”

Sam smiled. “This will draw their troops away from the southern border, too, pull them north and east,” he said. “That'll make it a lot easier for our folk and the refugees.”

“And we're appropriately dressed,” Juniper said, touching kilt and plaid. At his look she grinned and went on, quoting a poem from wars older and more savage than any this land had yet known:

Crossing Tavern, Willamette Valley, Oregon

May 12th, 2007 AD—Change Year Nine

“
S
o that's why they are all stirred up, Juney,” Mike Havel chuckled. “Tweaking him, as you said back at our conference. We thought it would be the perfect time to clean out Crusher Bailey, with the Protector himself doing something up the Columbia, and his reserve cavalry all east over the river. Either they've got a lot more cavalry than we thought, or our English friends here are more important than we thought. Perhaps we'd better hear from them before you fill us in on the details of how you got from Table Rock to the Willamette.”

Juniper nodded. It had taken only half an hour, spaced out between bites; the good food was welcome after a week of riding, fighting, and snatching meals catch-as-catch-can.

“I'm curious too, to be sure,” she said. “And poor Sam's fair bursting.”

Sam Aylward grinned his thanks at her—he'd been smiling a good deal since he saw Sir Nigel and the others. He'd spoken of the Lorings, but not often, probably because memories of home were too painful when he thought everyone he knew dead.

“I might as well make the introductions,” he said. “Sir Nigel was my CO in the SAS for quite some time, and we were neighbors before that. Tilford Manor's not far from Crooksbury and my father's farm—where it was before he sold up, that is.”

“Two of the least successful agricultural enterprises in Hampshire,” Nigel Loring said, with a slight self-depreciating smile. “Aylward's father and I were in a sort of race to see who could drag out the agonizing process of bankruptcy longest. I won, but then I had my munificent officer's wages to offset the yearly losses, and I had more assets to borrow against. No, I lie—we did make a clear profit, twice. 1974 and 1987.”

I think I like this little Englishman,
Juniper thought, smiling back.
And if he had a hand in the making of Sam Aylward, he must be some considerable sort of a man.

“And this great lump of a gallybagger here, his father ran the Pied Merlin,” Aylward went on. “
And
he's a second cousin of sorts. Bad blood coming out there, inbreeding…”

“Led me astray with tales of soldiering on his visits home, Sam did,” John Hordle said, beaming. “Lies, lies, nothing but lies!”

“The more fool you to believe them, then,” Alyward said. He turned to the younger Loring: “And you must have been just down from Sandhurst when things Changed, sir.”

“I was, and it was luckier than I thought at the time. But Father was more at the center of things.”

The elder Loring took up the story, eventually summing up: “…quite an efficiently managed coup and purge, and we'd been very reluctant to openly confront His Majesty. If it hadn't been for the Tasmanian ship being in port and willing to take us into exile…well, the king
might
have allowed me and mine to retire to Tilford Manor eventually. On the other hand, he might not have, after the queen had been at him for a while. I'm afraid we'd all become deplorably case-hardened by then. We took Captain Nobbes's offer and sailed from King's Lynn—”

“Ah,” Mike Havel said. “And you pulled into Portland in…what, early March? Sorry if I'm cutting you short, it's very interesting and I'd appreciate the whole story when there's time, but we
do
have immediate local problems with your former host there.” A crooked smile. “As did you, I understand.”

“Their ship got in the first week of March,” Signe said. “But the Protector kept it under very tight security.”

“Yes; the
Pride of St. Helens
was on a world survey voyage, you see.”

Juniper leaned forward as well. Aylward felt his ears prick; this wasn't just a matter of far-off things long ago. It affected his new home, and his family and people.

Loring went on: “Well, at first everything went quite well. I can't say that I liked this Arminger chappie even on first acquaintance, but I didn't take against him at once the way poor Captain Nobbes did, we'd seen plenty of worse rulers thrown up by the Change…and when I did realize there was no dealing with him, I flatter myself I didn't show it. Then it became obvious that he was delaying our departure for some reason…”

 

Portland Protectorate, Willamette Valley, Oregon

April 6th, 2007 AD—Change Year Nine

 

It was a fine bright spring day as the Protector and his guests rode out from Portland, westward to a manor that he'd suggested as quarters for their visit. The burnt-out suburbs were almost behind them now, although for most of the trip you'd scarcely suspect humans had ever lived there anyway, save for the road itself.

Tall trees left standing before the Change reared among saplings already twice man-height, above a tangled mat of vegetation, vines and brambles and hedges gone wild into shaggy walls; forest had gone even further towards reclaiming the abundant pre-Change parks and natural corridors. It was all washed by recent rain, intensely green, starred with flowers, swarming with insects and loud with songbirds. There was game trace of everything from rabbit to elk and boar, and even emu—plus one astonishing set of pugmarks that were unmistakably tiger, although nothing beyond butterflies and birds showed itself with so many carriages and riders on the pavement. The sound of their hooves rumbled and echoed as the road wound between hills crowned with tall firs.

Reminds me of parts of England,
Nigel Loring thought—of the thorn jungles and spreading woodland that had taken over where resettlement hadn't reached, right down to the descendants of game-farm escapees haunting the new wilderness.
Like those hippo in, of all things, the Fens.
Only an occasional snag of wall or stretch of concrete or asphalt showed the hand of man, or a creeper-grown lamppost.

“Portland's virtually the only large city we've seen that isn't completely deserted,” Captain Nobbes said, turning in the saddle to look behind them at the skyscrapers, and at the unearthly white cone of Mt. Hood floating against the eastern horizon. “
Partial
destruction is very rare.”

“I'm not surprised,” the overlord of the Protectorate said. “From my scouts' reports, it's certainly the only one in western North America of any size that isn't empty of anything but bones—usually gnawed bones.”

Nobbes nodded. “We've been around the world, and anything that had a population of over a quarter million is dead, and has a dead zone around it. The bigger the city, the bigger the dead zone—and in places where they overlap, there's nothing left. Most of Europe west of the Vistula, both sides of the Mediterranean, pretty well all the Middle East, Turkey, Japan, Korea, eastern China…Well, there's Singapore, but that was a special case—they all moved out in an organized mass.”

Lord Protector Arminger—Nigel Loring assumed that was a bit of a joke—nodded graciously.

“The circumstances here were rather exceptional,” he said. “I saw that the population had to be reduced, and quickly, or everyone would die. So I and my associates—the Portland Protective Association—seized whatever bulk foodstuffs we could before they were wasted or lost. Forty percent of American wheat exports to Asia went through Portland. The amount in the pipeline was considerable, and we took over elevators, trains stalled on the tracks into the city, ships in port and in the Columbia. And then we, mmm…encouraged the surplus population to leave and shift for themselves; with that, there was enough to keep more than thirty thousand people alive for a year. After about six months we began to expand into the countryside round about, most of which was as you say a dead zone—dead from Seattle in the north as far south as Eugene, except for some enclaves of…troublesome bandits and cultists on the fringes. You can imagine the difficulties—lack of tools, lack of skills…”

“Remarkable that you've accomplished this much,” Nobbes said, his voice neutral.

Well, you Tasmanians had a good deal of luck, with the Bass Strait to protect you,
Loring observed to himself, slightly irritated by the unspoken distaste.

The thought made him feel a little more sympathetic to Arminger than his first impression had left him, and he had to admit that the man had been scrupulously polite. Portland's ruler was a tall man in his middle forties with a square chin and knob-strong cheekbones, light-brown hair falling to his shoulders, dressed casually in loose black trousers tucked into high boots, crimson jacket, a dagged hood with long liripipe, and a broad-brimmed hat with a peacock feather tucked into the band. A dagger and double-edged longsword swung from his belt, the hilt a surprisingly plain affair of steel crossguard and worn, sweat-stained leather-cord grip. He looked fully capable of using it effectively, too. For now he held the reins in his left hand, and a peregrine falcon in hood and jesses on his gauntleted right wrist.

Nobbes evidently felt the silence as they came out into settled country; Arminger was the sort of man who could use quiet as a weapon, and Nobbes one of the more numerous variety made nervous by it.

“This reminds me of parts of Tasmania,” he said, speaking rather loudly to carry over the rumbling thunder of hooves. “Near Launceston, and up the Tamar. Even to all the people in the fields, and my, didn't all those yobbos from the towns complain!”

“You seem to have made a remarkable recovery, though,” Arminger said. “We lost nine in ten or more of our population, and you?”

“We were hungry, but lucky with it—no famine at all, ah, my lord Protector,” Nobbes said. “But we've found a number of islands that did as well as Tasmania—the South Island in New Zealand, they've got nearly a million survivors, and Prince Edward Island in Canada with over a hundred thousand; Bornholm and Gotland in the Baltic; no famine there either. And many more that did worse than that but well compared to nearby mainlands—Fyn, Sicily, Crete, Cyprus. And Iceland held out for a year, before the British evacuated them.”

“Logical,” Arminger replied. “Most of the farming countryside in the advanced countries produced huge surpluses of food for people far away. Even with the massive drop in productivity after the Change there was enough for the few residents and they could readjust in time—unless they were overrun by starving refugees. Islands that weren't too built up would be safe from that, just as the far interior was here—Idaho, for instance. Or at least an island could defend its borders.”

He went on, like a genial host: “I've been told the landscape here is like England, too, Sir Nigel,” he said to Loring.

“More like parts of France,” Loring said. “The Loire Valley, Anjou or Touraine…near Bourgueil, for example. Except that you can't see mountains from there, of course. Perhaps more like the Dordogne country, as far as the view of the middle distance…larger scale, of course.”

Arminger looked pleased. “Yes, now that you mention it, this does look a little like parts of France. I visited Tours as a student, long ago…how is France doing?”

“It's empty, save for the dead,” the Englishman said flatly. “The king sent a mission through a few years ago to salvage works of art and take a survey, and I was in command of the escort. We've planted a few outposts on the Norman coast, and at the mouths of the Loire and Gironde. Everything else is scrub thicket reverting to forest, with the odd pocket of neosavages, no more than ten or twenty thousand in all.”

“Pity,” Arminger said. “It was a beautiful country, don't you agree, my sweet?”

His wife looked up from her accounts in the open carriage; Sandra Arminger was a woman in her thirties, brunette but with something fox-faced about her, and clever dark eyes.

“It was overpriced and they never did learn about changing their underwear regularly,” she said. “The food was good—as long as you didn't think too much about the kitchen or what was under the chef's fingernails.”

“Think of the art, and the chateaux, and the scenery,” said Arminger.

“Think of the bad-mannered waiters, and the drivers all intent on killing you.”

“Philistine.”

“Romantic.”

The lord of Portland turned to his guests again: “We're past Beaverton, out of what used to be called the Silicon Forest. Now it's the New Forest. I'm keeping it and the big parks west of town as a hunting preserve…”

Loring gave an involuntary snort of laughter. “A hunting preserve called the New Forest? I say, you're following Norman precedent rather closely, what?”

Arminger's grin was charming. “Touché!”

His wife spoke: “Your family is of Norman origin, isn't it, Sir Nigel?”

“Remotely,” he said. “But yes, there was a Loring in the Conqueror's train—a
miles,
or household knight. He was rewarded with land in Hampshire, which stayed in the family…until last year, in fact.”

“Remarkable,” Arminger said; his enthusiasm seemed genuine. “Unique, perhaps?”

“Rare, but not quite unique. There were the Berkeleys—descendants of Eadnoth the Staller, a Saxon nobleman who went over to the Conqueror and was killed in 1068. His descendants held land in the West Country right down to the Change, which I'm sorry to say they didn't survive.”