The Protector's War Read online

  She nodded briskly, swung out of bed and began to dress. They had had twenty-two years together before the Change and eight since, and neither needed many words to know the other's mind. He quickly slipped into his colonel's undress uniform—that was the post-Change version, designed to be worn under armor or as fatigues, tough and practical and with grommets of chain mail under the armpits, to cover the weak spots in a suit of plate. This set was clean, but there were stains from blood and sweat and the rust that wore off even the best-kept armor. His wife looked a question at him as he felt behind the frame of an eighteenth-century painting of a London scene and took out the dinner knife. He'd palmed it when the Varangians had arrested them at table with the king at Highgrove and brought them here. It had been filed down to a point and given a respectable edge over the last two weeks, and she'd carefully braided and tied unraveled fabric from the bottom of an Oriental rug onto the grip so that it wouldn't slip in his hand.

  He slipped the blade up the right sleeve of his jacket. She dressed then herself, in riding breeches and tweed jacket—they were allowed exercise, though always separately and under heavy guard. King Charles had made their confinement comfortable enough, probably the result of guilt and reluctance. Queen Hallgerda hadn't managed to talk him into throwing the pair into a dungeon or sending them to the headsman's ax—not quite yet.

  But she will do it, given enough time to convince him it's for the good of the realm. Damn the woman!

  "What do you suppose is happening?" Maude said calmly.

  "Not quite sure, old girl, but I think it's a rescue attempt," he said, his voice equally serene.

  Although I feel more nervous than I have in thirty years, he thought. It's a trifle different when the wife's along too.

  "I don't suppose…" Maude said.

  Sir Nigel shook his head. "If His Majesty was going to give us the chop for asking about Parliament and elections and lifting the Emergency Powers Act once too often, the Varangians would handle it without needing to sneak about through the shrubbery. Light the candle, please. If it's friends come to call, we should make sure they know we're in. Then give me a spot of help with the furniture."

  She nodded calmly; he felt a stab of pride as she picked up a lighter and flicked it alive, then went around the room touching the flame to candlewicks and the rapeseed-oil lanterns, as calmly as if they were back home at Tilford. Mellow golden light filled the room, touching the chinois-erie of the wallpaper, the pictures and mirrors in their ornate frames, and the pale plaster scrollwork medallions on the ceiling. It was a melancholy sight, in its way; the detritus of a thrice-lost world, the elegant symmetries of the Age of Reason filtered through the Age of Steam and his own twentieth century. The current situation was more suited to an older, darker period—the Wars of the Roses, perhaps, or even the stony roads of Merlin's time.

  A few seconds sufficed to force a mixture of wood splinters and candle wax into the keyhole; then he shoved wedges made from shims worked out of the interiors of tables and settees under the doors. Together they dragged a massive desk over and tipped it up against the frame, lodging the edge against the pediment above and bracing smaller items in the remaining space. It had all been planned in advance, of course, against the chance they would need it.

  "That should hold them for a little while," he said, as a shout from the other side asked what they were doing.

  Maude nodded, she was a strong-featured woman of fifty, two years younger than he, and three inches taller than his own five foot five. It went unspoken between them that the Varangian commander almost certainly had orders to see that they didn't survive any rescue attempt.

  "If you could detach this table leg for me, darling?" she asked politely.

  He nodded, braced a foot against the frame and wrenched the mahogany loose, working it back and forth so that the pegs wouldn't squeal when they broke. Sir Nigel was a small man, but nobody who'd seen him exert himself thought he was weak. Maude smiled and hefted the curved hardwood.

  "Makes me nostalgic, rather." At his glance and raised eyebrow, she explained: "About the size and weight of the hockey stick I used back at Cheltenham as a girl."

  She took a good grip on it and waited; Sir Nigel took the opportunity to use the splendid bathroom one last time. He'd rather have had his armor with him, but unlike a suit of plate, the cloth uniform did have a button-up fly, and a functioning loo wasn't all that common these days. He might as well have one last chance at decent English plumbing.

  As he returned a horn sounded, dunting and snarling in the night—not the brass instrument the regular forces used, but the oxhorn trumpet the Special Icelandic Detachment affected. The clash of steel sounded, rapidly coming closer, and men's voices shouting—and then a few screaming in pain.

  Nigel Loring smiled slightly. "And they wouldn't tell us where Alleyne was," he said dryly, feeling another glow of pride—for his son, this time.

  "I rather think we know, now," she said.

  "Right on schedule," Alleyne Loring said. "Good old Major Buttesthorn."

  They approached the great Georgian country house from the west. The long stretch of grass was being used to graze the garrison's horses and working oxen since the Basin Pond provided a natural watering point, and large dark shapes shied and moved aside as they trotted forward. A sudden clash of steel sounded faintly from over Woburn Abbey's high roof, and then the snarl of a signal horn. Hordle grinned more widely. The SIDs' families were quartered in one of the two big outbuildings behind the main house, the South Court, and the cover there was much better for a clandestine approach. The diversionary attack was going in right as planned—with maximum noise and plenty of fire arrows. That ought to keep the day watch at home; with luck, some of the ones on night duty would hurry back.

  But not all of them—and if the rescue party wanted Sir Nigel and Lady Maude out alive, they had to move quickly. For that matter, the garrison commander would probably send a detachment out here as soon as he collected his wits. Hit them fast when they weren't looking, and put the boot in hard while they were still wondering about the first time…

  "That's the window," Alleyne said, pointing.

  "Just like the drawings, sir," Hordle said.

  The abbey was built like a giant uneven H, with the short arms and the Corinthian facade in the middle of the connecting arm facing west, and the longer east-facing ones enclosing a court open in that direction. The rooms faced west, and the candlelit window was sixty feet up and a hundred distant from where the storming party halted.

  Hordle took a blunt-headed arrow from his quiver; it had a small slip of paper fastened to it with a bit of elastic. He drew carefully, well under full extension, and shot. The arrow hissed away, and an instant later he was rewarded with a tinkle of breaking glass.

  The arrow smashed the windowpane and flicked across the room to dent the plaster. Nigel Loring winced slightly at how narrowly it had missed a painting by Nebot; his wife was already unfastening the message.

  "'Stand clear and pick up the string from the next,' " she read. "But dear, we can't climb down even if they do have a rope attached. The bars…"

  Whhhptt.

  The first shot hit the bars and bounced back. The second landed in the room trailing a thin cord, and Maude Loring began to haul it in hand over hand, a pile of it growing at her feet.

  "Sir Nigel!" a voice called from the hall outside their suite. "Please to open the door, immediately!"

  He didn't bother to reply. Seconds later the first ax hit the outside door of their suite.

  "Keep going!" he barked to his wife, and went to stand beside the doorway.

  Through the piled furniture he could see the panels begin to splinter; a two-handed war ax made short work of anything not built to military specifications. The dry splintery scent of old wood filled the air, followed by the glug-glug-glug sound of Icelandic—in this case panting curses between grunts of effort. Loring flipped the knife down into his hand and into a thumb-on-pommel grip�
��good for a short-range stab—then risked a glance over his shoulder.

  The heavy rope had come up at the end of Maude's cord—two of them, in fact, both woven-wire cable. One was the top of a Jacob's ladder, and she was a little red-faced with effort before she clipped that to the bar nearest the left side of the window. The other had a ring clip swagged onto the end. She fastened it to the center bar, made sure that the thin cord that prevented it from falling back was still tied to a chair, and stepped back.

  "Encourage them to hurry, my dear," he called, and turned back to his own task—making sure the Varangians didn't break through too soon.

  "You chaps! Do hurry—we're in a spot of bother here!"

  He heard her voice crying out into the darkness, and then the first axhead came all the way through the panels of the door. It withdrew, and took a yard-wide chunk of the battered wood with it. A gauntleted hand groped through to feel for the knob and lock. Sir Nigel had anticipated that, and left a pathway he could use; he slid forward and stabbed backhanded, his arm moving with the flicking precision of a praying mantis. Stainless steel stabbed through buff leather and flesh and bone, and he barely managed to withdraw it in time as the guardsman wrenched his arm back with a scream.

  One, he thought. Out of this fight, if not crippled.

  There was no great army of men here; less than thirty. The entire Special Icelandic Detachment numbered only three hundred, and it was a quarter of the ration strength of the British army as of Change Year Eight—and the troops all spent the majority of their time laboring on public works or doing police duties or working to feed themselves. More wasn't necessary when the whole of mainland Britain held only six hundred thousand dwellers.

  Immigrants included, he thought, poised, as the axes thundered again. Well, they're just doing their duty as they see it.

  "Right," John Hordle said. "Let's clear the way!"

  They tallied on to the main cable, Hordle and Alleyne at the front—the younger Loring was only six feet and built like a leopard rather than a tiger, but strong as whipcord with it.

  "Remember, stop pulling the moment it comes free!" Alleyne said sharply. "If we pull the precursor cord loose, we'll have to run another up."

  Hordle took a deep breath and called: "Heave!" Seven strong men surged backward against the cable with hissing grunts of effort, driving against their heels as if this were a tug-of-war game at a village fair. Steel squealed against rock; he could feel the bar bending as the cable went rigid, and then there was a sudden release of tension as it broke free. They all threw themselves forward at once, and Hordle blew out his cheeks in a gasp of relief as he saw Maude Loring's hand come through the remaining bars, hauling up the cable and setting it on the next of the steel cylinders. The first fell, bent into a shallow U, clattering and clanging as it dropped on the pavement below the window. "Ready… heave!"

  This one came more easily; they knew the strain needed, and knew they could deliver it. A man could get through already; one more and it would be easy. Lady Maude looked over her shoulder as she refastened the loop. Then she called, urgently: "They're in the room!"

  "I'm coming, Mother!" Alleyne shouted, dashing for the ladder.

  "Christ!" Hordle shouted; they'd need another bar out before he could get through, for certain! And the Lorings couldn't climb out, either, not with SIDs in the same room. They had to get some blades in there, to throw the SIDs back on their heels and give the Lorings time to break contact. So…

  "Heave, you bastards!"

  Maude shouted out the window: "They're in the room!" and snatched up her table leg.

  Some corner of Nigel Loring's mind wished desperately for a sword. Three Varangians were crowded into the entrance, hampering each other—but not enough that a man with a converted table knife had much of a chance against three armored killers. Two of them set their shoulders against the desk and the other furniture that blocked their way and started rocking it back by sheer brute strength; the third punched the top of his ax at Loring's face like a pool cue, an effective stroke when you didn't have room for a chop—five pounds of steel would crush your facial bones in with unpleasant finality. The Varangian expected Sir Nigel to leap back; they knew he was agile enough. That would give the axman space to push his way into the drawing room, drive Nigel into a corner and demolish him.

  Instead he jerked his head just enough aside to let the pell of the ax go by; blood started from his cheek as the grazing steel kissed him, a burning coldness. Then he slid forward again with that dancer's grace, his left hand gripping the ax and pulling it to one side, the knife in his other whipping across in a backhand slash at the other man's eyes. The guardsman bellowed in alarm and snatched his head aside in turn, saving his eyes at the price of taking a nasty cut that opened his face to the bone along one cheek, and relaxing his hold on the ax as he did.

  Sir Nigel's hand clamped down on it at once and pulled sharply; he stabbed backhand with the knife once more, and the ax came free as his opponent twisted once more to avoid the point. It hit the shoulder joint of the back and breast and snapped with a musical tunnnggg sound; then the Varangian did something sensible: smashed one gauntleted fist at Nigel's face, and used the other to draw the short sword hung at his waist. Sir Nigel skipped backward away from the gutting stroke of the man's upward stab.

  The mass of furniture overturned with a roar, scattering itself across the room in a bouncing, crackling tide. The two Varangians who'd pushed the barricade out of the way stumbled forward, puffing and off-balance for an instant. Nigel saw that, but there was nothing he could do about it. His own panting reminded him forcefully that he was fifty-two this coming September—in superb condition for a man his age, but still a good three decades older than his immediate opponent—and air burned like thin fire in his lungs. He could smell the acrid odor of his own sweat as it ran down his cheeks and shone through the thinning gray-blond hair on his scalp.

  The Varangian was enraged by the slash that had nearly taken his eyes. It streamed blood into his red beard across a face contorted in fury, he stood eight inches taller than the Englishman, and seemed to have arms longer than an ape's as they wove with sword and dagger advanced. Sir Nigel hefted the ax; it was heavier and longer than he liked in a weapon but he gripped it expertly with his left hand at the outer end of the helve and his right, feet spread and at right angles—which might have been a mistake. The guardsman's blue eyes went a little wider as he recognized hold and stance, and he made no move to attack. He didn't have to. In a few seconds his comrades would be on Loring, and it would end in a flurry of ax strokes impossible to counter.

  "St. George for England!" Loring shouted, and attacked.

  His first move was a feint, a lizard-quick punch with the head of the ax. That brought the Varangian blades up to block. Stepping in, he delivered the real blow—an overhead loop that turned into a cut at the neck, hands sliding together down to the end of the haft. The other man began a sidestep and block to deflect it, but at that instant Maude Loring's chair leg cracked into his elbow. The chain mail there probably saved the bone from breaking, but the two-handed blow on the sacral nerve still made his hand fly open by reflex, and the dagger in it went flying. His wild stab with the short sword left him open, and the ax in Sir

  Nigel's hands fell on his shoulder with a sound like a blacksmith's hammer.

  The Varangian toppled backward with a sound that was half curse and half scream of shock and pain; the broad curved cutting edge of the ax had gone through the metal of his breastplate, just deeply enough to sever his collarbone. Torn steel gripped the blade tightly enough to pull Nigel forward; he released the haft of the ax perforce. Movement caught the corner of his eye, to the right—

  A figure in dark green armor squeezed through the window. It was a complete suit of plate—officer's or lancer's gear—and there was the face so much like his, below the raised visor. Alleyne Loring was grinning as he reached over his shoulder to flip a longsword through the air, then dropped a
shield to the ground and skidded it over with a push of one foot.

  Sir Nigel raised his hand as the weapon spun towards him; the leather-wrapped hilt smacked into it with a comforting solidity, and he had a yard of double-edged, cut-and-thrust blade in his fist. It was his own, intimately familiar from eight years of practice and battle. He snatched up the heater-shaped shield as well; it had the five Loring roses on its face, and a diagonally set loop and grip on the rear. He slid his arm in from the lower left, took the bar at the upper right corner tightly and brought that fist up under his chin just so…He had the shield up under his eyes and the sword poised while the two hale Varangians hesitated. Another figure climbed and wiggled through the window, cursing the tightness—a man huge and familiar, grinning as well as he took his archer's buckler in his left hand and drew the great hand-and-a-half sword slung by his side with the other.

  Little John Hordle, Nigel thought, grinning back. Well, the card's full and the dance may begin in earnest!

  More Varangians crowded through the shattered door, bearing axes and the spike-blade-hook menace of a guis-arme on its six-foot shaft. There was a moment of silence as the three Englishmen stared at their foes—silence save for the moaning of the wounded man crawling out the door among his comrade's feet—and then it began. An ax swung at Nigel; he stepped into the stroke, sloping his shield to glance the battering impact away at an angle, stabbing around it at a face.

  Steel rang on metal, thudded against wood; breath sounded harsh as men stamped and shoved and thrust through the great candlelit drawing room. Over it a roar of battle cries:

  "Konung Karl! Konung Karl!"

  "A Loring! A Loring!"

  "St. George for England!"

  "Ettu skit Engelendingur!"

  Hordle's wild-bull bellow joined the cries as his heavy sword cracked into the shaft of an ax and through it and into a face: "Die, you sodding SID bastard!"

  Then the guisarme hooked over the edge of his shield, hauling him forward and off-balance, leaving him open to the wielder's partner. The Varangian poised his ax to kill, but an arrow went by, close enough to brush the fletching against Sir Nigel's neck. It buried itself in the Varangian's face, slanting past his nose and coming out the angle of his jaw, breaking most of the teeth on that side of his face in the process. Nigel killed the man behind the guisarme by reflex, a swift twisting thrust to the neck, then turned his head to see someone kneeling in the window with his bow in his hands. He recognized the narrow dark face: Mick Badding, from his old SAS company.